398th Bomb Group
Memorial
Association


The Youngest Crew Goes to War
January 9, 1945
Nuthampstead, Hertfordshire, England


By
Paul Wagner
Pilot, 600th Squadron

The 398th Bomb Group (Heavy) was the sole occupant of the airbase at Nuthampstead. The flying field itself consisted of three runways, a control tower, maintenance hangars and dispersed parking areas (called "hardstands") for the bombers. The area had originally been a small farming village and the remainder of the base was the US Army's temporary buildings, set between the farmhouses and connected by a loop road.  All told there were probably more than 2000 persons at the base at any particular time, of whom approximately one half were flyers, the others were support personnel, "ground pounders" as we called them.

Once we arrived at the base, the truck dropped the enlisted men off at their Quonset hut and delivered us to the other end of the airbase to our Quonset hut. The Quanset hut was a building about thirty feet long, made up of ribbed sheet metal formed into a semi-circular cross section, with concrete floors and  closed off at the ends with masonary. There was a door at one end and a window on the other end.  Our hut housed twelve flying officers.  We must have been quite a sight when we walked into the our hut the first time.  Naturally, we were trying to look "cool" and in the process probably resembled nothing less than bullfrogs with our eyes bulging and our heads swivelling on our necks trying to look at all of the hut's occupants and furniture at once.  By the time we got inside we were really up tight and saying to ourselves things like, "this is it, this is the real thing, the big time."  We tried to control our excitement, panic actually, while we got ourselves settled down.

The hut was furnished very simply, six double decker bunks, four chests of drawers that served for three people each and four chairs.  There was one stove and there was a radio. The radio allowed us to listen to all those songs that tore at our heart strings while we were on combat duty, they still do it to me; "I'll Be Seeing You"  by Jo Stafford, "It Had To Be You" by Dick Haymes, "We'll Meet Again" by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, "Elmer's Tune" (this was no.1 on the Hit Parade on December 7, 1941) and "Moonlight Serenade" by Glen Miller with his Army Air Corps Band and others.

Several of the inhabitants were seated around the stove trying to keep warm when we walked in.  One of the men, a navigator named Mondo had an interesting habit. [Mondo Baldwin was Tom Mathews' navigator]. He would put a lit cigarette into the right corner of his mouth and when the ash grew long enough to be discarded, instead of taking the cigarette out of his mouth and flicking the ashes off, he would turn his head quickly while blowing outward along the length of the cigarette in order to get the ash off the  end.  He usually did this twice, quickly, to be sure of getting the excess ash blown off the cigarette.  To one who was not aware of this, Mondo appeared to be a guy with a terrible twitch.  After introducing ourselves I had to ask the inevitable questions.

"How are things?"
"Rough" said Mondo, twitch, twitch.

"How's the Group doing?"
"Tough times", replied Mondo, twitch, twitch.

About this time I heard a sound that went CRUMP.
"What's that?" I asked.

"Those are V-2 rockets falling short of their target.  We are on the direct flight path of the rockets from Holland to London and the short ones hit right around our airbase", Mondo informed us, twitch, twitch.

By this time we were all convinced that this guy was suffering badly from combat fatigue which was nothing compared to the effect his twitches were having on us!  There was nothing for us to do but get settled in our bunks and try to get some sleep which, by this time, was going to be impossible.  But at least we stopped asking questions so we limited the nightmares we were already having.  After a day or two we became accustomed to his odd habit but until we did, it certainly gave us a turn.

Next morning, as aircraft and crew commander, I reported to the base adjutant at the Base Headquarters.  The base was simply a small farming village--a collection of farms actually, that was delineated by a mostly unpaved road that ran around the perimeter of the inhabited area.  The quarters of the U.S. personnel were located so as to minimize our effect on the daily lives of the locals.  The airfield itself occupied a large, flat area just to the east of this mixed community.  The only commercial business in the town was a pub that was located within about one hundred yards of my hut.  Aside from a very occasional beer at the pub, I had very little to do with the locals.

The base headquarters building was located directly across a snow covered field from our hut and taking a direct path across the field looked like a much shorter route to take than following the wandering and muddy perimeter road.  So Bud and I got dressed in our best dress uniforms and headed for the Base Headquarters.  About halfway there I stepped into a depression and found myself up to my armpits in snow -- this in a country that, I had been told, did not get snow.  We made it eventually and after brushing the "non-existent" snow off our uniforms we reported in officially and became members of the 600th Bomb Squadron of the 398th Bomb Group.

By this time we had remembered Kipling's poem about the "Charge of the Light Brigade" and the opening lines, "Into the valley of death rode the 600", and were resigned to our fates. 


From "The Youngest Crew" by Paul Wagner
Lagumo Press, Cheyenne, WY, 1997, ISBN 1-878117-18-1


Veteran: Paul Wagner
Pilot, 600th Squadron
Date of Personal History: August 2003 Web Page submission. Excerpted from "The Youngest Crew" by Paul Wagner.
Author: Paul Wagner
Submitted to 398th Web Pages by: Paul Wagner


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