My father served in several theaters during the war, but most notably he flew seven low level daylight precision bombing mission in the fall of 1943 as a tail gunner in a B17. As I understand it, this was before they had fighter cover all the way over the target. One of the missions was Black Thursday.

My father never talked much about his service during the war - in fact, he avoided talking about it if at all possible. Finally, just a short while before he died in 1990 he told us a little about his time stationed in northern England during the war.

I had wondered why he would have nightmares so often. I remember hearing him screaming in the night all through my childhood. That day he told us why.

My father was several years older than many of the young men he flew with at this time in the war. Because of the high rate of casualties and the intensity of the fighting at the time, the American Air Force was forced to send over young, inexperienced crews. On one mission, while outbound over Belgium on their way to the target, a single large caliber round pierced the fuselage and decapitated the pilot. The young man's body, strapped to the chair, disgorged all of its blood into the cabin soaking the instruments and copilot.

The young copilot panicked, started screaming and froze at the controls. Within moments the whole crew was panicked, screaming and throwing up. Worse yet, the copilot was unable to keep the plane on the air. (I know nothing about flying, but my father told me that if small corrections weren't made by the pilot, the plane would slowly start to skid and eventually would roll into a dive with the obvious catastrophic results.)

My father came forward from his position in the tail and got the copilot to calm down and fly. Though I never in my life knew my father to use profanity, as he described it that day, he got them to turn the plane around. He told the bombardier to "drop on the f#&@king Belgies" (his words) and they headed back to base. (Apparently clearing the bomb load was critical in trying to avoid or outrun German fighters and for landing if they made it back.)

At the age of 35 I finally found out why my father woke screaming several times a week all his life.

That's one of the reasons why I use my father's image for my avatar. He was a very good man and I miss him.

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