TAKE ME OUT OF THE BALL GAME
August 3rd, 1945. Ten AM. Another hot and humid Guam day. Briefing for our seventh mission had just ended with the usual lame joke about the flavor of ice cream on the sub waiting to pull us out if we need to ditch.
But now a break in the routine. We are, never happened before, summoned to the operations office. Where we learn we’ve been singled out to become a lead crew. And are to leave immediately, that day, for the States. We'll be on detached duty to attend a month of training at a school in Muroc California.
That wasn’t great news. They called our selection an honor. If so, it was one we’d gladly skip. It would not only prolong our overseas stay once we got back to Guam, but meant a more dangerous future if the Japanese still had accurate flak.
Our immediate departure was because of one of those inexplicable rules. Flight personnel couldn’t be placed on detached duty if they had flown more than six missions. We were bound for our seventh in a few hours. The good news was that the lead crew school had regularly scheduled terms. Ours wouldn’t start until early September, so we were to be on leave in the States until then.
Per instructions, we stowed most of our uniforms and paraphernalia in our footlockers, packed our B-4 bags lightly, and reported to the flight line. Soon we were on our way to Hawaii's Hickam Field in a drafty C-54 upholstered in wood and metal. Not nearly as cozy as our jam-packed B- 29s.
In Hawaii we learned that before leaving we would be subjected to, of all things, customs inspection. The guilt always lurking beneath my surface assured me I’d be arrested on the spot once the inspector found the information folder for the aborted-for-us seventh mission I’d packed in the side pocket of my B-4 bag. The folder contained, among other things target details, the sites of air-sea rescue planes circulating along our potential route, and (the souvenirs I had filched the folder for) beautifully detailed, yard square, colored silk maps of the Asian Pacific area. The inspector slipped his hand in the side pocket containing these treasures. Probably he was searching for more deadly wares. A colt-45 perhaps. Or booze. My 45 was, per orders, ensconced in my footlocker back on Guam, along with a fifth or two of Canadian Club.
My fright evaporated. As fast as his hand went in, it emerged, empty handed.
We were classified as important travellers, priority # 4, top of the heap. And quickly routed to a plane to ferry us the rest of the way to the States. This time a shiny C-54 with real, perhaps 40, seats. The eleven of us piled in to discover the only other passengers. Ten of them. A general and various underlings. Once airborne, a genial colonel discovered to us that their boss was General Carl Spaatz. None of us knew that he was in command of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific. We’d fortuitously been loaded on to the plane which was carrying his team back to the US from his Guam headquarters. And for a reason beyond our imaginations.
My crew scattered around the almost empty plane. One of the others and I dropped into seats across the aisle a row behind the general who sat alone in the aisle seat. We droned along for several hours. I dozed, luxuriously having nothing to do.
The door to the flight deck opened and the pilot walked, suspiciously brisky to me, to say something to General Spaatz. Why suspiciously brisky? Simply because any unusual noise or activity on the plane we normally flew probably signified a problem. The general leaned forward. Instead of announcing a problem I distinctly heard the pilot tell the General “Sir it's just come over that we’ve dropped an Adam bomb on Hiroshima.” I wondered what an Adam bomb was. Concluded it wasn’t that momentous when the general murmured thanks and relaxed again in his seat, declining the pilot’s follow-up invitation to come forward to use the radio.
When we arrived in San Francisco I discovered the enormity of what had happened. That Adam was really Atom. Some time later I wondered if that momentous event also explained why the stockpile of ten-ton bombs for use in daylight raids had recently been removed from our base.
A day later I arrived back at our Brooklyn apartment to surprise my mother. She wasn’t there. She was in the Catskills, MC-ing and performing at Ehrenreich’s Hotel with her current man-friend, Michl Gibson. I borrowed my uncle’s car to drive and surprise her there. No problem with gasoline. I was equipped with an abundance of prized C ration gasoline stamps given me by the man who had picked me up when I hitchhiked away from San Marcos not very long ago. This trip in my uncle’s beat up car along the old curvaceous Route 17 was enjoyably unimpeded, Almost no traffic, and a stop half-way along for refreshment at the famous Big Apple restaurant.
I did get hauled over for speeding when a motorcycle policeman emerged from behind a road-sign. But an amicable conversation about the reason for the trip - I’m going to surprise my mom - plus my sharp dress uniform, and particularly the fact that I was a combat guy on detached duty from Guam, had me on my way with a friendly admonition to take it easy on the pedal. Guiltlessly overlooked a few minutes on.
At Ehrenreich’s I was publically adored by my mother (to my total embarrassment), and feted to the extreme by Michl, the hotel’s guests, staff, and management. This meant unending drinking bouts, at which I had become quite adept, as I happily joined one individual after another in toasts to our great war exploits. Everyone was on tenterhooks, hoping for a rapid end to it all.
I slept soundly the night of August 10tth as my comrades-in-arms back in Tinian dropped “fat man” on Nagasaki. I was still slumbering soundly the next morning when I was rudely shaken awake by Mrs. Ehrenreich. The hotel owner had burst into my room. She shook me awake, shouting “You did it! You did it!” Momentarily, her outburst was as guilt-wrenching as the impending custom inspection in Hawaii had been. What I had done? Then I understood. She was telling me the war was over. Only it wasn’t. Not quite. I had been frightened awake due to a communication glitz, a misinterpretation of a comment from my recent fellow passenger, General Spaatz. 1
But it did really end a few days later.
I reported to the lead-crew school in Muroc at the end of the month and attended during all of September. I don’t remember any of this by then pointless schooling.
1 “In response to the Japanese message President Truman [had] issued instructions that no further atomic weapons were to be dropped on Japan without presidential orders,[110] but allowed military operations (including the B-29 firebombings) to continue until official word of Japanese surrender was received. However, news correspondents incorrectly interpreted a comment by USAF commander Spaatz that the B-29s were not flying on August 11 (because of bad weather) as a statement that a ceasefire was in effect. To avoid giving the Japanese the impression that the Allies had abandoned peace efforts and resumed bombing, Truman then ordered a halt to all further bombings.”
Abstacted from Wikileaks, (bold face added) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#cite_note-112
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