Here, gentle reader, endeth the story of the Combat Wing, a child of the war in Europe. For on the 8th of the month, the Third German Reich, acting through its ersatz Fuehrer, Doenitz, officially gave up the ghost and unconditionally surrendered its arms to the conquering Allied powers.

 

Before signing off, we compiled figures to show the extent of our effort during the two years we had been at work. We had scheduled, we found, a total of 26,295 aircraft for missions against the enemy. Of these, 64 failed to take off and 909 returned early, or 3.4% of aircraft scheduled. With 25,310 accredited sorties against the enemy, we dropped a total of 53,339.7 tons of bombs on enemy targets. This record represented 23.02% of the 1st Division effort and 9.15% of the total Eighth Air Force effort.

 

To effectuate the result, we lost a total of 379 aircraft: 130 to enemy air action, 103 to anti-aircraft gunfire, 8 to accident and 138 to causes unknown.

 

What was to happen to the Wing? During the month we learned our fate. The Combat Wing was to be recognized as an administrative Bomb Wing and move to Germany as a part of the occupational air force. The thing that we had learned to love as Gross’s family was to go on, but in another form, another place and with a different task. Also, the long arm of Washington reached into our little circle and snatched four characters: Smitty (“The Mole”), McDaniel, Akins, and Haberman. These four were alerted to be ready for movement on the 1st of June. They were to go home for a brief spell, then be fed into the hopper, which many of the old characters were being used for the augmentation of the Twentieth Air Force. In our re-organization, others of the faithful would leave us. The first to go was Hutchings, who left us on the 20th to go home with one of the units selected to return to the States.

 

Ours was not the only chapter drawing to a close. We were to lose our Groups, all of which were scheduled to go home, and the entire Eighth Air Force and the 1st Air Division were to be broken up.

 

But these things did not come to pass before we had pulled our last job of work in the air. There were no more bombs to be lugged to Germany, no more targets to be demolished, but in the eastern marches of the Reich were thousands of Eighth Air Force and Allied lads who had come to bring them home.

 

Accordingly, on the 12th of May, the Boss and his staff set out in “OUR BRIDGET” for the former GAF airfield at Barth. This spot was located on the shores of the Baltic Sea due north of Berlin, and was a hundred miles or so behind the lines of demarcation between the Western Allies and the Red Army area. On a point of land, not far from the airfield, was Stalag Luft No. 1, where nearly nine thousand Eighth Air Force and Allied airmen were waiting for transport.

 

The night before the operation was one of feverish preparation. Then at ten in the morning, the BRIDGET, with the Boss in the left-hand seat, took off from Bassingbourn with a load of men and K-rations and pointed her nose for Germany. In spite of the urgency of our missions, we couldn’t resist the temptation to see a few sights, and on the way back we flew at low level over our old friends Emden and Wilhelmshaven. Then, three hours after take-off in a flight that was a breeze for the BRIDGET the Barth airfield hove in view.

 

Naturally we didn’t know what to expect. Every German airfield we had seen since the breakup had been pocked with bomb craters, and we knew that Jerry was in the habit of mining fields before he abandoned them. So we prepared to give the field a good buzz before landing, with every man Jack straining his eyes to try and see what the field would do to us if we landed. But as we came over the field, to our amazement a big green flare came up from the tower. So we circled and landed and when we got to the end of the quite undamaged runway, there was a typical airdrome car flying yellow flags and carrying a sign with the words “FOLLOW ME” in big letters.

 

We soon learned the explanation. About two weeks before, just before the arrival of the Red Army, the Jerry P/W camp Commander had sent for Colonel Hubert Zemke, who was the P/W Commandant, and confessed that he had lost control. The Luftwaffe was running away from the airdrome, and the German staff of the prison camp had gone completely out of control and was fleeing in panic and disorder.

 

This was what the P/Ws, or Kriegies (short for Kriegagefangene) as they called themselves, had been waiting for. Under the able leadership of Colonel Zemke, former Thunderbolt Group Commander, and the senior officers of the Camp, the Kriegies had an organization that had been set up for months, just waiting to go. At the head was a provisional Wing organization, and under the Wing there were four Groups, each comprising a single camp compound, and an air base Group ready to take over the GAF airdrome as soon as they could get their hooks on it. The minute the Jerries took off, the boys swung into action. Bursting out of their compounds they seized arms, commandeered every vehicle within miles, and took control not only of the prison camp and the airdrome, but of the town of Barth, a not inconsiderable place of some 30,000 inhabitants, and the surrounding countryside.

 

To their eternal credit, it must be recorded that one of the first things the Kriegies did was to break open the Hun concentration camp located on the airdrome. Here was a huge compound, surrounded by barbed wire, high tension, ten feet high, in which the detestable Nazis kept political prisoners and foreign slaves, workers employed in an assembly plant where AR-234 jet fighters were put together.

 

What the Kriegies found was another sordid chapter in the story of the stinking postholes with which the Hun had filled his Europe. For the barracks within the compound were filled with the dead and dying. Stinking corpses were strewn indiscriminately in the rooms where there were the shadows of men, wasted with starvation and diseases, too weak to do anything about the dead. There was little the Kriegies could do except to remove the living to a place where they could die decently, for they were nearly all beyond help. Then they locked and bolted the gate to prevent the spread of disease and pestilence. We did not enter, but the stench was all we needed or cared to sense. If this was the smell of Hitler’s Reich, we wanted none of it.

 

To come back to our own saga, the little FOLLOW ME wagon led the airplane to a parking place on the line, and we dismounted. We had a theory that we ought to impress the Russians, if we met any, so when we climbed down on the ground, the General put on his full regimentals while Moreau and Haberman danced attendance and snapped to attention if he so much as sneezed. And sure enough, the Russians were there, but the armies remained to be observed, for the Kriegies had gone out and patrolled the area until they made contact with the Russians, then led them into the area, turned over control and completed negotiations for their evacuation. So, the General was greeted by Colonel Nikitin of the Red Army, who came to extend the compliments of General Major Vladimir Alexanderovitch Borisoff, the local Divisional Commander, and would the Yankee General give General Borisoff the pleasure of his company at tea, with two officers of his staff?

 

Well, he would and, By Gum, he did!

 

Leaving the airdrome situation under Lt. Col. Don Sheeler of the 91st, who had come after us in a special airplane equipped with tower-type radio, the Boss singled out Moreau and Haberman (who had brought their blouses) and went off to have tea with the Red Army.

 

The Kriegies briefed us. In the first place, tea isn’t exactly tea: it is a drinking contest. You sit down at a table loaded with food and bottles, and then the Russians start proposing toasts. You drink four or five kinds of liquor all at the same time. If you fail to drain the glass every time you pick it up, that is the insult fatale. You eat as much as you can get down your throat between drinks, or you will surely end up under the table and carry down with you the honor of the United States Army.

 

And so it turned out. First we met his nibs, the General, a hard-bitten cuss with what looked like false teeth made of steel, who needed no urging to tell us, through several interpreters, all about the Battle of Stalingrad. Oh yes, that was the battle. Russians, we found, suffer from modesty. Stalingrad was the biggest battle of the war. And he was one of its heroes. Candidly he took his place in line with the victors of Salemis and Thermopylne and Lepanto and Waterloo and all the rest. Probably he was right, but we didn’t argue. Not even to the extent of suggesting that maybe the United States had something to do with winning the war. Somehow, we didn’t think he would appreciate it.

 

Then tea. A long, snowy table set for thirty, groaning under sixteen kinds of herring, black, winy Russian bread, spiced and smoked meats, butter and pickled onions and caviar and black Russian cigarettes and chocolate bonbons. And glasses and bottles, dozens of bottles; wine and liquors and vodka. And Russian women waiting on the tables. It seemed that the Russians fight a thoroughly co-educational war, with their women going right along. And if the going gets a bit tough, the gals pick up their rifles and get right up in the front line with the boys.

 

Immediately, the serious business of the afternoon got underway. General Borisoff got up and spouted for five minutes. Then the interpreter got up and said, “The General, he propose toast the Red Army”. Then another and another. Always the Red Army. Finally, it was the Boss’s turn. After all, what could a man do? He toasted the Red Army. After a while, we didn’t need the interpreters anymore. It didn’t matter what anybody said. There was hilarity and good fellowship and no end of eating and drinking for three solid hours, and all in the name of tea. We shuddered at the thought of a real drinking party. It was a real experience, one for the book. And we all had one and the same thought: except for the fact that our hosts were plain soldiers and not titled nobility, it couldn’t have been very different had we been the guests of the old Imperial Russian Army.

 

The party broke up at six, when everyone was given a cup of real tea. But our respite was short-lived, for at seven we sat down again with the Russians, this time at a sumptuous repast prepared by the Kriegies in what had been the Jerry Officers’ Club. There were plenty of bottles here, too, bottles liberated from the fallen clutches of the Luftwaffe. Again, we were toasting the Red Army, doing bottoms up. It was an unforgettable day, an unforgettable evening.

 

Meanwhile, the serious business of the expedition had not been neglected. While we were having tea with the Red Army, 36 ships of the 91st Group arrived and did a trial evacuation, taking away about 1,000 Kriegies. It was determined that the airfield could conveniently handle twenty ships an hour, with a comfortable margin in case of breakdowns, and the General sent a message back to the 1st Air Division by W/T to start pumping the ships in at that rate the following day.

 

On the 13th, the big movement was run off. We were up at five in the morning, breakfasted with the Kriegies, and went down to the airdrome. When the ships started to arrive, we were loaded for bear. The Kriegies were organized in shiploads of 30 each and marched from the camp to the field, where they formed a pool in a former prisoner cage until needed. Then, as the ships arrived on the field, an officer of the Wing Staff would board and brief the crew, who were not allowed to leave their seats or shut off their engines. Briefing proceeded while the ships were taxiing. Then the ship would pull up at a loading station, the briefing officer would get off and the Kriegies would embark. Within a few moments, the ship would be off, carrying the Kriegies to France on the first leg of their journey to the port and home.

 

The joy of the Kriegies made us all happy. There were many happy reunions, notably our own with Captain Bill Martin and Dave Williams of the 91st, lost over Germany more than a year ago. Many were excited exclamations as Kriegies recognized the airplane markings of their old outfits, come to take them home again. Over and over again, we heard the boys exclaim, “A Fort brought me to Germany and by God a Fort is gonna take me home!”

 

We were justifiably proud of the performance put on by the ships of the 1st Division, including our own. Gasps of joy came from the Kriegies and excited admiration from the Russians, as formation after formation came over the field, each at its appointed time and each in precise military formation. This was air power in its most impressive form. The Russians were overwhelmed the previous day when they inspected BRIDGET. But when two hundred fortresses arrived and cleared the field in a single day, coming and going with the scheduled precision of a great passenger terminus, they were speechless. Only two minor malfunctions marred the day; otherwise, every ship was landed, loaded and took off again in less than fifteen minutes. And even the ships that had trouble were fixed on the spot and returned to base under their own steam. One ship that had damaged a prop in landing took off again with three engines and went home, to the consternation of General Borisoff, who witnessed the event.

 

That one-day disposed all but a few of the Kriegies. The next morning, the balance were readily taken off and then, after bidding farewell to the Russians, and taking with us as the spoils of war everything that we could carry that wasn’t nailed down, OUR BRIDGET took off, leaving behind an empty camp and taking away a bunch of guys with memories that would last a lifetime. We carried Colonel Zemke to Paris and then flew from Villacoublay to Bassingbourn in one hour and fifteen minutes, with the BRIDGET heading home like a mule for the barn at a nifty 220 IAS, and not even trying. Then a bunch of tired and happy guys got in some much needed sleep.

 

Nothing remained but to liquidate our operation and observe, at one and the same time, the occasion of our second anniversary as a Wing, the end of the war in Europe and the end of this, the greatest adventure of our lives.

 

We gave a Wing Party. It was a great party, the party to end all parties. We took over the local cinema, as we did the year before, and we all brought our best local girls and we tried to show them that they, too, had been a part of this adventure. We tried to say a lot of things: that we had shared something that would never be recaptured, that we had learned to love these Islands, that we would never forget each other or the times we had together.

 

The scrivener of these pages is one of those to leave the Wing. In closing his part of this History, he can do no better than quote our Old Man, General Bill Gross, who summed it all up when he said:

 

“THE WING IS DEAD - - - - -
LONG LIVE THE WING!”