Oral History Interview with Alvin L. Martin

Diakov: It is Thursday, November 15, 2007. This is Leanne Diakov, and I am interviewing Alvin Layman Martin, who was born June 23, 1924. He served in World War II in the Army Air Forces attaining the rank of Technical Sergeant, and he served in the European Theater. This interview is primarily regarding Mr. Martin’s World War II service.

Diakov:Mr. Martin, I’ll just start out by asking you to tell me a little bit about yourself before the war—where you were born, and a little bit about your family.

Martin: I was born the date you mentioned in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and 1:00in 1928, at four years of age, I was…I moved to Glasgow, and Glasgow, Kentucky has been my home ever since. I was one of eight children. I had five brothers, and two sisters, and all of my brothers are gone now, and there were three of us out of the six that were in the service. My sister, two sisters and myself are the remaining ones of the family. My father’s name was Benjamin Harrison Martin and everyone called him Bennie. My mother’s name was Hattie, and they were both originally from Hardin County, Kentucky—Rineyville 2:00and Eastview. My dad was a stonemason. By that I mean he lettered monuments, well, he sold monuments, and he went to work in Glasgow in ’28, and after that he started a business of his own, just outside Glasgow city limits, called the Economy Monument Company, and so we lived there from ’28 until ’43, when I went into service. It’s a wonderful community, good neighbors. I can’t remember for sure, but I think I was in church when I first heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and I was just, sixteen, I think at the time, in ’41…or seventeen at the time. And 3:00I don’t know what caused me to think about going on into the service, but on May 22, 1942, I graduated from high school in Glasgow. June 23 was my 18th birthday, and the law that caused the eighteen year olds to first register for the Army was put into effect June 30 of ’42, so it caught me by seven days. Anyway I registered, and I think it was about November or December I thought the draft board was going to call two of my friends, and they were about…almost a year older than I was, and I thought they’d be going in the next bunch. So, I went to the draft board, and I volunteered. I told them to call me, and they called me in the next bunch, in early February, 4:00but my two friends didn’t go into the service until a year later [laughter]. So I was by myself, but they eventually went to China/Burma/India Theater and I’m glad I didn’t go over that way. I’m glad I went to Europe.

Diakov:Now what were some of the advantages that you perceived by going ahead and just enlisting on your own?

Martin:Advantages?

Diakov:Yes.

Martin:I don’t know if except maybe the interviewers saw that I wanted the Air Force—I was begging them for the Air Force, because I wanted to be a pilot more than anything. And I later found out that I was partially color blind, so that disqualified me from pilot training. So then, I started asking them to please let me get in the Air Force—I want to fly. 5:00I was sworn into the Army here in Louisville on February 9 in ’43, and then a week later, the 16th, me and thirty others of the fellows in the Barren County area, we left and went to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana for our induction center and processing. And we were there about a week, and I got acquainted with KP—if you know what that means—kitchen police, or kitchen patrol…whatever…[laughs], anyway they really work you at that! I learned to peel potatoes and I learned the KP, and the Mess Sergeant, he had me and another man washing the floor with a cake of soap and a brush—ha! And I made the mistake when we got it just about finished, and I said, “They must be gonna eat on this floor, as clean as we’re getting it,” 6:00and I didn’t know the Mess Sergeant was standing right behind me, but he said, “They are, soldier, gonna eat here, so you do it again.” It was on me! So I learned to kind of watch before I talked too much [laughter].

Diakov:Had you ever done any work like that before…growing up?

Martin:Oh yes, yes, I had some. I had a mother that taught us sons, her sons, how to handle some kitchen and chores around the house. And I’m glad she did.

Diakov:What was your mother’s reaction to your enlistment?

Martin:I don’t remember—they didn’t oppose it, and…I don’t remember a time my mother or dad opposed it, 7:00or told me that they wished I wouldn’t go. And I guess I was one of those smart eighteen year olds that knew everything [laughs], and…I knew there was a possibility of seeing a lot of the world, and I wanted to do that, and I did get to see quite a bit. But they never opposed it, and so I left on the 16th, and went to Fort Ben, and then on my aptitude test, turned out pretty good, or at least for my benefit, and they---me, out of those thirty-one men, that went up there with me—thirty men—two of us went to the Air Force. Just two, the rest went to infantry, field artillery up in Oregon, or Washington one, but we went to St. Petersburg, Florida, and [ ] we were billeted in the Serena Hotel, 8:00right on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Florida [laughs]. And we didn’t stay there but about a month. They taught us how to march, how to handle rifles, and some skirmishes, and… Diakov:At the hotel?

Martin:Well, we marched out to the edge of town to do that—to learn all those things, and I think it was 27th of March we got on a—I don’t know who else—this friend of mine that was with me, that come from Glasgow, he didn’t go to the place I did—I don’t know where he went, but we went to Florida and trained down there for a month, and then I asked for the…because I was kind of mechanically inclined, I asked for aerial engineering—flying as an engineer on the plane. And I was hoping to go to Keesler Field, Mississippi, but I didn’t. They sent me to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 9:00to radio operator mechanic school [laughs]. And I was never too much interested in radio, but they taught us how to build a receiver, and a transmitter, and then they taught us radio procedure, and two signals that you use to hold messages with, and we learned the Morse code. I liked the Morse code; I was working on about 25 words/minute when I graduated there.

Diakov:How long were you in Sioux Falls?

Martin:In Sioux Falls, from March about the 20th, until the latter part of August—about three months or so. 10:00We finished our radio school and they sent me to aerial gunnery school in Laredo, Texas, and that was the most interesting and wonderful part of my service. I loved that gunnery school training, and I loved to shoot guns. And we shot everything from a BB gun to a 20-mm cannon…pistols, 45-pistols, submachine guns, we even shot skeet, with 12-gauge shotguns, and that was to teach us to lead targets, you know, when they’re moving you have to lead them, and that’s primarily what that was. And then we flew in the AT-6’s training planes, in the back cockpit, and it had a 30-caliber machine gun there, and then another plane would let out a target, a big sleeve target, and we would…each of us gunners would fire at those targets, and we had 11:00painted bullets, so we could tell which one hit the white sheet target, you know. And then some of the other training, was we went…they built wooden planes and set them about a quarter-mile apart on the ground, and our pilot would get right down on the top of the trees and we were to shoot at those planes as they went by, learn to lead and learn to [laughs] not hit the parts of the plane we’re flying in.

Diakov:Now was that the first time you had been in a plane?

Martin:I think I’d been up one time at some kind of show in Glasgow, earlier than that…I can’t remember…it may have been. But I sure loved it—I sure loved to get up in that airplane. And then we finished that, and I can’t remember the date now, but it was in September, 12:00I think…yes, September of ’43 and then we received a furlough from there—we had a ten-day furlough. So I got to come home for the first time, and see all my family and friends. Oh, I really enjoyed that.

Diakov:Tell me about your furlough at home. How did you get there?

Martin:They had a special bus…a Greyhound bus and they picked us…they put us on it, I think it was St. Antonio, or maybe at Laredo, I can’t remember which place we boarded it, but that driver took us all the way through to Nashville, and that was a long ride—day and night [laughter], and he really came across them states out there…I mean [laughs] he was [ ]. Then on at Nashville, I had to board another bus for Glasgow, and I don’t remember too much of the experiences there, but….

Diakov:Was that during the time when, in ’43, was the country rationing things 13:00at that time?

Martin:I think they were just starting it. I believe so. I never experienced much of that rationing, I never asked my dad and mom—I know I heard them talk about tires for cars, and sugar, and different things, and mother had mentioned that in letters to me overseas, but I never got to experience much of the rationing or knowing how it worked.

Diakov:So when you got home, your mom was still able to cook you a good meal?

Martin:Right, yes [laughter]. I missed those good meals. She would make candy, sometimes, and I don’t remember if she made a cake or not, but she would send it to me overseas, and oh, that was wonderful [laughs]. But after the furlough, I was to report to Salt Lake City, and I got in there a day early, and I didn’t like that [laughs]—I lost a day, but anyway they sent me from Salt Lake, to Kearns, Utah, about 20 or 30 miles away for a refresher course in radio. And then from that one-week course, then they 14:00sent me back to Salt Lake City, and then we were sent out to Boise, Idaho, to meet our bomber crews—the people that were going to be on the same plane with us. And I got to meet—I’d say I can’t remember—the last one that I got to meet was the one I wanted to become acquainted with first, or was second, I wanted to know the pilot. And the second one I wanted to know was the navigator, because he and I would work pretty close together, radio and navigation. And finally we met, and I forget, we trained in Boise for about a month, and I forget what kind of training it was, but well…I don’t remember, but anyway, after that month, they shipped us to Fairmont, Nebraska, and there we 15:00took some training; bombardiers were trained quite a bit there. We had a target range up in South Dakota and that, there was no habitation on the ground, and they had it set up for us, and we could bomb—I don’t remember if we went to the full altitude, but maybe ten to twelve thousand feet, and our bombardier got practice on bombing there, and then they had a gunnery range that our pilot had to fly around, and he’d make all left turns, and we had to fire to the inside, and we practice firing a 50-caliber machine gun there.

Diakov:Everyone, even the navigator, and the radio operator?

Martin:No, just the…see there were four turrets, 16:00and there was a man in each turret—that’s four gunners, and then the radio operator, myself, and the engineer gunner, we had a single 50-caliber machine gun and what’s called the waist position of the 24. And so we had—we didn’t fire the guns out to the right, because we’d be firing over habitated country. But we trained there for about…seems like about a month, and then they sent us to Lincoln, Nebraska, and I’m not familiar but the called it “swinging the compass.” What we did was, we’d fly each plane and the compass radio, which is a directional-finding radio, we had to calibrate it to make sure they’re all correct before we left for overseas.

Diakov:Now all this training that you did from Boise, Idaho on was with your…your crew? Your bombing crew?

Martin:Yes, right.

Diakov:And how many men were in that crew?

Martin:There were ten of us—the two pilots, 17:00and my pilot I just talked to yesterday. He lives in New York, and the co-pilot lives in Philadelphia—and myself, and the only three, out of the ten of us that are living. But anyway, a pilot was Peterson from Jamestown, New York; co-pilot was Robert King from Philadelphia; and then the navigator was Ray Bouserzack from Buffalo, New York; bombardier was Fred Savage from Wichita, Kansas; the engineer gunner was Ralph Alley, from North Carolina, and myself was from Kentucky. My nose gunner was Pat Hagan from Colorado Springs, Colorado. 18:00The upper turret gunner was Earl Isaacson from California; the ball turret gunner was Rex Merrell from Missouri, and the tail turret gunner was John Bowling from Charleston, West Virginia. So we were from all over the county. We had John Bowling and then Ralph Alley—I told my whole group one day, I said, “We’re the most unique plane in the whole Air Force.” I said, “We’ve got a “Bowling Alley” on there” [laughter]. They got a kick out of that. But we left Lincoln, Nebraska on the 13th, I think—maybe the 12th—we stayed one or two nights in West Palm Beach, Florida, 19:00before our flight overseas.

Diakov:And this was what month?

Martin:In March.

Diakov:March of ’44?

Martin:March of ’44. The morning of March 15, we got up around 3:30 I think it was—something like that—had breakfast and were briefed. We hadn’t, weren’t allowed to open our orders yet. We didn’t know where we were going. But they told us which way to fly. Well, after we got in the air, we could open the orders, and then find out. So we left West Palm Beach, and that was rather a unique experience. And my pilot’s even asked me today, he said, “How can you remember that?” My radio desk was right behind the co-pilot, who sits on the right side of the plane, and right in front of my desk there’s a little 8 or 10-inch window, that I could see the number three engine and the wing, and I can see 20:00also the right wheel on the plane. So at 5:32 a.m. on March 15, of ’44, the wheel of that B-24 left Florida’s territory—left the ground, and that was a telling experience for me, because I, I said quite a good prayer there. I said, “Dear Lord, I hope that it’s your will that I’ll get to see this beautiful terra firma again.” And oh, he let me do that. I appreciated that so much, so many times. But the first place that we landed was Trinidad, off the coast of South America. 21:00I don’t remember any experiences there, but my pilot yesterday told me, “When we went swimming at Trinidad….” [laughs] so I didn’t go with them, I know. But anyway we stayed one night, I think, in Trinidad, and then we flew to Braylin, Brazil. On the way to Braylin, we flew over quite a bit of water, the Atlantic, and the navigator—about half-way though—he notified me on the intercom, “There’s a B-17 ditched in the water—had to go down in the water.” He’d come crawling back from the front of the plane to tell me about it, and give me the latitude and longitude, and our radio procedure allowed us, in an emergency, to send plain text messages—plain English—so I sent the message in that the plane was ditched at such and such latitude and longitude, and they’re all 22:00in life rafts, and that’s the last I heard until I got on to Africa. But they were picked up—that crew—so I appreciated that. Later on, my group communications officer kind of gave me a little pat on the shoulder when we got to Algiers, or Tunis, and thanked me for sending that message because they got picked up. And that was kind of nice, to get a little commendation from one of the major officers. But anyway, we went on to Braylin, and I think we just stayed one night there, but Braylin had a pretty important visitor that night. Eleanor Roosevelt was there and somebody asked me if I was going over to see Eleanor, and listen to her speech. And I said, “Well, she hasn’t sent me an invitation, yet…I doubt if I will,” [laughter] because I was still nervous, and I wanted to stay with my crew, and I had a camera and we were supposed to not use a camera all the way over—not 23:00take pictures for security reasons but I took a few pictures of different places but didn’t let anybody see me. But anyway, I didn’t go see Eleanor [laughs].

Diakov:What did you do instead?

Martin:I, I guess I just went to the barracks with my, the rest of the crew. See they kept the officers and the enlisted men separate, and there was six of us enlisted men. We went there—we didn’t go to town or anything—we just stayed right on the base, because we were new at this, and they’d cautioned us about security, and not talking, or nothing—letting anybody know where you’re going, and…but anyway I think we just stayed one night there, and then we flew on south further to [ ] Brazil. And I believe we just stayed there a night and a day. I think we did, anyway, when we got ready to go across the ocean, they told us—they had us 24:00fly at night. And I don’t know why they did that, but anyway, we took off at 8:00 at night, and we landed the next morning at 8:00 in Dakar, West Africa. And that’s about a 2,000-mile flight, and that’s a pretty good flight for aircraft back in that days.

Diakov:About what altitude were you flying?

Martin:Oh, we flew, oh I guess, five to ten thousand feet—something like that.

Diakov:That’s pretty low.

Martin:Yeah, we weren’t…they didn’t want us going up to high altitude—you’d have to use more gas to get up there. We had tanks inside of the bomb bay, the extra gas, you know. And so we got over there, and me and the navigator and the two pilots were the only persons that were awake during that whole flight. And that was an eight-hour flight, and I had a radio, called a Laison Transmitter, and it was a 1,000-watt transmitter. I could transmit around the world if the weather conditions were all right. But anyway, when I got to North Africa, at Dakar, I was still working Brazil with my radio—talking 25:00to my co-workers and everything. That was kind of interesting. And we had about five or six different types of radios on that plane, and I had to know how to use and maintain them. And, anyway, about 8:00 the next morning, that navigator came from the front—he crawled through the catwalk back to the pilots’ compartment, and my compartment. He said, “We ought to be getting in there pretty quick now…it’s just about….” And boy, we looked outside in just a few minutes, and there’s that airstrip at Dakar. That navigator hit us right on—he was good [laughs].

Diakov:What did you think, going into Africa?

Martin:What did I… what?

Diakov:What were your impressions, going into Africa?

Martin:Oh, oh, that was a bad experience in the way—those people were so destitute, 26:00and without all the things that we’ve had in our country…I felt sorry for them. But we weren’t allowed to mix with the civilians hardly at all; we had to stay right on our army bases and take care of our business, and fraternize with the others—we couldn’t do much. But from Dakar to Marrakesh, French Morocco was our next flight, and that wasn’t anything happened on that…. I think it was the other trip, but anyway, we flew to French Morocco to Marrakesh, and I think just stayed one night, or maybe two, and then we flew clear across the top of Africa to Tunis, right over the coast, the eastern coast, 27:00and during that trip, we ran into…well first of all, another plane that took off with us, and his name was Lt. Olney, he was the pilot, and I knew his radio man real well, because we went to school together, fellow by the name of Yost, and we found out, I guess when we got to Tunis, that his plane didn’t make it over one of the mountains. They crashed into the mountains, so they lost a crew going over. My pilot on the way over…as I told you before I could see the wing out there, and the wing has rubber de-icer boots, and the pressure behind them makes the boots work out and that ice breaks out and flies away. If it doesn’t, why you’d be susceptible to crashing or going down. So, I watched that ice breaking ever so often—I said, “Boy, keep that up” [laughs]. But, our pilot, he was one of the best—he got us over the mountains, and then we got on to Tunis, 28:00North Africa. We were stationed right outside of Tunis, at a little town of Udna, and we would just stay there for about a month, because they didn’t have our airstrip finished in Italy, so we had to stay. We flew down over Egypt, and practiced, you know, bomb runs, and gunnery practice, and that kind of got monotonous, sitting there, but a few nights after we got there, we were listening to the radio, and I don’t know—one of England’s big powerful stations always had some American music, so we were all in listening to that. So low and behold, something broke in on one of the stations—I’m not sure if it was one of England’s stations or another one, but anyway, Axis Sally’s voice came on. She says, “We want to welcome the 485th 29:00Bomb Group to the European Theatre, with Colonel Arnold”—knew our commander, and some of the officers. And she says, “We’re going to be waiting for, you all come on over.” Man, we wanted to turn around and go home! [Laughter] That was kind of shocking—and everybody was sure quiet listening to her [laughter].

Diakov:That’s pretty…. threatening [laughter]. So this was in the spring, early summer of ’44. What was the military action in North Africa at that time? Was that still pretty heavy? 30:00Martin:No, they had already moved out to Sicily, and there were already invading southern Italy.

Diakov:Okay, so they had already pushed back [ ].

Martin:Yes, they had pushed Rommel out of North Africa. No, there weren’t any Germans there left, except prisoners.

Diakov:Yeah.

Martin:But we flew around there, and they had other people guard our plans. Ethiopian troops would guard our planes, and sometimes they wouldn’t let us get close to our planes, or they didn’t want to. Because we would go out to our plane, and take care—we really took care of our airplane. We put the covers over the engines, you know, to keep the dust—all the elements out of our engines, and we kept our plane clean. We were pretty proud of that. It was made by Henry Ford, in Willow Run, Michigan, and by the way—we never—a lot of air crews would paint a picture on it you know, of a lady or something; what was her name? Betty Grable—or somebody, and then, we just, we didn’t want that kind of art on our plane. 31:00So we just called it the last three numbers, “Old 769”—that was how we identified our plane. But one of our pilots in our squadron had a brother that was a pilot of a P-38 fighter, and he’d come over ever so often, and here they’d blow the tops off our tents when he come down so low, but it was interesting to see that P-38. They later helped us out quite a bit. I don’t remember the date that we went into Italy—it was right at the first of April, or maybe about the middle of April, and if I remember correctly we could hear the artillery guns of the infantry on up ahead of us—I mean quite a few miles away. But we were about 70 or 80 miles south of Rome and 32:00we were a bomb group all by ourselves, at this one airstrip, and a little town of Vanossa, Italy. We started getting in there, and they had special places for each squadron to park their planes, and I don’t remember anything particular about that, but I was always amazed at the pilots, how they could turn a great big plane around on a little [ ], and park it where we….it was really interesting. We got in their on the 1st of April, and we may have flown a couple of missions toward the south of Italy—I can’t remember—just to fly down there, but anyway, our first bombing mission in enemy territory, was May 10th, ’44 and the mission was over Yugoslavia, a small town in Yugoslavia that was kind of a 33:00railroad center, by the name of Knin. And I remember going in on that, and the briefed us about there might be fighters but there was going to be anti-aircraft fire against you, and each one of the bomb groups—each plane, each group would probably send about 36 planes into the air. That’s 360 men, you know, and we’d have six, seven, eight thousand pounds of bombs. So went over Knin, and we looked ahead and we saw another bomb group about three or four miles ahead of us that were going over the same target. We could see the German anti-aircraft fire, and they were correct in their fire. They had them shells bursting right at the level that that other group was. Boy, when you see that anti-aircraft fire exploding, 34:00and there ain’t nothing you can do, but just hope it don’t hit you. You just have to fly right through it. And I don’t remember…we’d started talking about food or something just about [ ]; the gunners, when you’re going right over a target, the fighter planes don’t come in, because they might get hit by their own anti-aircraft fire. So, all we do is wait for that bombardier to say, “Bombs away!” and we’re talking about this and that [laughs] and my pilot one time said, “Get off of that intercom, you guys, we’re in business up here!” [Laughs]. And so we shut up. And he and the bombardier, we’d start a bomb run at a certain point, several miles away from the target, and then 35:00that’s called the “initial point” and we had to fly a straight line right over that target at a certain altitude, and a few miles before we got to the target, the bombardier was flying the plane—he had control of it. And he’s the one that flew it that last…until he toggled that switch and dropped those bombs. And we could feel that plane raise up a little when that six thousand pounds of bombs went out [laughs]. But sometimes, I’d use—we had a set of big binoculars—and sometimes I’d use the binoculars out the hatch or the waist window, and watch the bombs go down, and I could tell where they hit at the target—near the target, or missed it, or what. So, 36:00I did that—I watched the bombs—and our bombs hit pretty good, I mean, of course we’re about 23,000 feet up. We’re almost five miles up, you know. You can’t detect a whole lot of things on the ground, except big buildings, and so forth, but you can tell if your bombs hit their designated target. I forget which mission it was now, it was in June, I think. We took a load of bombs that were brought up from Africa—they’d been laying down there in the ammunition dumps for several months, no doubt—and they were hundred pound bombs. So they put them in clusters of three, and oh, we had a bunch of those bombs in the bomb bay, but they were all tied together in clusters of three. 37:00Well, I got ready for the bombardier to give us the sign, or tell us “bombs away”. I got my glasses and got ready to start watching them, and those bombs—to arm the bombs, to get them ready to explode—they had an arming device on there that was controlled by a little propeller, and once that propeller started hitting the wind, why it would start winding itself off of that fuse. And at about 300 feet, 400, something like that below us, I saw all those little propellers fly off of those bombs, and I knew they were armed, and immediately every one of those bombs all blew up about 300 feet below us. Boy, that shook our plane and blew a hole, 6 or 8-inch hole through our number three engine, and that number three engine on a 24 controls the whole hydraulic system 38:00and that caused us some problems. But anyway we couldn’t stay up with the bomb group. Well, he had to feather the engine to keep it, you know, from dragging us too much, by that I mean they feather the propeller that caused it set straight in the wind, so it wouldn’t spin. And so my pilot started calling the company commander in another plane and tell him we couldn’t keep up, and somebody come and help us. The Germans might come and get us. But nobody came back for a long time. And we started dropping back, dropping back, and losing altitude.

Diakov:And where were you…over Yugoslavia?

Martin:No, that time we were over Hungary. I think it was—I think we went to Budapest, Hungary. It was a big oil refinery we bombed.

Diakov:So you were quite a ways from your base in Italy, so yeah….

Martin:Oh yeah, we were clear across the Adriatic Sea up in Hungary, 39:00in the Balkans. And so pretty soon we saw one of the 24’s coming back and it was one of the friends of my pilot that went through cadets with him, and they come back with all four of their engines running and they stuck that left wing of theirs into our, close to our right wing, and flew along with us, and it was good to see them turrets with those fifty-calibers out there, because some of our turrets were operated with all hydraulics, and we couldn’t do much shooting, correct shooting, without that hydraulic system. But anyway they flew along with us, and I think somewhere in Yugoslavia or Albania maybe, we crossed, we were already down to about 8,000 or 10,000 feet, something like that and I’m standing near my waist window looking out, and I see 40:00coming up ahead an oil refinery down there, and those big tanks. And before we got to it, I saw the Germans running out to their guns, that 88-mm anti-aircraft gun. Whew, man, that pilot he didn’t make an evasive action—he just kept flying [laughs]. I don’t know whether me telling him that caused him to doubt me, or what, but anyway, boy those Germans opened fire on us, and I…oh, they almost got us. But anyway, I’m the only one except the tail gunner, that…I mean, the ball turret gunner… that could shoot at them, and I’m about 8,000 feet away. So I turned my 50-caliber up and started shooting down on them, and the pilot called back and said, “What are you doing back there?” I said, “Well them guys are shooting at me—I’m going to shoot at them [laughs]. He said, “Well, you couldn’t hit nothing from this far away.” He said, “Let them shoot.” But we got over that target without getting shot down. Boy, I was glad [laughs]. But there was some harrowing experiences, I tell you. 41:00Diakov:So did they give you a new plane after that, or did they fix that one?

Martin:No, they tried…our plane got hit a few times, but we kept it until my crew got shot down. But another time, talking about getting hit, the flack, the anti-aircraft fire and the shrapnel from it, if it burst down below you, it blows out this way. But if it bursts up above you, you don’t get hit. But, I don’t know if I was watching the bombs go down or what, but I heard a big—and I’m laying on the floor of the plane, looking with my glasses—I heard a big thud, and man, right beside me, laid this emergency radio that we had. Each plane had a radio that would send out SOS signals, 42:00and you had to put it between your legs and turn the crank on it to generate enough electricity to send out that signal. But I pulled that radio aside, and there was a big piece of shrapnel, about as… bigger than my finger and about 3 or 4 inches long, from the way it was coming through the plane, it was headed right through the side of my head—and that radio stopped it. Yeah, I thanked the Lord again a few times, for that. I don’t know how many times, I remember quite a few that it got pretty close, and I didn’t know if we were going to make it, and then no doubt there were other times, that I never knew about, so I…I really appreciated being taken care of by a Higher Power. And there’s several instances, I’ve learned of, 43:00since the war from other crew members—we still meet each year—our bomb group does, and they tell us some stories, and these history books I’ve got here, they tell about each mission, and who got shot down and who…. One of my closest friends, on May 29th….see I told you we started our first mission on the 10th of May, on the 29th, one of the planes in my squadron was the first one to get shot down from my bomb group, and their radio man was a close friend of mine. And he just died last month, down in Florida, but anyway he got captured and they were prisoners of war for a while. And 44:00I sure did miss him, and then on June 28th, in ’43—‘44 there, we were flying to Bucharest, Romania, and bombing an oil field, and a German fighter hit us that day. They came in from ten o’clock level…. my it looked they were right in our formation, meeting us. But, I’m firing my single 50-caliber out the waist window at them, and then the tail gunner, and the top turret gunner and I guess the ball turret gunner, they were all shooting. And I was kind of halfway listening to all 50-caliber machine guns in that whole bunch of planes. You fly in a box, they call it, with six planes right close together, and boy, them boys were really firing those 50-calibers at those Germans. I don’t know how 45:00many…if we knocked out any German fighters or not, but right back on my left, was one of my closest buddies again, James R. Scott, and he just died last year, in September. He was a real dear friend. His plane got hit as those fighters were coming through, and the smoke started coming out of his number two engine, I think it was, and he started falling back, he couldn’t keep up. And I watched them, after they got clear back out of the formation, away from the rest of them, why the German fighters jumped on them, and boy, they shot him all to pieces. And I could see the plane—I quit shooting at the Germans, to tell them guys to jump, jump—get out of that plane [laughs], nobody could hear you. But anyway the plane went on down, and down, and finally I saw it nosedive—it started, 46:00and I thought oh, man, ain’t nobody going to get out of that thing now. And just as it started down, I saw two parachutes, and we’re still screaming, and not shooting, and looking at them, and hoping they’ll get out, and this buddy that was a radio man, he started down, and there was an explosion in the plane. They think it was some of the oxygen tanks, or something like that—this is the way he told it to me—and it blew him clear out of the plane. And he’s unconscious. And he starts falling, and then he regains his consciousness, and looks around and reaches down—he already had his parachute on luckily—and he pulled his ripcord, 47:00and the shoot popped open, and it hadn’t anymore than popped open than his feet hit the ground. He described that to me, and he was a physical wreck when he came back. The Russians liberated him after a month or two. Boy there was some hair-raising instances, other guys would tell you about—things that would happen to them. On June 9th, our squadron, well the whole bomb group went to Munich, and that was a terribly well defended target. Four of our planes in our own squadron—see each squadron would send up eight, nine planes, so that’s a total of 36 planes from one bomb group—and we lost four of ours, fighters hit them. I wasn’t in the air that day, because I’d flown the day before. 48:00Usually they let us fly every other day. Sometimes we’d fly every day, but I was told all about this, and I knew quite a few of the guys that went that day. Four of planes got shot clear down, and one of them was Flight Officer Lockwaynis, I’ll never forget that. His radio man was a Jewish boy, Jack Bisraughty—I was a good friend of his. I was told later that he was told to parachute out, and he froze, he couldn’t jump. So three men got out of that plane, and it blew all to pieces, so there was seven men just in smithereens. And then one of the other planes, I guess a fighter came from the rear, and he killed the tail gunner in the back. One tail gunner got killed. But those three 49:00men that got out of that plane, in ’81, at my reunion here in Louisville, I had those three men here—that was a great experience to see them. But, that’s forty percent of that squadron’s fighting ability, with four planes gone. Each squadron had 18 planes, and nine would fly one day, and usually nine the next day. And so we got to have some replacements to come in, and they did pretty soon. They kept flying replacements in from the States, because we’d lose them, you know. Another friend of mine, who I just saw September in Kansas City, Missouri at our reunion, he finished his 50 missions—he was a top turret gunner—he finished 50 missions and came on home, but I left the squadron before he did that. But anyway his pilot one day, talked about [laughing] protecting all his guys, and this gunner said, “You were protecting us?” He said, “We’re the guys that’s got the guns—we’re protecting you, pilot!” 50:00[Laughter]. But they got, they got it back, all that crew did, and I thought, I thought I had another item or two in the combat zone, but I can’t think of it now…I may come back to that.

Diakov:You can come back to it, if you remember later.

Martin:Yeah, yeah. Well anyway, in June, I think, maybe clear back in May, I developed a cyst on my body, and it kept getting worse, and I couldn’t hardly walk for it, and I’d been to the sick calls, but all they did was give me some medicine. So it got so bad, in the later part of June, that, no, it was the first of July, July 8th. Well, I went to the doctor on the 7th, 51:00and he said, “Martin, you’re going to the hospital tomorrow and get that cyst removed by surgery.” So, I got up the next morning about 3:00 with the crew, they were going on a mission—my crew—and I bid them all so-long, and they left with another radio operator in my place. I’ll never forget him; I’ve never been able to find him—Sergeant E. R. Mack, but they went on that mission, which I missed by just a few hours, and they got shot down over Austria. German anti-craft fire knocked them down.

Diakov:That day?

Martin:That very day. So I had told them before they left that morning, I said, “Now you guys come up to the hospital and see me.” It wasn’t but ten or twelve miles away, a big field hospital. When they didn’t come in on Sunday, or at least one or two of them, I knew something had happened. I was just worried to death, 52:00and the next morning, Monday morning, my flight surgeon came in from the squadron area, and he said, “Martin, you know you’re a lucky guy, don’t you?” I said, “I know, I know, I know…something happened.” I said, “Did they get out and parachute?” He said, “We counted ten parachutes.” I said, “Praise the Lord!” So they all got out, and were prisoners, about a year or something like that. And to jump ahead a little bit, that was in ’44, July 8th, and July 4th of ’75, I had eight of us ten together in Louisville for a reunion. Oh, they were just thrilled to death [laughs].

Diakov:So everyone made it through the prison camp experience?

Martin:They made it through the prison camp, and they all lost a whole bunch of weight, because the Germans didn’t have no food, hardly at all.

Diakov:Did they hold it against you for going into the hospital?

Martin:No, they kidded me. You know, I’ve heard that there used to be 53:00times when people in the army when they wanted to get out of something they’d kind of fake a sick call [laughs], so these crew of mine, they’re a bunch of guys—they started kidding me, “That’s old Sick Call Al” [laughter]. I said, “I know when to stay with my friends, and when to leave” [laughter]. Oh boy, I thought of everything after they got shot down—I thought of jumping out up there myself somewhere so I could be with them, but that kind of proved silly. I’d have gotten tried later for desertion [laughter]. But those guys had some harrowing experiences, and one of them—maybe two—I’ve only got one of them to tell me about it—but they were in a prison camp up in northern Poland, way up in Poland. And when the Germans were being pushed back west by the Russians, 54:00they took all those prisoners out of the prison camps and made them march about 600 miles back into Germany, and this was in January and February of ’45. Oh my, he told me about that, and that turned out to be equal to the Bataan Death March. But you don’t hear much about it. But I know two of the guys that are still living today that were in that march. Whew, they don’t like to talk about it, because they had to eat grass and insects and sleep in a barn, or sleep together to keep warm, a little bit, and my nose gunner was one of them. And I never got him to tell me—I got this word from somebody else. But that was a horrible time they went through. Germans are…the Germans were marching them, and they were suffering about as much as American prisoners were. 55:00They didn’t treat the Americans bad, I mean, the Germans didn’t, but there’s a lot of instances there anyway. I came back to the squadron area, sometime in August I think it was, the first of August, and recuperated, and I started flying again. I flew three more missions and I forget where they were now, but anyway I flew with a Lieutenant that’s living today, and he’s a preacher of our bomb group. He lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He preaches each year at our services—our memorial services—wherever we’re meeting. He’s missed the last two, and he’s deputized me to do the memorial services [laughs] and I’m not a preacher 56:00[laughter]. Anyway, let’s see. Oh, another one of my friends—on August 30th of ’44, one of our planes in the group over Budapest, Hungary, and they were bombing either an oil refinery or bombing railroad yards, but they, right over the target, they got a direct hit in the bomb bay, with an 88-mm shell. Only three parachutes got out. And all the rest of them got blow to pieces and one of them was their radio man that was one of my dearest friends. He was from West Homestead, Pennsylvania, and I’ll never forget him. He’d been with 57:00me—I forget how many months now—back to radio school, gunnery school, refresher, training, but anyway, he got killed and one of the crew members…we had a reunion in Pittsburgh, and one of the other crew members of that crew, came to that reunion. And my mouth just dropped open. I said, “S. P. Spencer, is that you?” He said, “I was one of those three parachutes.” Whew, that’s…it’s something to talk to somebody like that that’s been through some experiences.

Diakov:You thought he was dead.

Martin:I thought he was dead. When I looked at him, I said, “This can’t be you…you’re gone!” And then his navigator 58:00was another one that got out, and I’ve seen him two or three times at reunions, and, oh, it’s something to see some people that you thought were dead and see the plane get blown out of the air, and back to some of the bombing runs…. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Ploesti, Romania, but they furnished about a third, or maybe more, of the oil, motor oil for all of Hitler’s armies and air force and everything. So, it was one of the biggest targets that we had. I’ve been over two or three times, I forget, but they had nearly two hundred anti-aircraft circled around that refinery, and every time we went over it, they had already put smoke pots all the way around that whole refinery. They had a whole section of earth covered with smoke down there, and we couldn’t see 59:00the target, and we bombed it, and we could tell when we hit the refinery because the black smoke would come up through that white smoke…the smoke pots. And anyway, that was…we hated to go over that target because it was really well defended, and they always had fighters, the Germans always had their fighters down there too. But the first bomb run over that target was made in ’42 or early ’43—I forget which—and General Audery, that lives here in town he was one of the leaders in that. But they went in at treetop level. I forget how many bombers they sent over that day, but they lost 50% of the bombers.

Diakov:It was a suicide mission. 60:00Martin:And they’ve got pictures, videos of that flight, and you’ll see some planes diving into the ground—you know all of them are gone, some of them blown out of the air…. To the other branches of service, the infantry guys, they had it the roughest. We’ll admit that anytime, because they had to live with it day after day after, 24 hours a day, when we flew in and come back out, you know, and it made a difference there. But we respected the infantry, field artillery, and all the engineers and everybody. We used to—in order to boost the morale of the ground forces, we used to fly straight up Italy until we got to the fighting line, and then we’d turn and go out the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, and then go on to the target, just so the guys on the ground could see us, to let them know that we were supporting them. And 61:00I guess that was kind of a morale booster for them. But then, at the end of August is when I started my famous career [laughs], my career that was really something. My first sergeant came up to the squadron area when I flew those last three missions, and he said, “How would you like to fly for a general?” I said, “Well, who wouldn’t?” He said, “Well, you stay close to the squadron area.” He said, “We put your name in—there’s a general up in France that needs a radio operator.” So we went on for about almost two weeks, and I thought, well, they’ve put a radioman’s name in from every other squadron and bomb group in Italy—I’ll never get it. But one day that first sergeant came up and said, “Martin, get your badge—here we go.” And [laughs] a captain and a major and I don’t know 62:00two or three lieutenants—there were about five of them. Took one of those 24’s and flew this little old tech sergeant from Vanossa up to Naples, and we landed at Capodichino Airport, and I had to go across the airport to get on a plane that was 4-Star General Jacob L. Devers’ plane. He was going to France and I hitched a ride with him. A 4-Star General is a pretty important person [laughs]. Anyway, we flew into Saint-Tropez, France. Saint-Tropez was…I can’t think how to spell it…T-R-O-P-E-Z, or something like that…anyway, that wasn’t far from where we had bombed about a month earlier, when the southern invasion of France went about—I was on that bombing run. And, anyway, we landed there and the front 63:00the–Americans, the French, and everybody and the English—were all pushing pretty fast. Patton as you know was really going through Europe. And so I don’t know how long we stayed in St. Tropez, then we moved up to the third largest city in France, Leon, right up on the Rhone River. Then we stayed there awhile; I don’t remember any spectacular…well, yeah…I think it was while we were in Leon, we were always complaining about our food, but the officers, they got real good food. We had to take the plane’s seats out and there was about…I don’t know how many…that C53, is just like a C47, it’ll seat about 30-40 people, something like that—we took all the seats out and flew to Casablanca, North Africa and got a plane-load of eggs for the officers’ mess, 64:00and we didn’t get a one of them [laughing]. And then one time again, we—for the officers’ again—we flew to Cognac, France and got a whole load of liquor—cognac, schnapps—whatever that stuff was (I didn’t drink), and flew that back to our outfit, and the officers got all of that [laughs].

Diakov:What were you all eating in your mess hall?

Martin:Wasn’t quite that nice! Beans, and peeled potatoes…well, they had some pretty good food, they did. But the Air Force and the Navy were the best feeding branches of service. I’ve visited a lot of different, I’ve visited Marines, and Coast Guard, and infantry, and places, and they don’t have quite as good as food as the Air 65:00Force and the Navy. The Navy’s got the best, had the best. So, we flew to Leon. I can’t remember some of my dates then. But from Leon, we flew up to Epinal, and Epinal was over in the east section of France, and it’s not too far from the German line—Stuttgart, and we were in a little resort town of Vittel, France, and all it was was casinos and resort hotels, and we were stationed in a hotel. And this was right about the time of the Bulge, the Battle of the Bulge, and we got a big part of the snow down there too, that was…I 66:00can’t think…. it was in December, but we couldn’t fly, and nobody else around there could. When that Bulge first started, why, I think they kind of alerted us—we were a big headquarters outfit then—that we might have to move, if the Germans turned south, you know, but they turned north instead. We didn’t have to move. But, we couldn’t do anything with the snow three foot deep, except get my first experience at snow skiing and I didn’t realize there was so many different ways you could fall on a pair of skiis [laughter]! But, the front then, after the Battle of the Bulge, the front moved on into Germany, and I think they crossed, and I think the next move we made was after our forces 67:00had already taken Germany, most of Germany. But we flew in to Heidelberg, that’s in the western part of Germany. And by the way, it’s got the oldest university in Europe—Heidelberg University—and that’s where they put our headquarters. And we had the English there—Ali Kahn—do you remember that Indian, Ali Kahn, the Kahn Family, richest rulers in India? He was a playboy, and then one of the Vanderbilt persons was there—that’s a big money family from New York. And then General Devers was the commanding general, he was 4-Star, and I was flying for his Chief of Staff who was a Major General. And anybody that wanted a plane, all they had to do was call General Barr, my general, and we flew for everybody. Flew, 68:00like when we went to get those eggs and liquor from Cognac, France. We met Mr. and Mrs. Martell that makes, that owned Martell’s Cognac, then we’d fly for parts, airplane parts or different things, and also at this headquarters group was also a group of 15 or 20 small planes that would fly the field officers to the front, as close as they could get to Patton, or…what’s their names…I can’t think of the generals’ names of the other armies, but on the southern part of the front, were the French First Army, and then our Seventh Army. That was General Devers’ command. And then above him was Patton, 69:00and I forget the others on up north, but the English were clear at the northern part of Europe. And some of this little pilots, they were enlisted men, they had trouble keeping up with Patton [laughs]—he was moving. But anyway, I got to know most everyone of those pilots, and they let me fly those little L4 and L5 planes.

Diakov:Oh, had you ever piloted before?

Martin:No, they were teaching me [laughing]…showing me how. I went out to Mannheim at that airport, and the guy that was the pilot, he got in the backseat, and he let me have the front seat, and I started shooting landings—just go down and touch the ground, and then hit the throttle and go around again. Because we had to shoot landings to get the practice of that—that was real interesting. I loved that.

Diakov:Now did you ever have to fly to the front?

Martin:No, I didn’t. They wouldn’t let us…this 70:00just was two-places, two-cockpit seats, you know, and whoever they were taking up front and just one other—and that was the pilot. But they were all master and tech sergeants and none of them were officers; they were good friends. But their little airstrip was outside of Heidelberg, just at the edge of town, because they don’t need a lot of space. They can take off out of a potato patch, almost [laughs]. But anyway there was a German home right close to that airfield, and I was out at the airfield, whenever I wasn’t flying for the general—we were out there all the time. This German home just happened to have two nice pretty looking girls [laughs], and me and another guy—we weren’t allowed to talk to Germans—we weren’t allowed to fraternize. We had to kind of hide to get up to see them. We’d 71:00have to go through the orchard, and the shrubs, [laughing], but anyway they were friends, and one of the girls, that I was seeing—Leah Moser, was her name. She could speak a little English. She had studied some in high school. Her sister’s name was Beta. She couldn’t speak a bit of English. But Leah, my friend, could play the piano, and she like music, and she knew quite a few American songs [laughs] and one she knew was “You Are My Sunshine.” And every time we came out there, she made me sing that song. Their mother was there, but their dad wasn’t. He was in the Reich [ ], in the German army, way up north. But I had to sing that—I had learned the tenor a little bit of that, and me and this other guy, we’d sing that. They gave me 72:00a birthday party for my 21st birthday. And I’ve got a picture of the house here, and the lady, her family owned the house, but my Moser family was just renters. They made a gooseberry pie, and the only thing was lacking was sugar—they couldn’t get any sugar at all. It was a little bitter, but boy, I ate that like it was it caviar [laughing]. But they were real nice to me. I was surprised that most all the Germans, when we were allowed to talk to them, they weren’t mad at us, although they could have been. Oh there were a few that hollered about the bombs we used to drop—“you doggone people tear up everything around here.” But they never took their anger out on us, and this German family treated me real nice. 73:00And I was there when their dad came home from the army. I found out from Leah, that he didn’t like the idea of two American soldiers seeing his daughters, but… Diakov:[Laughter] Not while he was off at the front, fighting you guys….

Martin:But she says you don’t have to worry [laughs]; Dad isn’t going to stop us [laughter]. So anyway, this family was so nice to me, and even after I left, we corresponded for several years. And then here, last year, two years, three years ago now I guess it is, my niece up in Ohio and her husband—he was in the Air Force. They were stationed at Eidelberg, and I had them to go visit this house, and tell who they were. So my other niece went with her, and I got pictures of them in Heidelberg with this lady that owned the house. And she told them 74:00about giving me the birthday party and the beautiful rose bush at the side of her house. That was a wonderful experience. I, well, I felt sorry for the German people, but not the Nazis, not Hitler and his bunch. But the German people…Leah one time told me she just knew the Russians treated the Germans better than the Americans did. I said, “Well, why don’t you just move over to Russian zone?” She said, “Oh, no, no!” [Laughs]. But anyway, I was surprised that the treatment that we received from the German people, and I remember when their officers, or some of the people from a television put pictures of the death camps, those concentrations camps, put them in store windows 75:00down with all them dead bodies, and boy those Germans used to—they’d look at that and make a face and get away from it right quick. Some of them didn’t believe it. But it happened. I never saw any of the death camps, never got to. I wasn’t far from one or two, but I didn’t get a chance to go by. I had a wonderful time at Heidelberg. I learned to kayak—I found a little kayak—and boy, I loved that. And one of the other generals there had a crew that was flying a B25 bomber, that medium bomber, and I flew with them a time or two. We went down to Lake Constance, where Frederick Choffin, right across the lake from Switzerland. This pilot went down to see his girlfriend, and I’d fly with him, 76:00fly up in the nose, and he’d notify his girlfriend that he was there by going down and buzzing the town. When he come out of down there, why there’s mountains right in front of me, and man, I began to wonder if he was going to get above them trees. Anyway, he flew us down there two or three times. And then, in April, this is before I went into Germany, I think it was…yeah…we were told to go down to Stuttgart and we flew down there, and the officers probably knew, but I didn’t know, who we were going to pick up. But we picked up two men that had been prisoners of war, and one of them was Ambassador Winant’s son—our ambassador to England. I think that’s who it was, and the other one was Queen Elizabeth’s nephew. And that was just before this queen made queen, 77:00she was still a princess then. But anyway, we picked them up and took them to London. We flew them right into Heathrow Airport and when we landed, I could see the Queen Mother and the Queen was over there at a place, but we let the men out at a different spot; I don’t guess they wanted us to pull up in front of all the Queen and all her entourage. But anyway, I told my pilot, I said, “Hey I want to go over and meet the Queen,” [laughs]; he said get in the plane sergeant—we’re going back to France [laughter]. I resented that.

Diakov:I’m going to pause this here, and we’re going to pick it up on another date.

Martin:Another date?

Diakov:Yes, just a moment. [Tape interruption.]