My father enlisted while he was in the fire department. Not sure why - maybe the adventure, or maybe he was assigned to fireboat duty at that time (which he hated). But FDNY gave them credit for the time they served in the military, so I guess he figured it was a wash. Obviously already in better shape than many other enlistees, since he was able to run an 8 minute mile for his FDNY physical exam. He connected with one guy who was a gambler and on the cross country train ride, the fellow gambled constantly and was probably fairly good. My father acted as his banker and bodyguard, checking in on him from time to time, holding on to his excess winnings or providing a cash infusion when things went the other way. They were stationed in a camp in Utah for training, maybe basic, and they took hikes in the mountains for conditioning. My father loved the hikes and the scenery, but said a lot of guys just complained the whole time. When they had furlough, him and his friend would get up before everyone else and get spiffed up in their dress uniforms. They would head into town to the nearest factory as the women were lining up for their day shift. They would connect up with a couple hotties, then go into town, get a hotel room and sleep till the girls got off shift. Then they would pick up the girls and hit the bars, maybe dinner, then take them back to the hotel.
When training was over, he wanted to be a pilot, but they said he was too old at 25 already. (At that age, they figured men might start questioning the sense of flying through flak, enemy fighters, and the other risks required). So they wanted to make him a door gunner instead and he told them to stuff it, since he knew the survival rate was about 0%. Fortunately they had a mechanical test and they had them disassemble and reassemble something. Since he had a good background in taking things apart and fixing them, he completed the test faster than anyone else by organizing the parts as he took them off. So they made him a ball turret mechanic - that's a glass ball that is on the bottom of the B-25 Mitchell Bomber that contained two 50 cal machine guns and a seat for a gunner. The gunner could turn the ball using foot pedals and elevate the guns by the handles. Very cold seat, since there was no heat and the glass provided no protection against the outside temps. Must have been a heck of a view for as short a time as one could live in that spot.
So he was shipped off to England on an LST, which having a flat bottom, wasn't a very smooth sail across the North Atlantic. But he and the cook were about the only ones who weren't sea sick, so he ate pretty well on the trip. He ended up at an airbase, in Kent. Things were fairly relaxed as far as military standards go. They would get the call that a mission was going and get up in the night and prep the planes. Sometimes the planes wouldn't make it off the runway and they would have to collect the remains of the airmen. He remembered one propaganda plane loaded with leaflets that crashed and they had to get the leaflets loaded onto another plane. He said they were scooping up body parts with the leaftlets and throwing them into bags to put it on the other plane.
Once one of the bomber pilots he knew wanted to take out a P-51 for fun, so he signed it out and he asked my father to come along. So the pilot, used to flying bigger lumbering bombers felt like he was in a sports car. He flew along the tops of trains and beat them to trestles, then flew under the trestles, among other tricks. Sometimes when flying in the bombers, the pilots would fly up steeply, then loop over into a dive, so the guys in the back could be weightless for a bit. My father said they had one short guy who would run in mid air as soon as they did. More to come.
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