March 29, 1945

Mar. 29, 1945

Dear Mother:

I suppose you have now been to N.Y. and back by now so have a lot on your mind.  I hope you had a pleasant trip and I am sure you have.  I wish I could have gone because I know I would have had a lot of fun.

You wrote about Mary having a tooth pulled and I felt rather sorry for her.  Well yesterday I had one yanked which was pulled purely on my own say so.  Since I am 21 they can't pull my teeth unless I give them the go ahead. I guess I am glad it is done but 24 hours ago I was wondering about the wisdom of my momentous decision.

The tooth was in bad shape and was giving me quite a lot of trouble.  It was quite painful at altitude and I had reason to believe that the filling was bad and not the tooth.  Usually they have a paste that is very irritating which causes pain at altitude, and some times it is just a pin point of air under the filling.  The "doc" made an X-ray and said that the tooth looked bad but not until I told him I had frequent tooth aches did he recommend that it be removed.  He didn't say it would have to be removed, and said that a non-flying member of the army could get along for some time in its condition.  However he said that flying aggravated the situation and that it would get worse until in a matter of months or a year it would have to go.  I don't know where I will be in a few mos or years so I told him to go ahead.

Well he got out the hammer and tongs and the big needle and put the whole right side of my face to sleep.  Of course when he went to work he didn't spare the horses and got it out but I almost went out too.  He said I was a good patient because I didn't scream and scare all of the others I guess.  It had the biggest roots on it I have ever seen and it must have left my head hollow.  When he got it out and looked down into the hole he said that it was abscessed and was a good thing to have gone.

At least I won't wake up nights and wish it were gone, it won't prevent me from getting sleep I should have.  It was a kind of bloody thing and I thought I never would stop bleeding but last night it had pretty nearly stopped.  I didn't sleep too well and I finally took two little pills this morning and got about 3 hours of sleep when no one was looking.  The weather socked in around here so I haven't missed anything.  I have no idea what they put in those little white pills but they almost put me to sleep on the spot.  I don't know what plans are being made for a replacement so I will have to go see the dentist pretty soon and see what's up.  I hope that now I have one gone my other teeth will get a little more space and maybe be easier to take care of.

Last night was the first night I ever dreamed of starving to death which goes to show you how hungry I was.  It seems that no matter what happens I am hungry.  I guess I could eat even if I were too sick to see the food.  Maybe I just inherited a few things form my pop.  Actually the food around here is none too good although we pay $1.50 for it.  It is not too well prepared but I guess plenty of it.  The meals are well balanced so you get your calories but sometimes they are unidentifiable.  They have pretty girls serving so maybe that is why I eat so much.  I don't think I have gained any weight and if not my clothes are just getting small however not much smaller.

My pilot bought a car yesterday and I financed him to the extent of $160, which may be a foolish thing.  However I expect him to be around for some time and he says I will be paid on Monday.  Payday comes up pretty soon so I shan't be short of money be a long shot.  At the rate I have been saving money in Lincoln and here I guess I could finance year at B.U. in a couple of months.  You can expect some money to come along very soon.  I don't know yet what I shall put it into but War Bonds and the bank seem to be two rather investments in these times.  Maybe you can find something better.  I think all this money is spoiling me for good because it will be hard working for a living.  (you will have to wait while I go eat).

If you waited while I ate you would have waited a long time.  I went to the show last night and to a show at the club.  I went to see "God is My Co-pilot" and I might say that it is a good show.  Of course they have too many technical errors in it for anyone in the Air Corp to swallow whole but as a picture it follows pretty closely to the book.  All of the shots taken in the air are taken over Arizona about 10 miles from Luke so all of the ground and mts. look very familiar.  In fact I could identify a lot of the places where I had looped and dived and rat-raced just like they did in the movies.  I have flown off the runways they pictured so the picture was not so exciting to me.  It is a picture you should see if you want to see the old AT-6 in action because that is all they use for Jap.  I enjoyed the picture and I guess you would too.

Clip from God is My Co-Pilot

I have got to go fly in 1/2 an hour.  We may not fly because the weather looks bad but we may get up. It makes little difference to me.

 I will have to close now and go mail this so until I have some more time

With  love

Austin

March 26, 1945

Mar. 26, 1945

Dear Mother:

I haven't written to you for quite some time it seems.  Maybe I am neglecting you.  If so I hope you don't mind too much this once.

We are definitely going into Summer uniform next month so send mine as soon as you can.  I will really need them next week.  I will be looking for them pretty soon too.  It is getting rather warm here with temperatures around 70 or 80 every day.  I guess they figure it is warm enough now.

I suppose by now the trees are beginning to bud and things look like spring again.  I guess everyone is glad to see it coming after all the snow you had.  I kind of wish I had seen some more of that snow. By the way I will send those negatives so you can see the pictures you took.

We had a little excitement up in the air today.  Usually after we have ground checked the ship for take off the crew chief gets out because he doesn't fly.  When getting out he always turns off the auxiliary power unit which we call at "putt putt" which is actually a small generator.  However the crew chief was not the regular man and when getting out left the generator on.  After take off the tail gunner started back to his position and accidentally stepped on the leads and shorted one of them out.  It made a lot of sparks and set the insulation on fire and burned a 1/2" hole in a rib.  The first I heard about it was that we had a fire in the waist.  I turn immediately back to the field and gone an emergency landing.

Inside of a B-17 with Lt. Bob Welty

Although I knew the fire was not out I had no idea whether the whole waist had burned or if someone had started a fire in his clothes, so it wasn't till after we were on the ground and parked did I get a chance to see what actually had been done.  We really didn't damage anything very much because a little tape fixed everything but what might have happened doesn't make me feel good.

The wires on the generator are usually covered with gas and oil because they don't take too much care how they fill the engine.  The mount is also pretty well soaked and made of wood.  With all that gas and oil and those red hot sparks made by the burning aluminum it is a wonder nothing caught.  The aluminum-magnesium skin really burns and is actually impossible to extinguish so we could have had a wonderful fire if we had given it a chance.  The crew was right on the ball and had it out before it really got started.  However the hazard is in every ship on the field.  Next time we will know better. Experience is a hard teacher but it sure leaves an impression for a long time.  I'll not forget my lesson for a while.

I wish you could go to N.Y. and just see what there is to see.  If nothing better just go for a ride on the buses and go to the end of the line and come back.  I had more fun doing that than doing most anything.  Sometimes it looks a little silly but who cares.  You will never see any of the people you meet on a bus again so who cares.  Then you can go and see Radio City and all.  I am sure if I went I could find loads to do and lots of places to go.  I think in most of the cities I have been in that if you go looking for something you can't exactly identify like just plain adventure or excitement that when you least expect it it pops up.  I have had a lot more fun walking around waiting for something to happen than seeing some of these famous places.

Too bad about the man power shortage.  I wish I could be home to putter around but if I were it would be the same story, man power shortage.  I wouldn't be able to sit down long and probably cutting bushes and grape vines would not look too good.

I only wish you would pull some stunt which would make the family wonder about you.  They expect to see you every night when they get home but if you didn't show up some night and left only an ambiguous message I am sure they would not take you so much for granted.  I guess such things are for young people only and after you get your responsibilities you have to stay around.

I just had a bright idea.  Why don't you go down and see my navigator's mother.  She lives down in Conrad and would probably like to see you.  It would be a chance to get away and someone to go see.  It's a chance to go somewhere and have an excuse.  If the idea sounds good I will get his address and he will write his mother.  At least you could write to her.  He says that his mother also sounds a little bored with the same old thing every day.

Well your bright idea boy must sign off and go to bed.  I really need the sleep because my head is beginning to ache.

With love

Austin XX

March 18, 1945

Sunday Mar 18

Dear Mother:

I wrote to Mary yesterday but the letter won't go out till this one does so you will get two letters today.  I sent Mary's to B.U. so if she is on the ball she will get hers at school today.  I thought that in that way I could write two letters and not crowd the Stoneham mail.

The Independent has been coming very regularly.  It comes on Wednesdays or Thursdays so I get the news while it is relatively new.  All mail takes about 3 days which is as good as it was in Lincoln and a lot better than when I was further West.

I have several things on my mind but I can't think of them all at once.  One thing is that it is getting warm here and summer uniforms will be in style again soon.  I would suggest that you get my clothes cleaned up and fit to send because I may want them soon.  It gets quite warm here during the day.  In fact it was 75 F. yesterday and made me think spring was here.  We will need the Summer clothes before I leave since we are scheduled to leave on May 16 which is considered the summer in uniform regulations.  If you could clean up everything now and send them I am sure I could find place for them.  If you do could you find some kind of a clothes bag to keep the blouse in to keep it away from all this coal smoke.

I hadn't realized that grandma was 89 years old.  Maybe you reminded me some time ago but it must have slipped by somehow.  I wish I had sent a card.  Maybe I shall write a letter instead.  I have some Chamber of Comm. literature I could put in which she might enjoy.  She is so interested in such things.

I sure would like to bring the crew to Boston some time.  However there is little hope for such a thing.  It might happen if we flew across instead of going on a boat.  If we flew we would go the Central route which has a refueling stop over at Nashua N.H. or some place like that.  Then it might be possible if we had bad weather to be grounded for a few days and then everyone could come down and see Boston.  If we go by boat we might leave by way of N.Y. although the last shipment from Lincoln went through Boston.  It would be a troop movement and no one could leave and there are few chances of having a layover because of weather.

Training goes on as usual except weather gives us a break every once in a while.  It seems that the weather in this part of the country has a bad tendency to be bad a lot of the time.  It doesn't rain all the time but the ceilings are too low to take off.  We have to have 1500' ceilings before we can leave the ground.  Often they reach 1000' but that still keeps us down.  When you get up rested and ready to fly it kind of makes you mad to sit around doing nothing.  It seems I always want to fly but the crew is content to see bad weather.  I don't blame them too much because they don't have much to do in the air.  I believe today we won't fly because it looks like rain so we will have to sit down on the line for 5 hours or more waiting for the weather to break or looking at G.I. movies I have seen a dozen times.

I really don't have many ideas for letters this morning.  Last night I could have written a book but today I am short of words.  I really don't have time to write either because it is time to eat and then go to the line.

Meals around here are not too hot.  They cost 50 cents apiece but are not too filling.  If I get fat or gain any weight at all it will be because we have access to other food at the officer's club and at a cafeteria.  I spend most of my money nowadays on cleaning and eating.

Next month I get $396 pay which is going to be quite a windfall.  I now have $144 check and another $140 in cash which makes me a rich man now.  You will probably get about $400 next month as I have nothing which I need to spend money on.  I already have too much of everything.  

Well I must close now because I am short of time, paper and words,

With love

Austin  .

March 11, 1945

Mar. 11, 1945

Dear A.P.

I guess I have kind of neglected my writing to you of late so here is one going your way.

Well here it is Sunday again and nothing special in the way of a schedule.  Most every Sunday so far has been a day of rest with no flying but next week we have a change.  Next Sunday we fly the second mission in the afternoon.  That means no rest on the one day a week you want to have off.  Well I am rather used to looking at a schedule rather than a calendar.

So far we have had no real hard work but rather a full schedule.  We usually get up at 0530 or 0630 in order to have breakfast and get to class on time.  Our first class is at 0700 and they continue till 1700. we then have the rest of the day to ourselves.  Sometimes it means getting to bed right away to meet a formation at 0230 the next day.  It makes you rather tired after the second day.

The other day we flew the second mission.  We got up at 0230 and went to briefing at 0330.  Our take off time was 0530 but we got off at 0600 instead.  Our mission was to have the navigator checked out on cross countries.  I had to file a flight plan for the route because we went along the airlines.  I had to call each station on the way.  The experience was brand new to me and along with my other duties made me very nervous.  We of course went to the line in the dark.  Nothing seemed to go right.  It was our first solo hop with the crew and they were very dependent upon me.  We had no flashlights due to my own negligence which made things all the worse.

The lights on the ramp shine in your eyes rather than on the ramp and made me almost night blind.  Then the lights in the navigators comp. shined up in the pilots compartment making it almost impossible to see the instruments.  Then we had a heavily loaded ship, not exactly overloaded but about 4000 # from the maximum.  I had never flown a ship like that.  Then I have an engineer who knows practically nothing about the ship so when the lights went out he didn't have any idea what was wrong.  I had to get the lights going myself.

Then they have good sized hills all around this field so that when the ship so heavily loaded didn't climb too well I was almost ready to give up.  I just held on and kept the power on until there was no danger.  For all I know we just made it over the hills but actually we probably went over them with plenty of space to spare.  We couldn't see the ground it was so dark and the light from the navigator's lamp made the instruments unintelligible.  Then we couldn't see any other ships in the air so I half expected to get run down any second.

Then I sighted what looked like a star because it was where stars should have been and found after looking at the instruments that we were in a steep bank.  It rather scared me especially when our airspeed was so slow and anything can happen in a heavy ship with the nose too high.  I finally got things righted and not until later did I realize what a strain it had been.

I never was so glad to see the sun come up as I was that day.  For that 2 hours before day break I had felt like I was running through a field full of ditches and gullies full of barbed wire fences in the middle of a moonless night with my arms full of high explosives. I felt like letting go of everything and letting the stuff explode.  Sun brought security again and a feeling of knowing what was going on.  I finally did let my pilot take over and went back to have some coffee.  I drank it black and shook so bad that it almost spilled.  Finally after 6 hours in the air I got back to the base and finally to the room where I was too tired to roll over.  I was almost shaking all over.  I guess I fell to sleep and slept 3 hours and woke up refreshed.  However the feeling of futility of that morning will last for a long time.

I really like my job and get the biggest kick in the world out of it but it gets so nerve wracking at times that I only wish I could be home in bed rather than making little moves and decisions which effect the lives of 9 others besides my own.  I am not afraid to make a wrong decision but I only hope I make them on the ground rather than in the air where it is so important.  Maybe I will be an old man when I get home at least I will have aged a little.  However I believe everyone will still recognized the kid in me.  I will know that I am ready to settle down for a while and live a peaceful life with no responsibilities for awhile.  I guess it will be rather hard.

I don't know if I should write this or not and get everyone's hopes high but if we finish flying ahead of schedule we get an eight day leave.  It will mean getting home again for a short time which will be a break.  However I am not planning on any such thin to happen so please don't you at home plan on it. It is just something to think about.  It sure would be swell.

I hope you are saving for that plane and not just thinking about it.  I am sure I will have enough money before this thing is over to have one so I think we had better have a plane fund like the camp fund for the future.  I have a government check for $144 here and a check for $350 coming next month so a lot is going home next month.  Someone besides me had better start saving.

What has happened to Bill?  He never writes though I hardly blame him but I would like to hear from him.

I guess I have written enough for 2 letters now.

With love

Austin

March 6, 1945

Mar. 6, 1945

Dear Mother:

I should have written again before this because we have been in the ground for the last few days because of bad weather.  As it is I just don't get around to it and this finishes everything.  Finally I get in the mood and I write several letters.

I got the big picture about 5 days ago and thought it was rather good but was a little disappointed.  However I suppose you can't expect the photographers to take a picture of something you can't take and put in front of them.  Anyway if I haven't mentioned it before I think they did a good job, in fact so good I shan't want it to be stuck up around my room here.

The snapshots from El Paso came in Sunday and I really got a kick out of them.  They all came out swell.  I was very surprised at all the snow you had.  I kind of wish I had a chance to shovel a little of it and I suppose you wish I had had a chance to shovel some of it too.  With your busy family I guess you had trouble getting rid of it.  It really did come down and pile up in the flat spots.  I wish I could have seen some of it but the pictures you took came out so well I almost feel that I was at home.  I will send the negatives so you can have some printed and see what you got.

Now I must explain what I am doing by not sending the same kind of paper.  You see I have a lot of this other stuff and must get rid of it some way.  It is about the same as the other and almost the same size so I hope it won't be too noticeable.

I went to church on the post this week for the first time in more than a year.  In fact I can't remember attending a post service since J.B. which was a long time ago, at least it's beginning to seem like a long time.  The service was nothing to talk about.  The chaplain was a bad wanderer or I was because I can't remember what he talked about.  He is really supposed to be very good because I have had to listen to several lectures on morals since I have been here and the last half of the time is devoted to a few statements by the chaplain.  He gave two very good talks and I was somewhat impressed but Sunday's sermon kind of put a pin in my little balloon.  Maybe he just had an off day.

I have been checked out now so I can take the ship and the crew up alone now.  They tell you that they are not checking up on you as a safe pilot but as one who knows what to do if the time comes.  I guess I know what to do all right but I am afraid the crew will feel a few hard landings before I get too good here.  Now I am supposed to start their training and see that they do what they are supposed to up in the air.  Ground school is all taken care of so air training is my speciality.

Sat. we went up on a camera mission.  We had a 3 ship formation each ship having gun cameras.  One of those new P63s made passes on the formation the object being to let the gunners track him with the gun cameras.  Most of the fellows did very well and got a lot of good pictures.  We are trying to get them enlarged so we can send home some good pictures of those 63s.  You know some of the pictures were actual close ups of the plane.  He came so close to the ball turret at times he said he could have spit on him.  It was a lot of fun watching all of it going on.  He would come in and make a pass on our nose and look like we would hit and at the last moment, it seemed to me he would pull away 50 or 60 ft. away.  I got some awful good looks at him if you consider 1/10 of a second a good look because he went under us that fast.

P-63 flight demonstration

I seem to be writing uphill today.  Maybe it means something but I guess it just is that I have my paper lopsided.  I will try harder.

The tail gunner's folks were in town this weekend and we all went in to dinner with them.  They are from El Paso and typical of the hospitable Texans.  They have a farm 1 1/4 miles square and just a little thing they say.  I don't know what they have on it except cotton and wheat but there must be something else.  Anyway they are really wonderful people.  They also have a beautiful 18 year old daughter!

I must go eat now so here's whats C.C.T.S stands for Combat Crew Training Station.  Now don't you know a lot.  Now see if anyone can guess what M.A.C. means.  We use it every day in flying.

With love
Austin


{Ed. note - Austin had special stationery printed with his name and the US Army Air Forces emblem on it, as seen at the top of this letter.  When he first got the stationery, he used it for each page of his letter.  Now he uses it for only the first page of the letter and plain paper for the rest of the pages.}