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The Secret War in the Balkans

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Chapter One

As a youngster, I was fascinated with flying. In May 1927, I sat on the window ledge in my grandfather Kidd's fifth floor office at the New York Produce Exchange at Number 1 Broadway and watched the ticker-tape parade for that hero of heroes, Charles Augustus Lindbergh. The Lone Eagle had just fired the world's imagination by flying, as one journalist succinctly put it, "... from New York to Paris by himself and without stopping."

One bright, gusty Sunday afternoon that fall, my father took me for a flight in a Stinson Reliant cabin plane at North Beach Airport, on the site of what is now La Guardia International Airport. We bumped and bounced around the New York City sky for 30 minutes before landing. It was just scary enough to be attractively thrilling, like a roller-coaster ride but much more significant.

Air races rivaled automobile races in popularity. The annual National Air Races received as much press coverage as the Indianapolis 500. The planes were tiny, stubby-winged bullets with oversized engines like the Folkerts Special, the G. B. Sportster and the G. B. Speedster. Roscoe Turner was the most popular racer of the day, handsome in leather helmet, goggles and waxed mustache, a white silk scarf whipping in the slipstream, and his pet lion cub in the open cockpit to keep him company (and bring him enormous publicity).

Turner was just a pilot, but Stinson had designed and built, as well as flown, the Reliant. A few years later Benny Howard designed, built, and flew elegant biplanes with negative stagger (lower wing farther forward than upper wing). He called one the Howard DGA (Damned Good Airplane). I was fascinated. From age 10 to about 13, I was an avid reader of a monthly magazine called FLYING ACES (price: 15 cents). The stories were all strikingly similar: An American fighter pilot on the Western Front in 1918, after overcoming great adversity, ultimately triumphed over his evil German adversary. Nevertheless, I eagerly awaited each new issue.

I finished high school in June, 1938, and went to work for Eastern Airlines in September as a mail clerk in the company headquarters in the General Motors Building at 57th Street and Broadway, just south of Columbus Circle. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the celebrated WWI flying ace, was president of Eastern Airlines. Pilots in smart blue uniforms with wings on their chests and gold braid on their sleeves came and went. Employees could buy at discount the official blue pilot's shirts, made by Wings. They weren't of very good quality and not particularly comfortable, but I wore mine constantly. I was hooked.

How could I become a professional pilot? By enlisting as a cadet in the air service of either the Army or the Navy, receive excellent training, earn a commission, and get paid for it, all at the same time. Males between 20 and 26 with 2 or more years of college credits were accepted if they could pass the stiff physical exam. Those with lesser academic credentials also had to pass a long written exam that was heavy with math and science. I was weak in these subjects and realized that I'd have to improve in them if I wanted to fly. In February, 1939, I resigned from Eastern Airlines, borrowed $600 from my father, enrolled at Rhodes Preparatory School, on 42nd Street at Bryant Park in Manhattan, and spent a year learning the math and physics I could have learned in high school.

In February, 1940, I tried to enlist as a Flying Cadet in the Army Air Corps. I was tentatively accepted but, due to a backlog of other undereducated applicants waiting to take the written exam, it was August before my turn came. The exams were held at Mitchell Field, Hempstead, Long Island. I later heard a rumor that of the 600 applicants, only 90 had passed the physical exam, and of these, only two had survived the written. Surely an exaggeration, but indicative of the difficulty of the exams and of the high standards imposed at the time by the Army Air Corps.

Military organizations are rife with rumors-also known as scuttlebutt and latrine-o-grams-especially in wartime. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, standards were necessarily lowered. One wag claimed that "Anyone who can hear thunder and see lightning can get into flying."

I was notified in September that I'd passed the exams and was ordered to report to a new primary flying school at Albany, Georgia. On October 1, I drove down to Albany with Vincent L. "Benny" Snyder, a civilian aviation mechanic I'd met at Mitchell Field. There were about 60 of us in the second class - Class 41D - at what was, officially, Darr Aero Tech, a small operation consisting of two open-bay barracks for the cadets, a mess hall, and an administration building with several classrooms. This was a "contract school," with civilian instructors and support personnel, two Air Corps officers and several enlisted personnel, a clerk or two, and a medical technician. First Lieutenant James, a remote, unsmiling man, was the Commandant.

Training began immediately. My flying instructor, a man named Russ Parker, was an excellent pilot but very quiet and, in retrospect, not much of a teacher. That made us even, since I wasn't much of a student. I could take off pretty well, in spite of the very high torque created in the Stearman PT17, and I flew well enough. But I had serious problems with landings. Several times I leveled off and "landed" five or six feet above the runway, and once or twice I overcompensated and tried to land five or six feet below it. There was no damage to the landing gear, but a good deal to my confidence and reputation. After seven weeks, I met with a Flying Evaluation Board and was eliminated for "flying deficiency."

I was devastated. The possibility of failure had never seriously occurred to me, and I had no idea how to handle it. I arrived back home in time for Thanksgiving. My misery must have been obvious, and my father responded by taking me down to Nussbaum's, a good quality men's store, and buying me a suit, an overcoat, and a hat. It helped a little, but only a little.

I took a clerking job with the Universal Atlas Cement Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel. I had a miserable, suspicious supervisor, nothing in common with the other clerks, and never felt fully accepted as "one of the team." I stuck it out for nine months, then took a similar but better-paying job with the Sperry Gyroscope Company (later Sperry-Rand, later Unisys) at Manhattan Bridge Plaza in Brooklyn.

Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor - the most stunning single blow the American nation had ever suffered. I was listening to a National Football League game - Giants versus Redskins, I think - when the broadcast was interrupted with the first grim announcement of the totally unexpected attack and the great damage that it had inflicted. The next day, President Roosevelt made his famous speech about "... December the Seventh, 1941, the date that will live in infamy ..." and Congress formally declared war. We all knew that our lives would soon be vastly different.

The Sperry Gyroscope Company was a 3-hour-and-10-minute roundtrip bus and subway commute from my home in Flushing. It made for a long day, particularly after Pearl Harbor when we went on a schedule of 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily and a 6-day week. I knew that, as an unskilled worker, I'd soon be back in military service, even though my employer was a major defense contractor. But I was in no hurry to leave. I not only liked the company but had become enamored with Jean Fuller, the boss's secretary. Several weeks after Pearl Harbor, however, I received a notice from my draft board stating that I'd soon be called for a pre-induction physical exam. Being drafted had no appeal for me, and I had a much better option.

On the January 20, 1942, I re-enlisted in what had become the Army Air Forces. My title was Aviation Cadet rather than Flying Cadet, and my program was navigator training rather than pilot training. But my destination was the same - Albany, Georgia. So was the pay - $75 per month.

I didn't realize it at the time, but navigators were very new in the Army Air Forces. In WWI and up into the late 1930s, the world's air forces had two-place observation aircraft manned by a pilot and an observer, but these were phased out just before WWII, along with the horse cavalry and for the same reason - obsolescence. With the development of long-range military aircraft, such as the B-17, came a need for a new specialist, a navigator who could guide an aircraft on long flights, day or night, fair weather or foul, over land or water. The Army Air Corps had begun training navigators in small numbers in 1940, and while they were commissioned upon graduation and drew flying pay just as pilots did, they were otherwise severely restricted. Only a pilot could command an "operational unit" - an aircraft, flight, squadron, group, wing, etc., - and aside from such obviously specialized units as hospitals, all other command positions within the Air Forces as well. In fact, when navigators entered the personnel inventory, the Air Forces didn't bother to design a set of wings for them, but gave them the old observer's badge - wings with the letter "O" in the center. Pilots often referred to it as a Flying Asshole (navigators sometimes responded by calling pilots "coordinated morons," but rarely to their faces). Bombardiers were only slightly better off. They had a bomb superimposed on their "O". It was not until after the creation of the US Air Force in 1947 that navigators, bombardiers and others had distinctive aviation badges similar to those worn by pilots.

Years later, as officers, the US Air Force decided that we should spend two hours in a pressure chamber as part of our annual flight physical examination. We were taken to the equivalent of 35,000 feet altitude. One by one, we were told to take off our oxygen masks, whereupon we passed out. When the instructor replaced our masks and we regained consciousness, we were asked, "What is your serial number?" Without exception, we all gave our cadet serial numbers rather than our officer serial numbers. Even the Flight Surgeon couldn't tell us why.

First, however, came a month of "Preflight Training" at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama. Maxwell was, and is, a large permanent installation. At that time, there were 6,000 cadets in a holding operation awaiting assignment to pilot and navigation training schools. I don't remember any budding bombardiers, but there may have been some. The tactical officer in charge of the military training of this heterogeneous mass was a First Lieutenant Luper, and the corps was known as Luper's Super Droopers. There were also several hundred Royal Air Force personnel awaiting training.

We were issued uniforms, given our immunization shots, and assigned a lot of make-work activities. One of them was the "care and feeding" of brand-new Springfield rifles that had been in storage since the end of WWI. The barrels had been preserved in thick foul-smelling grease called Cosmoline which no amount of work with the cleaning tools would remove. Our showers, however, produced very hot water, and word quickly spread that two or three minutes of showering was an efficient, if unauthorized, way to produce a clean, sweet-smelling Springfield.

We carried our rifles during our training as "Interior Guard" - patrolling the barracks and school area in two-hour shifts from dark until dawn. Just which enemy we were protecting against with our empty Springfields, we couldn't imagine. Presumably, MPs patrolled the perimeter of the base; we never knew. I always seemed to draw an after-midnight shift, and even southern Alabama is cold in January and February. We turned in our Springfields when we left Maxwell, and I haven't seen one since.

Although we never fired our Springfields, we were required to qualify with the Colt 45-caliber pistol that would be issued to us when we completed training and became commissioned officers. Training began with several hours of classroom instruction that included practice in disassembling, cleaning, and assembling the weapon. The instructors, obviously pleased with themselves, could and did perform this procedure blindfolded.

For safety reasons, procedures on the firing range were strictly enforced. No one moved except on command of the Range Officer, whose assistants walked up and down the firing line to ensure compliance. We did some practice firing, and on the day set for qualification, I was paired with a cadet I didn't know. We were to take turns firing and observing each other for proper procedure - another safety precaution. My partner was obviously very upset, almost terrified. I fired first. He neither moved nor spoke. When my group finished, the Range Officer ordered the observers to take the weapons and assume the firing position. I offered the 45 to my partner. He dropped his hands to his sides and said in a hoarse whisper, "Please, please, fire for me, I can't do it."

I had only a few seconds to make a decision. Looking up and down the firing line, I saw no one observing us. Reluctantly, wondering how many other soldiers were afraid of guns, I accepted his loaded clips and prepared to fire a second time. The qualification ratings were "Expert," "Sharp-shooter," and "Marksman." No one fired Expert, a handful fired Sharpshooter, many fired Marksman, and some failed to qualify. I was no William Tell or Sergeant York, but I'm pretty sure I was the only cadet on the firing range that day who qualified as Marksman twice.

Another of our make-work activities was learning to send and receive Morse code at a minimum rate of six words per minute - a nonsense exercise for several reasons. First, when actually used by communications specialists, code is transmitted at 35 to 40 words per minute; a rate of six words per minute had little practical application. Second, unless we used code regularly, we would soon lose our skill. Third, Morse code was rapidly disappearing, as were signal flags, in favor of voice transmission and other means of communication. Still, we had to reach the six-word level or, in theory at least, be disqualified for air crew training.

We had other classes as well, and frequent examinations which were surprisingly difficult. We soon learned that the same examinations were given to successive classes and that exam keys were readily available from those in the class ahead of us. The result was that there were not only no flunk-outs, but many of us had averages of 100%. An effort was made to correct this situation about a week before we completed preflight training. Our class was ordered to a special meeting at the base theater, where an officer told us that our superiors were well aware of what was taking place and that the use of keys was a flagrant violation of the honor code. This was the first any of us had heard of this time-honored military standard.

To explain the code to us, a cadet who'd previously attended the US Military Academy was introduced to us. He began by telling us that, after attending West Point for three semesters, he had flunked out because of a deficiency in math. Yes, West Point cadets lived by the honor code, and it worked. Indeed, it was the only way to educate officers. Complete trust and accurate information were essential in the profession of arms. Silence in the theater. He hesitated a moment, then blurted out, "But down here, if you don't have the key, you're screwed." Pandemonium - laughter, guffaws, shouts, whistles, and a standing round of applause. Also, end of meeting.

British cadets at Maxwell were few in number and well segregated. Nevertheless, they made one major contribution to their American counterparts - they gave us their marching song, Sixpence. Six hundred of us in squadron mass formation, marching to mess at dusk singing Sixpence, was really quite impressive and the only semblance of esprit de corps that we had. And the activity - the singing portion, at least - was self-imposed.

"Sixpence"

Verse: I've got sixpence, jolly, jolly sixpence I've got sixpence to last me all my life I've got tuppence to spend and tuppence to lend And tuppence to send home to my wife, poor wife

Chorus: No cares have I to grieve me No pretty little girls to deceive me I'm happy as a king, believe me As we go marching, marching home Marching home, marching home By the light of the silvery mo-o-on Happy is the day when the airman gets his pay As we go marching, marching home - dead drunk!

Repeat with "fourpence" and chorus, then "tuppence" and chorus, then "no pence" and chorus, then Start over and repeat indefinitely.

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Excerpted from The Secret War in the Balkans by Richard H. Kraemer Copyright © 2010 by Richard H. Kraemer. Excerpted by permission.
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