One pilot in our squadron had the cutest little puppy. It was a little brown fat thing with fur soft as cotton. It would sleep on' the back of his neck and he took it everywhere but on the missions. Another incident I remember took place when I was walking in London. There were so many Americans around, I started looking for someone I might have known in the States. I finally saw someone who looked familiar standing across the street, so I dashed over and asked his name. You can imagine my embarrassment when he said: "Yes, sir, I am the armorer on your plane."
On the days that we were to fly escort for the bombers we would get up about 6:00 am as we heard the bombers taking off. We went to breakfast and then the Ready Room for briefing. When the curtain was pulled back and the ribbon went all the way to Berlin you knew you would have a tough mission. The weather man would give us the weather over the target and what to expect when we returned to England. All of our compass headings depended on the weather, our point of rendezvous with the bombers, heading to the target, and the compass heading home. The map man would describe the coast of Europe at the entry point and additional points of identification along the way so we would be certain of our location. He explained where we would be likely to encounter flak (the big German guns) and where we could anticipate the most enemy fighters. We wrote down all of this information on a pad fastened just above our knee so we could refer to it in a hurry.
All this time you could hear the steady roar of the bombers taking off. When there were about a 1,000 four engine bombers taking off you could hear it all over southeastern England. It took a good hour for all the bombers in a squadron to get into the air and another half hour for them to get to the right altitude where they would circle until in formation and ready to head for the target in Europe. They used a lot of gasoline and time just getting ready to go. After our briefing we would all make our trip to the bathroom and then to the equipment room to get our parachutes and other equipment. We didn't have to leave the field until about two hours after the bombers because we were so much faster. We would catch up with them soon after they crossed the coastline of Europe and it was a very pretty sight to see the formations of B-17s in the sky for miles ahead, especially on a sunny day. Some days there would be big white clouds and the B-17s would create their own clouds from vapor trails. The bomber vapor trails would be straight and the fighter trails would be above them back and forth across the blue sky.