Interview Transcript: James C. Reasman: Veterans History Project (Library of Congress

Question. This interview was conducted on April 4, 2001 at the El Cajon Elks Lodge in El Cajon, California. The veteran being interviewed is James C. Reasman, R-E-A-S-M-A-N, who was born on February 8, 1925 and currently resides at 4861 Boise, B-O-I-S-E Avenue in San Diego, California, 92117-2928.

Mr. Reasman served in the United States Air Corp, the 27th Fighter Group. He attained the rank of First Lieutenant and fought during the conflict over Europe during World War II from 1943 to 1945. My name is William Howell, H-O-W-E-L-L.

Jim, tell us what you were doing in 1942 and how ya came to become a member of the U.S. Army Air Corp.

Answer. One -- on January the 1st, 1943 a new law went into effect. And it said that after I became 18 which would be in February, I could no longer voluntary, I had to register for the draft and be drafted and they would put me where they needed me. I begged my parents to sign the papers to permit me to enlist and two weeks before my 18th birthday they signed it and I went into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and joined the Army Air Corp. I was issued a reserve card and I was called to active duty in April. That meant I wouldn't be finishing my high school. Pennsylvania had a law that said that if I was in the last semester of my high school career and had passing grades and I went into the service, when my class graduated, I would get my diploma. And what happened was that six mothers on graduation night stood on the stage and accepted their sons' diplomas. Two of the mother's lost their sons, one of them a very good friend of mine. I went into training from there. Nashville, Tennessee was kind of a screening place where they determined whether you're going to be a pilot, a navigator, a bombardier, a gunner or what -- whatever, plus they made the conversion into the Army by issuing us uniforms and shoes and stuff. And we got all our shots. And then from there went into primary training and we were the last class to fly that wonderful Steerman and after soloing it, we flew approximately 60 hours and then went on to basic training in the Volter Vibrator. It was called that because when you stalled the thing, the -- the wings just vibrated like crazy. I was close to soloing when my instructor caught the flu and went into the hospital and I got another instructor who felt that profanity was the way to teach flying. And I heard all the -- the words before but none of them were ever directed at me and I frankly I froze up on the stick. I became a lousy pilot. After a couple rides he says, "I'm putting you up for check ride." And the procedure was two check rides from the squadron commander and then a final check ride with the group commander. I flunked the first check ride but a lucky thing happened for me: The next day the squadron commander introduced us to a new squadron commander because he is being promoted. His first task was to give me a check ride and for some reason or the other he felt it would be unlucky to flunk his first pupil and he gave me special instruction with a friend of his. And the friend after a couple rides he said, "Do you really a want to fly?" And I said, "Yes, sir, I do." And he says, "Well, tomorrow we're going over the auxiliary field and you're going to solo or you're going to kill yourself." And that's what happened; we went over to the auxiliary field and we had it all to ourselves and I soloed. I did three landings. And from then on I was a pilot. It turned out this incident was good luck because when the class graduated from Basic, about 90 percent of the pilots went into multi-engine training, just a few of us went to single engine at Selma, Alabama. At Selma there were eight squadrons, seven of them were going to be fighter pilots and one squadron was going to be devoted to instructors and dodo pilots. They would be -- do miscellaneous tasks of flying like ferrying planes from one field to another and so forth. I was in that squadron because of my poor record. After about 20 hours in the AT-6 we were lined up to go back to the barracks for lunch when the clerk come out and called out four names and one of them was me and we were ordered to report to the squadron commander. He -- we reported to him and he said, "Gentlemen, by your flying proficiency, you deserve to be fighter pilots. I want you to transfer into my squadron immediately." And that's what happened; from then on I was qualified to fly P-40s. I was going to go to gunnery down in Eglin Field in Florida. On January 7th, 1944 I became a Second Lieutenant with pilot wings. On February 8th I became 19 years old. From then on I went into RTU training. And the first phase of it was in North Carolina. It was just flying formations and learning to handle the plane and then the second phase of RTUs also North Carolina, Bloomingthal (sp) Field, and it was mainly gunnery, aerial gunnery and ground gunnery, all toward the ocean, of course. And then we were sent to Richmond, Virginia to await orders. Went down to Hampton Roads and boarded a troop ship called the USS General Migs. We weren't going to have any escort and we weren't going to be in a convoy because it was determined that the General Migs was faster then any sub and could out run it. That wasn't too reassuring. But there was -- we ate two meals a day on -- on that ship and it took us about 10 days to get to Naples. When we went through the Straits of Megalone (sp), we did have escort of two destroyers; one at 10 o'clock and the other at 2 o'clock. And when I woke up the next morning we were docked in Naples. We spent a couple days there till we got our orders to report to another camp of tents and watching bulletin boards which we were 'coming an expert at. If you look at the bulletin board and your name wasn't on it, you were free the rest of the day, so we did a little bit of touring of Italy. And we found that hitching a ride was easy to go to different places. Then we got our orders, we bordered a DC-3, C-47, whatever you want to call it, and we were flown to Corsica. We were pretty sad looking bunch I must admit. And they seemed to have our papers. I -- I don't know how they distributed the 201 file, maybe they won it in a poker game. But anyway, they named off some names. They went to the 522nd squadron. They named off some more names which were mostly my friends. And they went to the 523rd and then my name and a few others went to the 524. One of the experienced pilots showed us around, showed us where the mess hall was. Showed us where our tent was going to be. It was hotter than the devil. And showed us where we could get water and -- and our helmet was to become our sink for the rest of the war. And we'd take baths in them. We called them horror baths. Anyway, that -- we were told we were going to have a familiarization flight the next day because we hadn't flown for quite a while. And that night I got deathly sick, threw up a couple times behind the tent and when we went down to the line the next day, I went up to our brand new squadron commander and I told him that I didn't think I could fly. I couldn't even buckle my belt. And he made me report to the flight surgeon. The flight surgeon gave me an examination and said you have appendicitis. Two hours later I was in a operating table on Corsica and I was being operated on by a doctor from Youngstown, Ohio. And a nurse was from Niles, Ohio and I had relatives in both towns since I was born in Warren, Ohio. Also, the doctor, I asked him, since I have a local, I could talk to him, if maybe he knew my cousin by the name of Nevion Trimber (sp) who was a doctor. And the doctor says, "My God, he interned under me." Well, it was kind of a painful experience and when I was released and went back to the squadron I was grounded for two months. And in that two months' time I learned -- went to the mess tent and I learned that milk was -- powdered milk was not drinkable. It tasted awful. Powdered eggs wasn't much better, and the butter we nicknamed cosmolene because it stuck to the roof of your mouth. And I was introduced to one of my favorite jams, orange marmalade. And I -- I noted it had little bits of -- of peel in there and I thought, "Gee, they must have put that in there because of the war." I didn't know that was the way it was supposed to be. During that time my parents got the first letter and they knew that I had been operated on and that I was on Corsica and they told me about a neighbor that was stationed in Corsica in the 86 Fighter Group which pretty much had the same missions that the 27th Fighter Group had. So since I had all this time on my hand, I grabbed a Jeep and went over there and -- and I was told he was in his tent. I walked in the tent and he just about fainted to see a neighbor of his walk in in the tent and he was cooling three cans of beer in his helmet of 100 octane gasoline. And he graciously offered me one. I don't think beer cooled in hundred octane gas, it will ever sell. So, anyway, when I went back to my squadron, I found out how we cooled our beer. They would take the beer and wrap it in wet cloths and put it in the ammunition well and the pilot would take off and fly up above 10,000 feet for a little while and dive down and that's how we cooled our beer. It's kind of expensive refrigeration. By this time we were pounding the Germans in southern France pretty hard and they were beginning to retreat up the Rhone Valley and our unit won the presidential citation because of all the materials that was lost by the Germans of which I got to see later on. And then when we left Corsica and went to a place near Marseille I was told that I was going to start flying combat missions. They -- first mission was what you would call a milk run. It was three flights and it was a search-and-destroy and since it was my first mission I was to fly the Number 2 position by the flight leader. And we just cruised around and didn't see a thing, and we came back and landed, but I had my first mission. The next two missions was exactly alike: We were to dive bomb Marshon Yards (sp) just north of Switzerland. I didn't know how to dive bomb so I went to one of the older pilots and asked him what I was supposed to do. And he told me that we would possibly peel off at 10,000 feet. I would put my gun sight where I wanted the bombs to go, and when I pulled up, I hit the thumb switch, the bombs would fall right where the gun sight was aimed at. Well, I looked back after bombing. At least none of the bombs landed in Switzerland and so I -- I felt pretty good about that. And it was the same mission the next day, so I guess we didn't do a good enough job. My fourth mission I'll never forget. It was going to be four airplanes on a search-and-destroy. We were led by a -- a pilot who only had a few more missions before he went home. And because the lines were so far away we had to land and refuel before going into Germany. And the first target we found was -- was a train. And -- and the leader and his wingman went down about the middle of the -- of the train. My element leader went down on the first box car and left nothing but the engine for me, and the leader said, "Peel off to the left." So I looked over the left and I saw a pyrotechnic display better than any 4th of July. The flight leader had hit an ammo car and it was blown sky high. Unfortunately, his wingman flew through that explosion and it flew open the door to the ammo on his left wing which caused him all kinds of problems. He had to put everything in the right-hand corner to get -- to get the left wing up. The plane was stalling at a hundred and sixty miles an hour and since he was fighting and went straight ahead while we were going off to the left, we lost sight of him but he radioed and said that he was returning to base so we continued on. And I was put over in the -- in the Number 2 position now and the three of us were flying along and something was wrong with my airplane and it was kind of vibrating. I looked at all the -- the gauges and everything seemed to be all right there. I turned around and looked back at my tail and 20 millimeter fire was exploding under my tail and it was making the tail jump. I informed the flight leader that we were under attack and he started taking evasive action. Just slow turns here and there. And one time turning to the left I had to slid under him and I looked up and flames was coming out of his engine nasale. So I called him and told him what trouble he had and -- and he peeled off and bailed out. And that left just the two of us and never had so much fire. We -- we were at a dangerous altitude, 2000 feet. They can throw everything at you. It was really exhausting and I was one scared little boy, I'll tell you. And I didn't even try to fly formation. I was all over that sky pushing that plane this way and that way. And every time I looked down at the ground it just seemed like there was a hundred guns aimed at me. Finally it stopped and I joined up on the element leader's wing and he says, "Are you okay?" Well, I had to lie to him and say, "I'm all right." But we didn't know where we were. All we knew is fly west. So we tried to call and get directions which you could do on a -- on a special channel and he couldn't understand what they were trying to tell us. I think we were too low. So we just kept flying kind of a southwesterly direction not knowing where we were figuring we'd get back sometime and mountains kept getting higher and higher. I ran out of gas in my wing tanks and I felt that they were dragging me down too much so I ejected them. Our first checkpoint was Geneva, Switzerland and that airport looked very inviting. If I went down there and landed, the war would have been over for me. But instead we turned right and slid past Mt. Blaum (sp). We knew there was an airport on the other side. But when we got to the airport the DC-3s were flying in supplies. There was just seemed like hundreds of them. So I gave them a mayday and -- the tower a mayday and told them that I was very low on fuel and wanted to have priority landing and they said, "Okay. You're clear." And I was doing 360s off the end of the runway in case I ran out of gas. We called it gravy by the way. and I went to -- I put down the wheels and -- and the flaps and there was a DC-3 or C-47 in front of me. So I called the -- the tower and I told him that I was peeling off and I was going to do another 360 and if another C-47 got in my way, I was going to shoot it down. Pretty checky for a 19-year old don't you think? So anyway, I landed and the element leader landed alongside and while I was refueling we got out and stretched and I got down on my hands and knees and kissed that French soil. It was scary. We were a short distance from our field and when we took off, two out of the four came back. Well, actually everybody came back eventually, but it was a long time. It was without a doubt the worse of my hundred and three missions and I'll never forget it. In fact, many of the missions is just kind of foggy. And we -- we did move again in France, we went north. And I -- I did learn that when you're in a dive bomb, you don't shoot your guns because the cartridges that come out can rip the plane apart that's following you. So it was never any strafing on our dive bombing runs. I don't know how many more missions I flew in France, but we were told to go back to Italy.

Q: What size were the bombs that you were carrying?

A: Most times it was five hundred pound bombs.

Q: How many of them?

A: Two, one on each wing. On a couple missions, believe it or not, I flew a thousand pound bombs on each wing. And that P-47 flew like a ruptured duck. It was -- it was really too heavy. Anyway, when we were ordered back to Italy, since I didn't have much time with the unit and we had more pilots then we had planes, that meant I had to go overland and three pilots and a sergeant drive the Jeep, drove back down to Marseille. And we boarded an LST. Kind of an amusing thing happened there. My buddies had been there for quite a while in the 523rd and they were playing pinocle and I decided to explore the ship. So I'm going down the -- the passageway and I saw these two sailors washing dishes and one sailor looked familiar. And I -- I said, "Where are you from?" And they, seeing that I was an officer, said, this one said, "Pennsylvania, sir." And I said, "Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, right?" He said, "Yeah, how did you know that?" And I says, "Don't they call you Nosey Nosewell (ph)?" "Yeah." Well, Nosey didn't know me. What happened was, when -- one time I was going home and outside the bus station these two guys were in a fight and one of them was Nosey Nosewell. I asked the girl along side of me who the little guy was and she said, "Oh, that's Nosey Nosewell. He's always getting in trouble." Well, it turned out to be pretty good because if there was any food left over -- the Navy ate a heck of a lot better than we did -- he'd bring us down a piece of cake and so forth, and so the -- my buddies kind of adopted him and since he had a pension for getting in -- in trouble, he got them in trouble. Should I tell the story?

Q: Sure. Go ahead.

A: Okay. They went into Marseille. We -- the ship couldn't sail because it didn't have enough water. So they took Nosey and -- and four of the pilots went into Marseille and I couldn't go because I was sick. But I gave Nosey some money because he was broke. I probably never will see it again. But they decided they would go to Maison a la Femme which is a cat house. And they no sooner got there when the place was raided by a team of SPs and MPs. Because my friends were officers and because Nosey was with them, they let them go. Well, the dumb fools, they went to another Maison a la Femme and they no sooner got there when the same team of SPs and MPs showed up and again they let them go. And the dumb fools went to a third one and they got raided again, this time they got reported and my friends were put on restriction and I don't know what happened to Nosey. But the LST landed at Legnago at night and we got into a truck and he took us to our new airport just west of Rome right in the middle of a field that was full of sheep. We were issued three things that was very comforting: The first was a -- a air mattress. We had been sleeping on those damn hard cots for all this time. The second was a coat with a -- a -- a -- a coat fur lined hood. And the third was gloves that you'd sweat in them they were so -- so good. All three of those was very welcome. Also they start giving us a day off. And if you flew your last mission and you weren't scheduled for anymore, and I flew lots of days two missions and I think one day I flew three missions, you could go do what you wanted to for the next 24 hours and we'd go into Rome. And I think one of the pictures is one of those trips in -- into Rome. Our favorite place was Broadway Bill's which was officers only bar. No ventilation whatsoever. And the leader played the trombone and every once in a while he would play Raising with the Moon which would make me home sick, I don't know about everybody else. But it -- it was a good hangout. It was so crowded if your mother was across the room you couldn't -- you wouldn't have recognized her. The smoke was thick, but the drinking was good. And another thing, women were not allowed to go in unless they were escorted by an officer. So there was always a bunch of the women at the top of the stairs trying to grab onto the lonely officers. So you were never without female companionship. After that I'd become seniority enough that I was given an airplane that was considered mine, and so when we flew -- when we moved up from Rome to Pontedera -- Pontedera was a little town halfway between Pisa and Florence. And like many European communities, a town usually specializes in one craft and I think our town specialized in furniture because all the buildings were high ceiling, high windows, big cavernous places, and we didn't have to live in tents. The -- the rooms were divided up into individual spots. Another thing, it was winter and it was dang cold and Irville Leball (ph), my tent mate for most of the war, obtained a stove. This stove was kind of unique, it burned one hundred octane gas. It could have blown us sky high, but it was effective and it did a damn good job. And I -- I often wondered what happened to those stoves. They're all homemade, by the way. And Pontedera, we had one building that was the officers' hangout, the officers' bar, the officers' dining room and the kitchen. And another thing, because our job was so stressful, we were allowed to buy one-fifth of whiskey a month. And I was not much of a hard booze drinker in -- in those days and so I usually put mine in a footlocker and used it for trading. But -- and the food, well, Leball always complained. Now, Leball's a -- a Jewish boy from Long Island and Jewish mother's kind of dote on their sons and also they have the reputation of being excellent cooks. And Leball just complained and I'm -- I came from an Irish Catholic family. If we had food on the table we considered ourselves lucky. My mother bragged that she could cook hamburger 22 different ways and I think I tried all 22 as a kid. One night Leball threw down his fork and he says, "I've had enough of this." And he marched up to the head table where all the group officers sat and he shook his finger in the mess officer's face and he said, "Your cooks ought to be digging ditch." And the group officer -- group commander jumped up and says, "You are now mess officer." And Leball became mess officer. After the war he told me that he found out that they weren't allowed to buy food from the locals and he didn't understand that. And Leball, being a master tradesman, midnight requisitioner, did improve the food and he did circumvent that -- that rule. He started using local food, even had a fresh egg once in a while.

Q: A big treat.

A: So in February, I'm now 20 years old and we got orders to leave the 12th Air Force and fly to northern France and join a new group called the First Taft. The First Taft was to support the French Army and General Bradley's Army in the south of Germany. And once in a while we'd have a mission over into Patton's territory and we used to joke that we had to wear a tie. We never did, but -- and our missions kind of changed a little bit. Not so much dive bombing anymore, it was more or less strafing, search-and-destroy, get a couple of wing tanks and send us out looking. And these missions became very interesting, very interesting. One -- one interesting mission was when the (?war mock?), the German Army would leave a town, our Army would go into the town and some of the townspeople would shoot at them and kill or wound them so they said no more of that. They setup loud speakers outside of town and asked that the mayor come out under white flag and surrender the town. Our role was to fly over the town and the threat was that if the mayor didn't come out and surrender, we were going to strafe the town, start a bunch of fires and they didn't like that. They -- they hated the P-47s. In fact, they were told that the pilots were Chicago mobsters. Twenty years old and I'm a Chicago mobster. The -- the mayor usually come out and surrendered and then we'd go to our secondary target. One of these times -- by the way, our -- our troops, we had such air superiority, that our troops to keep from being strafed by their own airplanes put sherris panels on their equipment. If the Germans ever found that they'd be putting sherris panels on their tanks, but they never did. So we knew exactly where they were. And we went to this picture perfect little town. It should have been on a postcard and we reported to an Air Force Air Corp liaison man who was on the ground. And he said that there was guns on the hills on both sides of this town and to look for them and strafe them. Well, all we could do was strafe because we couldn't find the guns, but we -- we strafed them, the hills pretty good. It was two flights. And then we said we were running throw on gravy and we had to go back and they said, "Well, we're getting ready to go across the creek." There was creek dividing them from the town, and you would go through town, strafe it and start a few fires and we did. I -- I felt kind of bad about that because the town was so pretty. And -- but it felt good that our -- our boys could see what we were doing. Another interesting mission, there was 12 of us on this one, three flights and we came to this town. There was three of our tanks on a hill overlooking the town and we'd see them shooting their guns and we'd see a high rise building explode. And while we were kind of looking around, a German tank came out of the town and we caught him right in the middle of a field and we started doing a round robin on him. I think I burned up my guns trying to, it was stupid. We should have been shooting from the rear because that's their weak point. But finally one of the armor-piercing bullets got inside and hit the ammo and that tank started exploding, "Boom." I don't think any -- anybody got out of that alive. But it made me feel good that our tanks up in the hill could see us doing that. That's why, I mean, the missions were interesting. There was another -- another time we caught a convoy between three hills. There was a little town down there and the convoy was -- was hiding down there and we had a hell of a time getting down there because we had such little time to line up the target and get out of there, running into one of the hills. One of the other pilots came up over the hill and he come down and he start squirting me, "Oh, my God. That's an ambulance." It wasn't an ambulance, it was full of ammo and it blew up and damn near blew him out of the sky. He said the engine quit and probably his hearing was impaired. But those -- those missions were damn interesting. After my 93rd mission after being debriefed, I was having a drink in the officer's club and the operation's officer come in and said, "Hey, Reasman, Joe wants to see you." Joe being the squadron commander. When I got to his office there was five other pilots there. He had us come in and he said, "Congratulations, gentlemen. You are now First Lieutenants." And he handed us all our silver bars. My gold bar had been polished so damn much it was silver already.

Q: How old were you then?

A: Twenty.

Q: Twenty years old, my God.

A: And so the rule was whoever got a promotion had to buy the drinks at the bar and they shared the bill. Thank God there was five other guys to share, but I was poured into bed about 2 o'clock in the morning.

Q: And with that we'll take a short break.

A: Oh, good.

A: I want you to know that I flew more early morning missions then anybody else. That means they wake me up at 4 o'clock in the morning, it's dark. I threw cold water in my face and drink coffee and everything, and that's what happened on my 94th mission. We got drunk that night because we were first lieutenants and I poured into bed at 2 o'clock and at 4 o'clock they woke me up for a mission. And I didn't like coffee, but I drank coffee. And there were two other pilots that became first lieutenants that was on that mission also, and he complained that he blacked out just landing the plane. And I remember the mission. It was a search-and-destroy, three flights and we -- we found this train. We went down the train. It was the first time that I saw a flat car, the sides came off the -- the --

Q: It was a trap and they were waiting until you --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- got close enough so they could shoot at you?

A: Yeap. And all we could do was shoot back at those 88s. I would have hate to have been on that 88, I'll tell you, with 850 caliber machine guns and 12 airplanes shooting at you. And we come back and we didn't have to fly the rest of the day because of our inebriated condition. You can't drive drunk, but you can -- sure can fly. And they were putting out a lot of nonsense about fly a hundred missions and go home. And after I flew my 100th mission and was debriefed, I went up to the PR that was putting out this nonsense and I says, "I just flew my 100th mission. Where's my ticket home?" And he says, "I'm sorry, nobody's going home." I distrusted PRs after that. After my 103rd mission I guess I was pretty tired and I was given leave in Nancy, France and there was a lot of rumors that the war was just about over. Hitler was dead. And after 'bout my third day there it was officially announced the war was over and the lights come on in the town for the first time in many, many years. The people were in the streets celebratin' and for some reason or other I didn't feel apart of it. I was leaning up against a lamp post watching all this and I turned around walked back into the bar and I was the only one in there. I just seemed to be all alone because everybody was out celebrating and I don't know why I didn't feel apart of it. Went back home and I think some general came by and -- and gave me my seventh air metal (sic). I had won seven -- make a total of seven and since each one of them meant five points for going home, that meant 35 points that I had. Also a point for every month that you were over there. I had a lot of points. And I don't remember my last mission at all. But soon three of us were given orders. We were the first ones to leave to go home.

A: So we saw a few of the sights and especially Perigueux and the Metro, their subway system and --

Q: Was there much war damage?

A: In Paris, no, we didn't see any. We spec -- speculated about flying through the Arch de Triumph (sic). There was a few inches to spare on each side.

Q: Speaking of that, what was the wing span of the P-47?

A: God, I don't know.

Q: It was a big airplane though, isn't it? Weighs seven tons.

A: Seven tons. Before refueling.

Q: Without bombs or ammunition?

A: Yeah. It was a -- a great airplane, like a tank. I'm glad I flew it. Anyway, we went to the staging area and there you wait your orders to go home. I got sick again and I was sent to a Paris hospital. The doctor was a corncob pipe smoker. Some -- someplace in the midwest and he told me I had infectious mononucleosis which is called The Kissing Disease. I thought she was clean. Anyway, they -- they filled me full of penicillin. They come in and took blood samples from my finger. They took so many that towards the end they had to milk my finger to get any blood out of it. And another odd thing. I had to urinate into a bottle and I thought it was for testing purposes, but it was in the same bottle and I couldn't understand that. So finally I asked the nurse, "Why am I doing this?" And they said, "Well, 90 percent of the penicillin comes out in your urine. And the French don't have any penicillin, so we give them your urine and they reclaim the penicillin out of your urine." I thought that was odd. I don't know how they did that, but I guess that was their only source of penicillin.

Q: And here it is the home country of Louis Pasteur.

A: Yeah. So anyway, after I became well and -- and went back, we converted our money into American dollars which meant we were really going home. And it was rumored that the American dollar was very valuable over there. In fact, there was still some World War I big bills still in circulation over there and being accepted. And we were told to report to this airborne outfit, a bunch of C-47s. We were all going to fly home together, about nine or 10 airplanes. And we spent the night in Marseille. And then we flew to Marrakesh, spent the night there. Marrakesh to the west coast of Africa, spent the night there. And then flew over to the Ascension Islands and that's a trip. The English said we couldn't build an airfield on there. Well, they did. Both ends of the runway were in the ocean and when you landed on one end, you could not see the other end because it went uphill and then downhill. You taxied around a mountain to get to the taxi area and we spent the night there and the Americans, there's no vegetation on it, so the Americans brought one palm tree over. We went from there to Fortaleza, Brazil. Wow, let me tell you. There was a big wedding going on and some -- some guy from the American Counsel Office, he was an officer, a Navy officer married a Brazilian nobility or something, and it was going to be really high fluen' party and here we were looking terrible because our clothes were disheveled. In fact, some major come in and said, "Sergeant, get rid of these men." And since our leader was a colonel, he said, "What'd you say Major?" He pulled rank and we stayed there, but it was some party, um. I was just drunk enough I went up to pretty Brazilian and asked her to dance and she says, "No dance, samba." I don't care. I went out and about three steps she threw down my arms and she said, "You no samba," and stocked (sic) off the dance floor. The next day we took off and flew up to an English territory which is now independent, I'm sure, and spent the night there. From there we went to Puerto Rico, spent the night there. From Puerto Rico, Savannah, Georgia. Exactly one year. And we went through inspection and when we come out of the hanger there was a Red Cross with a bunch of milk. Ah, fresh milk. I grabbed a couple of cartons and I drank them down. That night they had a steak dinner for us and I couldn't go because I was sick as a dog. Of course one of the first thing I did was call my parents and tell them I was back, and they were relieved at that. But I didn't know what made me sick. I -- I thought I was going to die. I definitely didn't make the steak dinner. From there we went up to Richmond again and we were supposed to look at the bulletin board and get our orders and if -- if on Friday there was no notice of what you were supposed to do, you had the weekend off and we were limited to 50 miles of the base. I went home anyway to Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. Got on a train and there MPs going up and down checking orders for unlisted men, but not officers, so I was able to go a little more than 50 miles away from Richmond. It was kind of nice to be home and my parents sure were relieved since I was the only child, by the way. Then we got orders to go home on leave, so I went home for 10 days and -- and there was a lot of rumors flying around about VJ Day and while I was home VJ -- they did -- it was everybody in the streets celebrating, if you can call Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, 13,000 souls. We rode a -- a friend of mine who was 4-F had a convertible and a bunch of us piled in that damn thing and celebrated along with everybody else. Anyway, we went to (?Indian Town Gap?) and got discharged and they gave us our lame duck as they called it. It meant you were a serviceman, and I went to work for a short period of time in a steel mill until I was accepted at Penn State. Penn State had a rule that if you were in the upper two-fifths of your graduating class in high school, they had to take you. Well, here comes all these returning servicemen, you know, four or five years' worth and Penn State couldn't possibly take all of us. So my freshman year, what they did was farm us out to colleges, teacher's colleges. I ended up in Slippery Rock which was a short distance away. So we spent our freshman year at Slippery Rock, and then finally the barracks were -- I call them barracks 'cause that's what they looked like -- were built in Penn State. And then there was a -- a mobile home park for married people and we nicknamed that Fertile Valley. Every -- everybody knows Penn State is called Happy Valley. I had a man come up to me one day and he says, "What is a Nitany lion?" And I says, "It's a mountain lion that lives on Mt. Nitany." "Oh." I graduated in January because one of Truman's economic adjustment periods, the steel mill where I worked summers couldn't take me. They didn't have their budgets reduced, so I went back to college for the summer and I was able to graduate in February, class of '50. I was an industrial engineer. I didn't know what I was going to do. The steel mill couldn't take me and -- and it was fortunate that a -- a man from Michigan needed an industrial engineer and they recommended me and he hired me. And my wife and I -- by that time I'm married -- moved to Michigan and worked in a steel mill up there. And after two and a half years we moved to California and I worked in the steel mill, Kaiser Steel, and I went into consulting, management consulting. From there they had a cutback and I went into defense industry which didn't need me at all. And I finally ended up with Rockwell, North American Rockwell and I worked in the (?Audionic?) Division of North American, and we had a small problem with contracts. I was on the staff of vice-president of -- of manufacturing and there was about 12 of us sitting around a conference table when in walked a contracts manager and he had a big tall guy with him who looked familiar. And they introduced him as Colonel John Devine. Well, I wasn't -- still wasn't sure that I knew the man, so I raised my hand and he says, "Yes." And I says, "Didn't you have a name like Dad or Pop or something?" He said, "Well, a few people called me Pape." I said, "Engineering officer for the 524 Fighting Squadron, right?" His eyes bugged out and he looked at me and he says, "Who in the hell are you?" And I said, "Well, sir, I flew a hundred and three missions in those crates you said were ready to fly." We had our own reunion then. But I was still intolerant of -- of milk.

Q: Now, before you went in the Corp and before you went to Europe, you could drink milk and everything was just fine, right?

A: Yeah.

Q: And then --

A: Because of --

Q: -- for the entire year you had nothing available but powdered milk?

A: No. But -- and I didn't drink much of that because you had to put a pile of sugar on your cereal to make it tolerable. And -- but it seemed like one of my favorite things was to take my girlfriend or my wife to a movie and afterward we'd stop for a hamburger and a milk shake. And then that night I'd be sicker than a dog. And I says, I couldn't understand it. And this went on for years and years and then one day I -- I read an article that the United Nations were giving powdered milk to Africans because they felt that milk-drinking nations had a higher intelligence level than non-milk drinkin' nations, so they thought they would raise their capability by giving them milk. Well, when they went back a year later to check they found out they were using the powdered milk to whitewash the walls of their house. And they said, "What's -- why are you doing this?" And they says, "The milk makes us sick." And that's when they found out lactose deprived, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And that's when I realized that's was my problem, and I had to cut way back on milk, especially after lunchtime.

Q: So -- so between the appendicitis, lactose intolerance and mononucleosis, those were your three purple hearts?

A: Yeah, that's my purple heart all right. So --

Q: Well, you did a wonderful job and hope to keep America free.

A: Well --

Q: Fly in a heck of an airplane, huh?

A: Oh, it was a wonderful airplane. I kind of redic -- ridiculed it at first because it just didn't seem to compare with the P-51, but today I am very glad that I flew my missions in it. The fourth mission I don't think I mentioned the one I was so frightened of.

Q: Um-hum.

A: A piece of shrapnel went into my ammo and blew up all the bullets in there and just tore the -- the sheet metal off something awful and I didn't even know it.

Q: I'll be darn. Where did it get its nickname Jug?

A: I don't know.

Q: It's such a cute little nickname.

A: Yeah. Thunder Mug, Thunder Jug.

Q: Yeah, yeah. Now, when you guys went to a briefing before a mission, and all you pilots, I presume, were sitting in a room and you were getting a briefing, did they give you maps so that you could find Point A to Point B and know where you were going?

A: No. There was a big map on the wall and the intelligent officer had put our route in crayon how he wanted us to fly, what level he wanted us to fly at, which direction for how long and so forth to get us to the target. And the flight leader had a piece of masking tape on his uniform and he wrote all this information down. And usually if it was a multi flight, the other flight leader did the same thing in case he got shot down.

Q: And why didn't they give you maps?

A: Well, if we got shot down, the Germans would love to have them I -- I would imagine. We were not allowed to carry anything personal on -- on a mission. We had to leave it where we picked up our parachute and we had a, what was called an escape kit. Of course we all had 45s tucked under our arm. I don't know what the heck we were going to do with those, but -- but -- so, we didn't carry anything revealing. All we had to do was tell them our serial number, our name and --

Q: On those hundred and three missions, did you ever run into Luftwaffe?

A: Twice. One mission that was being led by a squadron commander by the way, we were jumped by a bunch of Messerchmitt or at least they were up there and he put us in -- what the -- what maneuver is that where you fly in a circle?

Q: Almost sounds like circling the wagons.

A: Yeah. Well, what -- its purpose is that you always had an airplane on your tail in case anybody came down. Well, one Messerschmitt came down. And all I -- I heard the squadron commander screaming, "Shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him." And I looked across, it was a 180 degrees, he was sitting on that P-47s tail. He had him dead to rights. His guns must have jammed or something. I don't know what happened. Do you realize the squadron commander and I was the only one that saw that Messerschmitt and I think it's because I caught myself looking at my tail and I realized at the time I looked back, I saw that beautiful engine behind me and well, I don't have to look back there. So I started looking around and I think everybody else was looking back and looking at their tail. The other time was an escort mission, we had a few of those. And it was three flights and the squadron leader put one flight on the right and another flight on the left and his flight which I was element leader was at 6 o'clock high which is not where we should have been. And first thing we knew, two of the B-26s blew up and parachutes was all over the place. And I'm tipping the plane up on its wing trying to see what the heck was going on, but they -- two jets came in underneath us.

Q: Jets?

A: Jets.

Q: Me-262s?

A: And they shot, you know, they had cannon and they shot down those two B-26s and I'm trying to find them. And I could have sworn that my wingman who was called Dangerous Dave, said, "Let's go Reasman." So I put it into a dive and there was a jet sitting right in front of me. And I dropped my wing tanks and I shot at them and I underled him. He was so damn fast he out ran the bullets, I swear. I never -- it was a new experience with me. If I had led him properly he would have been off my gun sight. I gave it the water. I put the throttle all the way forward. He was gone. I wished I had known -- had experience, you know, I probably could have done things differently.

Q: I bet there aren't a half a dozen pilots in those days who had ever seen one.

A: Maybe.

Q: Nobody knew how to lead.

A: Oh, we had air superiority supreme. That's why we could use those sherris channel -- panels on our equipment.

Q: Were those the three white panels?

A: No.

Q: What were those?

A: Sherris brilliant red, pink, whatever. It was --

Q: Was it just a stripe or a square?

A: No, just piece of cloth --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- tied down on the hood, around top, wherever on the tank. They didn't want us to shoot them.

Q: Um-hum.

A: They -- on that mission, by the way, I was down below the clouds by now and so Dave and I start climbing up through the clouds and I saw a P-47 in front of me. And he did a slow turn towards me and I thought maybe somebody was on my tail. I turned around and looked and there wasn't anybody there and I looked back and he was bailing out of his plane. And to this day I don't know why he bailed out. And so we lost one airplane on that mission. And it -- it was a practice to note where we were when to bail out and then when our front lines moved past that area we'd send a team in to find out what happened to the pilot. And they sent two teams in, they couldn't find anything. And we had a pilot who was Polish and could speak Polish by the name of Lipiaras (sp). He lives in Buffalo, New York, by the way, and he was a comedian. He would see his name on a mission he would say, "I can't go. I've been sick." He always went. Anyway, they sent him down there with a team and he talked to Polish DPs. (Knock on the door.) So Lipiaras talked to the Polish DPs and he found out the pilot had landed in a swamp and they figured he had a couple of broken legs and he was in pain and a farmer and an SS Trooper went in and kicked him to death. And they took him to his grave in a Catholic churchyard and that's what happened to him. But to this day I don't know why he bailed out. It -- a lot of -- all the pilots that I went over -- overseas with, and I was grounded for two months, and I ended up my career with more missions then they had. And I think it's because I flew so many early morning missions and -- which made me available for another mission in the afternoon. When I went to the San Antonio reunion, I asked the operations officer why I flew so many missions. You know what he said? "Yeah, but they were all easy."

Q: Let's explain briefly how the Air Force in those days was broken down. We'll start at the bottom and go up. So you were in the 524 squadron --

A: Um-hum.

Q: -- which was part of the 27th Group --

A: Um-hum.

Q: -- which was part of the 12th Air Force, correct?

A: And major the first half. Is that it?

Q: I think we got it. I think we got it.

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Interview with James C. Reasman on April 4, 2001