A bombardier recalls dark times in the flak fields, and the haven that brightened his life.
No soldier would deliberately run into an artillery barrage, but for those of us in bombers, flying into flak—from Fliegerabwehrkanone, German for “airplane defense cannon”—was part of the job. Fortunately, on a bomb run, with the flak pelting away, I had something to distract me. It was fall 1944, and I was a second lieutenant and lead bombardier in the Eighth Air Force’s 401 Bomb Group, 615 squadron, with a Norden bomb sight to work. As our B-17, Ragged But Right, approached a target, I was locating that target, entering data, and, as usual on a bomb run, flying the plane while the pilot focused on holding the Fort’s airspeed and altitude steady.
I was too busy to think about flak.
I did feel sorry for our gunners, though. With no enemy fighters in the flak field to focus on—Luftwaffe fliers knew very well that 88mm rounds did not care what they hit—the guys at the .50 calibers were free to agonize about our vulnerability. I could hear them in my earphones. “How much longer?” they would mutter from turrets and waist mounts. “How much longer, for God’s sake?”
To fight fear in combat, there’s one defense, which is to repeat to yourself again and again, “I’m lucky. It might happen to him or to him, but not to me. Not today.”
My own sense of luck had recently gotten a severe test—on a February 3, 1945, mission to hit railroad marshaling yards at Berlin. Bad weather often obscured targets. I might have only seconds to spot the objective and get my crosshairs riding steady on it before bombs away. Short runs hurt accuracy, but clouds did keep German flak gunners from getting a visual fix on us. Amazingly, that day the skies over Berlin were clear. I used the Norden’s telescope from far enough off to have a nice long run at those railroad yards. Great for me, and for those flak gunners. For old Ragged But Right, not so great.
Approaching Berlin, I looked up from the bombsight, and my stomach roiled. We were about to fly into a huge field of flak. Bombers from the group ahead were falling out of the thick dark cloud—some burning, some disintegrating, some exploding in balls of flame that added their black smoke to the infernal cloud. Dying planes were spewing dozens of parachutes, some of them afire. I glued my eye back onto the bombsight. I had to get my mind off the ride into hell.
That didn’t help, because now we were in it, and when you can see flak burst black in a Norden’s narrow field of view and feel near-misses rock your B-17 and hear shards of flak punch holes in your plane, you know you’re in hell. “How much longer?” I heard myself mutter. “Come on. Come on.”
Even when, miraculously, your bombs finally fall and you emerge alive from the blackness, what you’ve been through sears your mind. You know that tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, you have to get up and do the same thing. The target might change, but the fear stays the same.
Fortunately, our crew caught a break. After so many missions—for Ragged But Right, I think the magic number was 19—the Eighth Air Force automatically pulled a crew out of combat for a few days’ rest at a flak house.
How such facilities came to be called flak houses I don’t know, but the term was rich with irony, since these havens existed to remove air crews about as far as they could, physically and emotionally, from aerial battlefields.
Officially, flak houses were “rest homes,” operated in both the Pacific and European Theaters. The variety in Britain dated to the early days of the bombing campaign over Europe. At first the Allies lacked escort fighters capable of round trips to targets deep in Germany, and when the fighters we did have— Thunderbolts and Spitfires—had to turn back, bombers hung in the air at the mercy of airborne and ground-based German gunners. Between the Luftwaffe and the flak—some targets had more than 300 guns defending them—bombers and their crews took a beating. A mission could lose a fifth of its group. Heavy bombers had 10-man crews, and sortied in flights of hundreds, so losing 60 bombers on one mission could cost 600 men.
Odds were against an airman surviving a full 25-mission (later, 30-mission) tour. It was nerve-wracking up there. But on the ground, things could get worse. Nightmares robbed men of sleep, often bringing on “nervous fatigue”—a constellation of symptoms including depression, listlessness, and insomnia.
One prescription early in the air war was the three-day pass, which in effect turned weary crews loose for 72 hours to do as they pleased—most likely whooping it up in the nearest village or in a city like London. In time commanders came to realize that staying out most of the night drinking and chasing girls not only worsened fliers’ fatigue but did very little for their nerves. These men needed not a license to behave riotously but removal from the stress of combat.
So in late 1942, the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces began arranging with hotel and mansion owners to volunteer their properties as rest homes for the duration. Eventually the services had 15 flak houses around Britain with names like Starbridge Karle, Moulsford Manor, Walhampton House, Keythorpe Hall, and Roke Manor. Generally officers and enlisted personnel went to separate facilities. Each could accommodate 25 to 50 men.
Most of us spent a week or 10 days, but military psychologists and psychiatrists rotated among locations, interviewing every guest, and after an evaluation a medical officer could recommend that a man extend his stay.
I can’t remember the name of the house that welcomed the officers of Ragged But Right, only that the sight of it left me awestruck. The residence appeared to be just short of a royal castle, with manicured gardens and meadows surrounding a vast red brick dwelling, much of it covered with ivy.
Genial Britons maintained the grounds and staffed the house, and at the front door a lovely young American woman welcomed us. A flak house usually had two nurses—well, we called them nurses because that was how they dressed, but actually they were Red Cross recreation workers, recruits from the United States who met the requirements of being college educated, at least 25 years old, and willing to serve a year. To battle-weary airmen these hostesses were angels from heaven offering us a sweet breath of home—their voices, their gentle empathy, their efficiency at managing a whirl of activities, all while laughing and joking with each and every one of us. I never saw a flier try to cross the line; we thought of those young women as family.
The estate’s middle-aged owner also let us know that she cared as well. To her we were boys far from home, sacrificing our youth and sometimes our lives for her country and ours. Her husband was an officer in the Royal Navy; their two sons were navy men as well. All three had been gone more than a year, and I got the feeling we were helping her cope almost as much as she was helping us.
The whole operation was designed to take combat out of the picture. The house had about 20 bedrooms, each seemingly bigger than my family’s farmhouse back home. There were ornate staircases, kitchens and pantries straight out of a fancy restaurant, carpets so luxurious I was afraid to step on them, and walls hung with paintings of people who looked like dukes and duchesses and earls and countesses.
We temporarily traded our uniforms for civilian clothes. Our quarters were genuine bedrooms—not a bunk in sight. The staff cooked and served home-style meals. Our time was our own. We had a wide choice of things to do—golf, basketball, baseball, tennis, archery, even fencing—which I really enjoyed, because in civvies no one had a rank, and for all I knew I might be trying to skewer a colonel.
Just about everyone’s favorite activity was bicycling. We all could ride and in good weather a few—sometimes more than a few—of us would tour the countryside. It must have been a real shock for neighbors to see gangs of healthy-looking young men in civilian dress casually pedaling country roads and village streets when they should have been in some army.
Even at the flak house, weather mattered. Britain is a green and pleasant land thanks to moisture, and plenty of it. When rain inevitably fell, we would hang out, reading books from the incredible library, shooting eight-ball in a grand room whose sole furnishing was a pool table, or playing Ping-Pong, darts, chess, or cards.
But sometimes events could not help but remind us that the war was waiting for us around the corner. For instance, I wanted to try playing bridge, thinking it would lend me that touch of class I felt I lacked. One evening after dinner, three seasoned players were trolling for a fourth. I volunteered, admitting I was a novice. Desperate, they agreed to teach me. Right away I drew a couple of aces, and thought I was off to a great start. My partner was giving me pointers when a siren erupted. Someone yelled, “Air raid!” Cards flew as we raced for the cellar, but after we had huddled in the dark a couple of minutes a nurse came in and turned on the light.
“That’s from a nearby British air base,” she said calmly. “No danger here. Besides, it’s a false alarm.”
Feeling like a fool I trooped upstairs with the rest, but we could not resuscitate the mood. I ended up losing a couple of English pounds at plain old poker.
The house had a radio but the real musical attraction was a Victrola and donated records. Some guys liked classical but most preferred the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James, and Artie Shaw. After all, you couldn’t jitterbug to a Mozart requiem with one of the nurses who, along with meeting the rest of the Red Cross criteria, must also have been certified as proficient at dancing with clods.
In truth, the Red Cross girls stood firmly at the center of flak house life. They were expert conversationalists, laughing and joking yet avoiding any serious talk about the war, and we were happy to reciprocate. Most people who have seen combat rarely talk about the bad parts. If they bring up war at all, they focus on politics or strategy or, more likely, funny stories. At the flak house, most of the guys who had a case of nerves tended to keep their anxieties to themselves.
The only fliers I saw having trouble concealing their troubles were a pair of fighter pilots. Pale and preoccupied, they rarely joined in. I learned why when I overheard them talking to guys I knew to be bomber pilots.
“Damn jets,” one said. “They practically wiped out my flight.”
“Yeah,” a bomber pilot replied. “They knocked out three of our group in one pass.”
I moved closer. They were talking about the Messerschmitt 262. The Germans’ new twin-engine jet fighter could outrun the P-51 Mustang, our fastest prop plane, by more than 100 miles an hour, and carried long-range fast-firing 30mm cannons with a terrible punch. These guys thought the only thing keeping them alive was the fact that 262s were not only scarce, but also so fast that the men flying them could stay on a target for only a few seconds.
I could understand their anxiety. The more jets the Luftwaffe had, the worse my fellow airmen’s chances—and mine—of surviving. Eavesdropping was doing my nerves no favors.
What helped my nerves was one of the manor’s four- legged residents. Wanting to exercise her horses, our hostess asked for volunteers to ride with her. Two of us signed up for a morning canter. The other fellow said he was from Texas, so I pegged him for a cowboy. During the Depression years that my family had farmed in Idaho, I spent considerable time riding— plow horses, true, but I figured a horse was a horse and riding one was like riding a bike: you never forgot how.
I had forgotten that horse people like to start at the crack of dawn, so the next morning it griped me when I had to rise in near-darkness for the frosty trudge to the stables. My confidence took a nosedive when I saw the steeds whose reins the lady of the manor was holding. They were handsome and beautifully groomed animals and, naturally, they were saddled English-style. The horses knew the game was afoot and they were dancing, shaking their heads, so eager to move out that their owner had her hands full holding them in place. One was a big bay stallion that pranced nervously in the chill. He had a wicked smile and devilish hazel eyes. The lady handed me his reins. I wondered if I should have stuck with archery. She asked if I had much experience with horses.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I practically grew up on horses.”
It wasn’t really a lie, I told myself, but my confidence wavered when the cowboy saddled up and promptly got thrown.
I had never ridden English, and without a saddlehorn for leverage I must have looked like a fool struggling to climb aboard the crow-hopping stallion, whose mane had been trimmed, eliminating a handhold. But I clambered into the saddle, and once there hauled on the reins and squeezed that horse’s ribs with my legs for all I was worth. I surely surprised him; after a couple of halfhearted bucks he settled down.
The estate was mostly meadows partitioned by hedges, perfect for a movie scene in which riders and hounds chase a fox. I worried we would see an actual fox; then I would be in real trouble. As we passed through a gate, our hostess noticed the stallion’s coiled energy, but I guess she sensed I could handle him.
“He wishes to run,” she said. “Go ahead. Let him go.”
Ahead lay about a half-mile of meadow. I eased up on the reins and that devil took off. A horse at speed is a fairly smooth ride, and soon I was standing in the stirrups waving my hat, Gene Autry–style. The stallion was going full tilt when reality loomed at the far end of the meadow in the form of a six-foot hedge topped by barbed wire. We were closing on it fast—too fast. I couldn’t tell if the stallion had even seen the barrier—or if he had and just didn’t give a damn. I suddenly had the heartin-mouth feeling I would get barreling into a flak barrage on a bomb run. Was this the day my luck was going to run out? Had I survived flak and Focke-Wulfs only to end up bleeding on barbed wire on some British estate?
Not me, damn it. Not today! I sawed at the reins, pulling the brute’s chin back and yelling “whoa!” I was halfway through a Hail Mary when the stallion planted his hooves. I kept going. I slid over the saddle and up his spine and ended with my arms and legs wrapped around the horse’s neck, my face far out in front of his, eyes riveted on the barbed strands that were strung about a foot away from my nose.
Up trotted the lady and the cowboy.
“How long did you say you’ve been riding?” he asked.
I tightened my hug on the horse’s neck.
“Oh, this? Just wanted him to know we’re good friends.”
I don’t know if my companions bought it, but the stallion did. All the way back to the stable he behaved himself, and continued to do so each time I took him out over the next few days. Riding that big fellow flat-out, standing in the stirrups and whooping in glee, did me a lot of good.
After a few days we had to return to combat, and the euphoria of our respite quickly wore off. During our next couple of missions, when we were deep in flak fields, I tried to conjure the sensation of galloping on that stallion. But I could not quite do it. That had been play. This was work. On a bomb run your mind is not on riding horses or on playing bridge. It’s on doing your job and staying alive.
My flak house memories served me best after a mission, when thoughts of those happy times would give my mind and body a chance at relaxing, replacing nightmare images of flak and fighters and black clouds with wild horses, playing ball, and Red Cross angels. It worked for me. I still remember.
Originally published in the February 2014 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.
