slows you down some. The plane might blow up and set a chute afire should it be open. Also, the Germans had shot at men in chutes, so getting closer to the ground before opening the chute gave the Germans less time to spot you. I opened the chute and from the moment I hit the ground people began to gather around. There were lots of people working in the fields near there. I didn't know where I was so I pointed to the ground and said, 'France?' They said 'Belgium.' A girl spoke to me first. I held my hands up and said, 'Aviator American.' The reaction was good. These people were under German rule, but were 1,200% for the allies! I was taken to a house where a girl about my age lived with her father and mother (who she called 'Mama') and brothers. I called the girl 'Shorty.' Shorty would spend time with me and we would talk for hours. One day someone brought in a bunch of corn silk and put it on paper to dry so I asked, 'What's that?' They said something I didn't understand. I said, 'Corn silk?' They laughed and said, 'Maize for tobacco.' To look like normal natives, the woman's husband went about a half block ahead of her and me. I think we were supposed to appear to be lovers out for a stroll. We had gone a couple of blocks when her hand tightened on mine. I looked ahead to see that her husband had been stopped by German soldiers. We kept on walking in the same direction, and saw that her husband had been allowed to walk on. When we got to the soldiers they halted us and said something like, 'Alley-Oop.' We put our hands up while they patted us down. I acted very nonchalant. I guess I may have seemed bored even, which was the best way to handle it. When they got through, I reached inside my coat and pulled out a harmonica and showed it to them. The woman was carrying a brief case. The soldiers looked in that as well and then let us go on. We took a streetcar to a place close to our destination. There were German soldiers with their rifles on the ride with us. I think I bumped into one or two as the car swayed because it was so crowded. After arriving at our destination, we talked about our experiences. It seems a shipment of handguns had been stolen and that is all the soldiers were searching for. Lucky us. My woman companion was carrying the items necessary to make identification cards inside her briefcase. If that had been found out, we would have been interrogated until we were killed, I think. Thinking about it again gave me the shakes. Soon we moved on to Brussels by train. Once again we were accompanied by German soldiers. On the next track was another train, loaded with antiaircraft guns. One thing we had going for us was the fact that nobody wanted to talk to strangers. The other was that so many different languages and dialects were spoken that you could just ignore people talking to you, pretending not to understand, and it would work. Looking bored helped, too. As we went along I kept reading a sign under the window of the compartment that said 'Non Fumer,' and 'Niet Rookin.' I just pondered that, wondering what it meant, as I casually smoked my cigarettes. When we got to our next place I asked what the sign said and was told, 'No smoking, in two languages.' I guess I was lucky that no one was enforcing it. Gunnery School In Brussels we stayed in a house behind anothe that faced the street. We were told to stay away from the windows, but sometimes we had lots of time on our hands and boredom set in. We would probably get too close to the window, as I wanted to see what was around us. This house had a photo lab in one room. I really think the man worked for the Germans, which was one way to find out what they were doing and then report the information to the allies by underground radio to England. One night, the man came out to where we were. Someone had left him a message that he was to be checked out the next day by the Gestapo, so he brought us each a blanket and we took a ride on a street car and then spent the rest of the night in a nearby park But it seems that by doing what we did, we did not make the contact that we were supposed to, so another had to be made. After awhile at this location, we went to stay at a doctor's home. It was in a multiple-housing area. When the man took us out the back door, there must have been around ten locals to take our pictures. I thought that was pretty chancy, with all the other multi-story apartment buildings around. At night, we slept in a big front room in front of the doctor's office. Across the hall from this was a dining room where we spent our days. I remember some of the guys talked in their sleep in English. Just outside the window, I figured it was a 26 German soldier or a Belgian policeman hired by the Germans to patrol the street or alley. In the mornings, we could hear what sounded like a beer vendor yelling, 'Boobley beah!' There were many people that would come to the kitchen door carrying shopping bags or briefcases in which they brought us fruit and vegetables and some meat and cigarettes. These were bought off the black market, I suspect. Sometimes other women would stay and help the doctor's wife with the cooking. I do remember that the doctor's wife would wash the kitchen ceiling walls and floor every day, day in and day out. She was good-looking and ambitious and efficient. Since then, I've wondered if she might have kept busy to keep from going nuts with the risks they were taking hiding us. There was also a cat named Mamoose and a small dog called Zoomba. When I got back to the States our first dog was called Zoomba and our first cat was Mamoose. (After the war, I somehow got the information that the doctor and his wife were caught by the Nazis and executed for harboring the enemy. At any rate, at that time I wanted to get out of there, because I thought we were all taking too many chances.) Soon, we got the message that threebut only threeof us were to leave. There were members of three different crews among us and I was the only one from our crew. So I suggested that one of us from each crew should go so that we could report what had happened to us. Luckily they bought it and I went with two others on to the next location. Our trip from Brussels to Paris meant that we had to cross the border from Belgium into France. This was done very neatly. We took a train to a small town near the border, then walked through some fields (where I picked up 'chiggers') to a little town on the border where the border guard watched us walk across unchallenged. He had been well paid off. We again boarded a train in that town and proceeded to Paris. One day about nine of us boarded a train headed toward Spain and the Pyrenees Mountains. We got off the train close to the Pyrenees. We had a Belgian and a French guide with us who were always kidding each other. The Belgian was telling the Frenchman that after the war the capitol of Belgium would be Paris. I don't remember but I'm sure the Frenchman had an answer for that. We rode bicycles near the Pyrenees and it was the longest ride I have ever done, probably about fifty miles. One of the men got cramps in his legs and had to stop. His buddy tried to get him going but the guy said he couldn't go on. Then a German soldier started towards them, I presume to see what was wrong, and this seemed to give our buddy the right motivation to get moving, which he did. We were in Basque country and I don't think they liked the Germans or the Spanish because later we spent the night with some of each in a Spanish jail. Anyway, we continued on our way and eventually we came to a cottage. The guides had to explain what was going on to an old woman, who wasn't taking anything for granted. Then the guides counted out a pile of money for her. There was also a young girl there, probably eight to ten years old. They eventually took us in. After we had eaten, we went through a door into the stable, which was all part of the house. There we went into the hayloft where we slept until morning. The little girl led us down the trail and pointed to a little village. She spoke Spanish and we had Chuck with us who had worked in Texas and Mexico, where he had learned the language, so he was our interpreter. We had gone some distance toward the village when we met a group of Spanish soldiers on patrol. Chuck had to talk quite a while with them before they finally went on their way and we continued on down to the village. We turned ourselves in as escapees to a neutral country at an embassy in the village. The Germans had an office in another room there, too. They gave us some bad looks but apparently they didn't dare do anything else. Finally, we were escorted by Spanish soldiers to the Hacienda Blanco (White House), which was a jail. Along the way the leader of the soldiers told Chuck that he didn't have any bullets for his gun. Chuck suspected that maybe he did but wanted us to try an escape so he could stop us and become a hero. Sorry to say we didn't oblige him. We had done what we came for, which was to intern ourselves into a neutral country. All was well and I still even had my harmonica! After attending Weber College from 1939 to 1941, I entered training in June 1941 as a flying cadet in the U.S. Army's flying program. I graduated on January 9, 1942, in the Class of 42-A. A group of us were assigned to a base at Las Vegas, Nevada, providing gunnery instruction for aerial gunners for nineteen months. From there, several of us were sent to learn how to fly the B-26 Martin Marauder, a two engine medium bomber. After completing training, my crew and I were assigned to the 320th Bomb Group in Sardinia, off the southern coast of France. We were assigned a new airplane at Savannah, Georgia, and flew over via the southern route through South America across the 27