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Show fPl fl it rb i TOUIt OF DUTY: Aboard a navy patrol plane over the South Atlantic (delayed) : Some men are more fortunate than others. Some men are richer than many. Some men stay in love longer than most and most men never experience experi-ence the wallop that goes with being at the bow-gun of a Navy patrol plane (a IBY) a few feet over the submarine-infested South Atlantic. How even a veteran bombardier can keep his eyes open or focused on a target out there in the open bow with the fierce wind blinding and bayonneting him is something I do not savvy . . . The powerful gun kicks the way Joe Louis punches and shakes you violently the way Lew Fields shook Joe Weber . . . At any rate, there you are out there, under the huge propellers several feet ahead of the pilot alone . . . Except for the hurricane-tempo'd wind and perhaps a Nazi sub hiding below. I was reminded of the time Senator Sena-tor Holman of Oregon and Senator Chandler of Kentucky flew to the Aleutians through heavy fog and storm most of the way. And picked up a soldier at some Alaskan base, who immediately took his battle station sta-tion and trained his gun on the skies. "Son," said Senator Holman, "whatcha fussin' with that there weapon fer that-a-way?" . . . "I'm being ready," replied the gunner, "in case we meet some Jap planes" . . . The white-as-a-sheet Holman turned to the whiter-than-that Chandler and Intoned: "Ain't it silly what some of us Senators will do to get into trouble when we don't have to?" My good break came from missing connections with the plane that was to take me to the next port on the tour . . . Had I made that plane I would have missed one of the biggest thrills of them all . . . That thrill was not my first flight in a PBY a huge and comfortable Catalina (one of which helped sink the Bismarck) ; or firing the bow-gun or circling low over oil specks that stained the beautiful beau-tiful aquamarine below . . . The big wallop came several hours later when we reached the base. I am not permitted to divulge the excitement I witnessed at this place . . . The four paragraphs para-graphs about it were blue-penciled even before I had the chance to correct the spelling ... It was my first experience with an official gremlin, too . . . For the first time in 22 years of newspapering I realized how tame the toughest editors are. All I was trying to jot down was that some fellows were luckier than other fellows . . . That some pilots had reasons for being happier than others and that the U. S. now has fewer enemies than it had. And so I cannot reveal at this time what all that excitement was about ... I cannot even elaborate that the excitement was enjoyed by a lot of very happy men, and that the reason they were so excited and happy was that certain other men, with dialects, were unhappy or dead. The PBY on which I hitch-hiked was manned by the most youthful fellows I encountered down there . . . Most were only 21. Some were 23 or 25, and some were a little more seasoned . . . But all featured beards that must have been months in blooming . .. All the other fliers I met at various places were cleanshaven clean-shaven . . . "Why the whiskers?" I asked. "They haven't been as lucky as other chaps," explained an officer, "and so they agreed not to shave until they got a sub." I kept wishing that on this routine flight I would not prove a jinx to them and that they could get a shave. At the Admiral's morning conference confer-ence I was shown a dispatch that told of a merchant ship sunk the night before, and that a PBY patrolling patrol-ling the area had radio'd seeing two lifeboats with survivors . . . But when he returned to the scene later he saw only one . . . We were instructed in-structed to keep our eyes open for those survivors . . . That saving them would be even better than sinking an enemy sub . . . But there was no trace of them ... I never learned whether they had been rescued or not ... I kept thinking of them throughout the flight knowing know-ing that brave men somewhere were suffering not only from the suffocating suffo-cating humidity and heat but from the blinding sun. The Atlantic seemed as tame as any Florida lake ... I was instructed instruct-ed to occupy one of the co-pilot's pews handed a helmet containing earphones and some dark specs . . . I just sat there wishing hard that they'd get lucky . . . Now and then the Captain brought the plane down to a few feet over the water to circle over oil specks . . . They are really huge gobs of scum from tankers tank-ers and ships, they said . . . Sometimes Some-times it might be from an ill-fated merchantman, but I heard this is not always the case. |