| OCR Text |
Show With Ernie Pyle at the. Front j Doolittle Meets Doolittle; Son Drops In on Father Tokyo Bombing Hero Has Still Another Namesake to Greet in Same 8th Air Force ) . By Ernie Pyle f (Editor's Note: Due to transmission delays, brought on by the volume of inva-,' inva-,' sion dispatches, Ernie Pylc's first reports on that historic event have not yet reached this country. The following dispatch was written before the invasion started.) LONDON. (by wireless) Here I've been gaUivantin around with lieutenant generals again. If this keeps up I'm going to lose my amateur standing. This time it is Jimmy Doolittle, who is still the same magnificent magnifi-cent guy with three stars on his shoulder that he used to be with a captain's bars. General Doolittle runs the American Eighth air force. It is a grim and stupendous job, but he manages to keep the famous Doolittle sense of humor about it. 5 Doolittle, as you know, is rather short and getting almost bald. Since arriving in England from Italy he ; has diabolically started a couple of false rumors circulating about him-' him-' self. 1 One is that his nickname used to be "Curly," and he occasionally throws his head PSiiPl back as though ifelpiSfl tossing hair out 1$'? f; of his eyes. His 1 Vfv" i other claim is mm0$& be six feet tall v'fii but has wrried t himself down to - ' -''V&P his present small height in the past irWiWfcA! flve months. Ernie Pyle Jimmy Doolittle Doolit-tle has more gifts than any one man has a right to be blessed with. He has been one of America's greatest pilots for more than 25 years. He is bold and completely com-pletely fearless. Along with that he has a great technical mind and a highly perfected education in engineering. engi-neering. In addition to his professional skill he is one of the most engaging humans hu-mans you ever ran across. His voice is clear and keen, he talks with animation, and his tone carries car-ries a sense of quick and right decision. de-cision. He is one of the greatest of storytellers. story-tellers. He is the only man I've ever knwn who can tell stories all evening long and never tell one you've heard before. He can tell them in any dialect, from Swedish to Chinese. Above all he loves to tell stories on himself. Here is an example: lie was at a Flying Fortress base one afternoon when the planes were coming back in. Many of them had been "pretty badly shot up and had wounded men aboard. The general walked up to one plane from which the crew had just got out. The upper part of the tail gun turret was shot away. General Doolittle said to the tail-gunner: "Were you in there when it happened?" hap-pened?" The gunner, a little peevishly, replied: re-plied: "Yes sir." As the general walked away the annoyed gunner turned to a fellow crewman and said in a loud voice: "Where in the hell did he think I was. out buying a ham sandwich?" A frightened junior officer, fearing fear-ing the general might have overheard, over-heard, said: "My God, man. don't you know who that was?" "Sure I know," the tail-gunner snapped, "and I don't give a damn. That was a stupid question." With which Jimmy Doolittle. the least stupid of people, fully agrees when he tells the story. Jimmy tells these stones wonderfully, wonder-fully, with more zest and humor than I can put into them second-handed. second-handed. As he says, the heartbreaks heart-breaks and tragedies of war some-limes some-limes push all your gaiety down into the depths. But if a man can keep a sense of the ridiculous about himself he is all right. Jimmy Doo-hule Doo-hule can. Lieut. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, head of the Eighth air force over here, noticed one day in the roster of officers offi-cers at his staff headquarters the name of a Captain Doolittle. The name is not a very ordinary one, and he made a mental note that some day he would look the fellow fel-low up for a little chat. One day not long after that his phone rang and the voice at the other end said, . "This is Captain Doolittle." "Oh yes," said the general. "I had noticed your name and I meant to call you up sometime." "I'd like to come in and see you," said the voice at the other end. "Why yes, do that," the general '. said. "I'm pretty busy these days, i hut I'll switch you to my aide and he'll make an appointment for you. 5 Glad you called, Captain. I'll look forward to seeing you." ! He was just ready to hang up when the voice came back plaintive-' ly ever the phone: "But Dad, this is me. Don't you I recognize me? I've got a package for you from Mom." The general exploded: "Well why in hell didn't you say so in the first place!" It was Capt. Jimmy Doolittle Jr., a B-26 pilot in the Ninth air force. The general hasn't got around yet to seeing the other Captain Doolittle. Doo-little. It'll probably turn out to be his brother or something. The last time I had seen General Doolittle was some 16 months ago, way down at the desert airdrome of Biskra on the edge of the Sahara. That was when he was running our African bomber force that was plastering plas-tering the Tunisian ports. General Doolittle flew in one afternoon aft-ernoon from the far forward airdrome air-drome of Youks les Bains. The night before his entire crew except for the co-pilot had been killed in a German Ger-man bombing at the Youks field. His crew-had manned their plane's guns until it got too hot, and then made a run for an old bomb crater 50 yards away. It was one of those heartbreaking freaks of hard luck. A bomb hit the crater just as they reached it, and blew them all to pieces. General Doolittle has written hundreds, hun-dreds, perhaps thousands, of letters to people who have lost sons or husbands hus-bands in his air forces. But one of the men in that crew was the hardest hard-est subject he has ever had to write home about. Here is the reason When he led the famous raid on Tokyo, Doolittle had a mechanic who had been with him a long time. Doolittle was a colonel then. The mechanic went on the Tokyo raid ; with him. J You remember the details of that i raid, which have gradually seeped ! out. The planes were badly scat-J tered. Some were shot down over Japanese territory. Others ran outi of gas. Some of the crews bailed! out. Others landed in Russia. The; remainder splattered themselves all over the rice paddies of China. I That night Doolittle was lower than he had ever been before In his, life. There wasn't any humor uv the world for him that night. He sat with his head down and thought to himself: i "You have balled up the biggest chance anybody could ever have. You have sure made a mess of this, affair. You've lost most of your planes. The whole thing was a miserable mis-erable failure. You'll spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth for this, and be lucky to get out of it that easy." ( As he sat there this sergeant-me-1 chanic came up and said: "Don't feel so bad about it, Colo-, nel." j Doolittle paid no attention. But the sergeant kept at him. j "It's not as bad as it seems. Why, I'll bet you that within a year you'll have a Congressional Medal for it and be a brigadier general." Doolittle just snorted. j "Well, I'll bet you so," the ser-i geant said. "And I'd like to ask1 one thing. As long as you're flying I'd like to be your mechanic." That finally got inside Doolittle's gloom. Somebody had confidence in , him. He began to buck up. So he, said: - j "Son, as long as I've got an air-1 plane you're its mechanic, even if we live to be a thousand years old." As you know, he did get a Congressional Con-gressional Medal of Honor, and now he has not only one star but the three of a lieutenant general. Andi that sergeant, who devoted himself to Colonel Doolittle that miserable night out there in China, was still General Doolittle's mechanic the night they landed at Youks les Bains in February of 1943. He was one of the men who ran for the shell hole that night. General Doolittle had to write the letter to his parents. |
