Yeager: An Autobiography

WINDING DOWN

Clarence Emil Anderson, better known as "Bud" or "Andy," was now a twenty three-year-old major, while I was promoted to captain a few months short of my twenty-second birthday. Wartime promotions came fast, and we figured that if the war lasted another year or more, the Air Corps would have a bunch of baby generals on its hands. In addition to flying, I was now squadron maintenance officer, which meant that I checked out all of the overhauled Mustangs; Andy was now the squadron's operations officer, and he woke me at six one morning to tell me I made captain. I reached into my bag and found a bottle of champagne I'd been saving. We were smashed before seven, hung over before lunch-a first for us.

"Chuck," Andy said, "we're gonna need new livers if we make it through this damned war." I don't think any of us actually flew missions in a falling down condition, but flying with a hangover was not unknown. You'd die when your engines cranked and swallow a couple of aspirins, swearing you'd never do it again. We sent guys up to Scotland on whiskey runs, and when that ran out we drank rotgut rye or British beer. There was always something to celebrate: a friend's kill or the fact you were still alive.

We threw a blast the last week in November to mark our first anniversary in England that nearly wrecked the officer's club. We brought in London strippers and maybe a few local amateurs, too. Those twelve months in Leiston seemed a century, and I found it hard to believe that only a year had gone by. So much had happened, so much adventure and hellraising since we stepped off the Queen Elizabeth as green and eager fighter jocks. Of the original thirty who arrived at Leiston as a squadron, a dozen had been killed, and eight more were missing in action. Six others had finished their tour and gone home. Four of us were left from the original group, and without saying so, I wondered whether all of us would actually make it back. As it turned out, one didn't; Jim Browning was shot down a few days short of going home.

My own tour was winding down. I had only eight more missions to complete. Being a short-timer was a strange feeling. I wanted to score as many victories as possible in the time remaining, but somehow avoid getting my ass busted at this late date. And from time to time, we all had nasty reminders that the war was far from over. One night, we had just turned out the lights to go to sleep when we heard an airplane coming in low. We knew the sound of American and British fighters, but this deep-throated roar was different. Man, we hit the deck. That German was directly above our little Nissen when he began firing into the roof of the empty mess hall. We waited for the bomb, but it was never dropped. When it was over we giggled neryously, because there was Obie O'Brien flopped under his mattress, pointing his forty-five at the ceiling.

I wrote to Glennis a couple of times a week and received a couple of letters back. Andy was also writing regularly to his childhood sweetheart, Eleanor. Both of us planned to get married as soon as we got home. I had already written to my mother telling her that, but I didn't tell Glennis. I didn't have to because our letters said everything we were feeling about each other, and, to tell the truth, I was a little superstitious. There were still combat missions to fly. I knew I was getting married, but that's about all I knew about the future. At twenty-two, my idea of heaven was to be reassigned to the same base as Andy, where the two of us could dogfight every day. Being in the Air Corps was all he ever wanted since boyhood. I loved to fly, but whether the Air Corps would want to keep me, I had no idea. About all I could promise Glennis was a cabin in a holler. Things usually worked out in their own way, and I wasn't one to spend much time planning a future. I tried to make the most of each day, get through a mission in one piece, and leave some time for fun. I might be getting married before long, but there were still a few girls to chase, a few bottles left undrunk, and more than likely a few krauts to shoot at and some bullets to duck until then.

Meanwhile, Andy and I worked it out that we would complete our missions on the same day, go home together, and try to be reassigned to the same place. I admired him totally and just felt good in his company. We shared the same background and interests. He was a rural boy from northern California who loved to hunt, fish, and fly as much as I did. Whenever we had a quiet time together, we were always dreaming up hunting trips or going through gun catalogs his folks sent him.

Our personalities meshed, too. We both loved fun and blowing off steam, although he was a helluva lot more tolerant than I was. I was impulsive and headstrong-something is either right or wrong; I didn't spend any time in between. We saw eye to eye on rights and wrongs, but Andy saw the other side; I wasn't interested. That wasn't my nature, but friends- real friends-don't have to always agree or try to cover over their differences. We found our harmony from mutual respect and just plain liking one another.

God, we had fun during those last months in England. As Andy put it, "Captain Yeager may be very busy, but somehow he will manage to fit into his daily program both dogfighting and hellraising." Andy, Bochkay, and I complained a couple of times to the base ambulance crew, who parked their damned meat wagon next to our Nissen and woke us up gunning that engine to warm it. Finally we rigged a string of whistle bombs and attached it to the motor. You could've heard that racket in Glasgow; that crew's ears didn't stop ringing for weeks. We'd go out and poach pheasants and rabbits and have ourselves a feast. A Texan named G.I. Carlisle was a genius at making Texas white gravy to pour over our fried hares. One time I got myself invited to a legitimate hunt on the estate of a local lord. We shot grouse and he used Italian prisoners of war as beaters. I was standing next to our host when he fired twice and missed. I turned around and shot that bird and it dropped behind him. Somebody whispered to me: "Don't ever wipe the governor's eye like that."

A few weeks before Christmas, I received an unexpected vacation from the British. Group sent me off to Switzerland; the assignment was so hush-hush I wasn't even told why I was going. I flew over to Lyon, where we now had advanced fighter bases, and was driven over the Alps to Lake Annecy, just south of Geneva, and put up at the Beaurivage Hotel. At Leiston, we slept in sleeping bags on a G.I. mattress, and this bed was so comfortable I couldn't get used to it. I quickly learned what my trip was about when Peter De Paoio, a famous racing car driver, now the American air attaché in Switzerland, arrived at my room and took me to dinner. As a former evadee who had escaped from France by climbing the Pyrenees, I was asked to help in an escape plan for eight hundred American fliers who were interned in neutral Switzerland. There were also sixteen hundred Americans interned in Spain.

"We want to do some discreet smuggling," Pete said. "Maybe set up a mountain-climbing expedition one of these moonless nights. We can't just ask the neutral Swiss to let them go home. The Germans would see this as a hostile act." He asked my advice about the ideal size of a group trying to get across, the best time to try it, and so on. Frankly, it sounded to me like a better war movie than a practical plan. Those Alps were mighty big, even compared to the Pyrenees. I told Pete I'd help plan it, but not help climb It.

Between Christmas and New Year's, we planned a small smuggling operation, bringing in canvas covers to protect a half-dozen American airplanes that had force-landed at Swiss air bases, shot-up but still serviceable, if we could get them out. As far as I know, the escape plan was never attempted.

It was amusing when I left, because I gave a lift to an O.S.S. guy. He sat on my lap when I took off from France in my Mustang. I carried him, his bag, and a case of champagne, in that tiny cockpit. We flew back low with the canopy opened.