For the 93rd, the day had already been a memorable one, thanks to the efforts of Doc Paine. The flight surgeon had just returned from several days of leave in Egypt, and among his many purchases had been an American flag procured in Alexandria. At 10:30 a.m., Paine staged an official flag-raising ceremony attended by Colonel Timberlake, a cornetist, and about thirty other officers and men. As if on cue, the desert breeze unfurled the Stars and Stripes as Ken Cool snapped away with his camera.
Hap Arnold had rolled into the camp a little more than an hour later, accompanied by generals Lewis Brereton and Pat Timberlake. Arnold had been briefed on the circumstances of the 93rd’s North Africa sojourn, including the fact that they had been dispatched from England without ground crews for what was supposed to have been a ten-day assignment, and they were “still here after two months.” In freewheeling conversations with officers and men, Arnold demonstrated keen interest in the men’s work. He asked about their oxygen equipment, guns, bombsights, and overall aircraft performance. “How do you like the B-24?” he pressed. At Gambut Main and two other nearby fields, Arnold regaled the men with talk about new planes, bombs, and guns under development. And he candidly acknowledged problems that had forced the men to deal with equipment shortages and substandard equipment.8
In his discussions with the 93rd men, Arnold said nothing of the decisions that had been made at Casablanca. One of these decisions—the approval of a raid to bomb the Romanian oilfields at Ploiesti—would result in thirteen hours of unparalleled valor and loss for the 93rd before the summer was out.
One issue came up repeatedly in Arnold’s discussions with the 93rd men: the lack of replacement crews, and the resulting sense of doom that had begun to haunt some of the men.
ARNOLD’S RESPONSE TO THAT QUESTION has been lost to history, but the truth—if that’s what he shared with the men—couldn’t have been reassuring.
Given all the demands that Arnold faced from American commanders around the globe, there simply weren’t enough aircraft or replacement crews to go around, and there wouldn’t be enough for months to come. Arnold couldn’t be expected to be so blunt with his boys, but a hard reality awaited the weary 93rd men: Unless they were killed or disabled, became prisoners of war, or broke under the stress and quit flying, Ben and the others would keep grinding out missions, with no end in sight.
Chapter 20
RETURN TO ENGLAND
Hap Arnold’s visit briefly boosted morale in the 93rd camp, but feelings of hopelessness bred by the existing policy of open-ended combat tours had pushed a growing number of men to the breaking point. The concerns raised by Doc Paine and others about debilitating combat stress had come to fruition by early February. Over the span of several days, Paine sent five men to Cairo for treatment of combat stress and none resumed their 93rd duties.1 Perhaps most disturbing of all, some men were beginning to demonstrate erratic or even dangerous behavior during missions. One gunner had to be restrained by his crewmates during a raid.
On his return to Gambut Main from some rest and relaxation in Egypt in late January, Paine had a disconcerting conversation with pilot George Piburn. A handsome Southern Californian with an angular face and a solid five-foot-ten frame, Piburn had first exhibited worrisome symptoms in late December, and his mental state had deteriorated since. After speaking to the pilot on January 26, on the eve of Piburn’s twenty-second birthday, Paine concluded Piburn “has ‘thrown in the towel.’” Days later, with fourteen missions to his credit, Piburn made it official and took himself off combat duty. He would leave the 93rd and be assigned to a training command back in the United Kingdom.
Piburn was hardly alone in his struggles. Paine suspected that another pilot who had recently checked into a military hospital complaining of shoulder pain was also suffering from combat stress. “Think he is cracking,” Paine confided to his diary.2
Another source of concern for Paine was First Lieutenant Robert A. Quinlivan, a twenty-one-year-old pilot from Jersey City, New Jersey. Quinlivan had already survived two traumatic combat experiences as the copilot of Flying Cock. On the group’s first raid in North Africa, the December 13 strike on Bizerte, a piece of flak smashed into Flying Cock’s nose compartment and inflicted a fatal head wound on the crew’s bombardier as he sat at his station below Quinlivan’s feet. More recently, during the January 15 raid on Tripoli, Quinlivan narrowly escaped death when an enemy flak burst spattered his helmet with steel splinters. Quinlivan confided to Doc Paine that he “couldn’t stand the idea of flying into flak again.”3 Although he had proven his courage by completing at least ten missions, earning an Air Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster, Quinlivan was finished as a combat pilot.
How many more good men would break in the days ahead? As February 1943 arrived, that question preoccupied the 93rd’s senior commanders and medical personnel.
WET AND FRIGID WEATHER FOLLOWED ON the heels of Arnold’s visit, postponing any reckoning for the battle-weary men of the 93rd. To pass the time, Doc Paine spent three hours on January 29 mending tears in his wind-whipped Stars and Stripes, using scraps of bandages to patch the holes. The patches didn’t hold in the fierce winds, and Paine would start using canvas threads to mend his beloved—and increasingly tattered—flag.
Paine was scheduled to join the welcoming party for a visit by Arnold’s new air chief for North Africa, General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, but the visit was canceled because of poor flying conditions. Instead, the doctor spent part of the afternoon patching up the mangled toe of a pilot who’d accidentally shot himself while cleaning his pistol.
Despite more rain and cold winds on January 30, the 93rd managed to launch a dozen planes for a raid on Messina. The bombing was deemed a “great success” and was cause for celebration by senior officers who knocked back shots of VO Canadian whisky.
On Sunday, January 31, the weather finally cleared and the stir-crazy 93rd men emerged from their tents to exercise and perform chores. A series of air-raid alarms over recent days motivated Doc Paine to undertake an ambitious project to transform his foxhole into a bomb shelter. He procured two halves of fifty-five-gallon oil drums and sheets of canvas as cover and arranged them over his foxhole. He piled eight inches of dirt on top of the hardened shell before adding a final inspired touch: He planted desert flowers in the layer of dirt “to make the best and prettiest bomb shelter I’ve seen anywhere.”4
As satisfying as the men found the weather, even more welcome was a rumor that began making the rounds: The 93rd was finally returning to England. The news wasn’t official yet, but Ted Timberlake had been alerted to stand by for orders. To celebrate the long-awaited news, Doc Paine broke out a bottle of Scotch that he shared with comrades.
The timing of the rumors wasn’t a coincidence.
After persuading Prime Minister Churchill at the recently concluded Casablanca Conference to drop his opposition to the American daylight bombing campaign, Hap Arnold was determined to deliver on his promises. One of Churchill’s criticisms of the American campaign had been the modest achievements of Arnold’s forces, including the American failure to drop a single bomb on the German homeland after five months of raids. The RAF, by contrast, was already mounting thousand-plane raids on Berlin.
With a nudge from Arnold, Eaker wasted no time in addressing Churchill’s criticism.
On the same day that Arnold was mingling with the 93rd men at Gambut Main, Eaker dispatched ninety-one B-17 and B-24 bombers to attack the U-boat yards at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Only fifty-three aircraft reached the target, but the message had been emphatically delivered—to the Germans and to Churchill. After months of tiptoeing around the fringes of the Third Reich, the Americans had finally hit the Nazi homeland, and they had lost only three bombers doing it.
As it turned out, the light losses had been a stroke of luck for the Americans. In fact, Eaker’s sudden willingness to roll the dice on an unescorted strike on German territory had caught the Luftwaffe by surprise. Unfortunately for the Americans, it wouldn’t happen again.
To meet Hap Arnold’s unreasonable expectations for the largely aspirational daylight bombing campaign, Eaker badly needed Ted Timberlake’s 93rd crews to fill holes in his depleted ranks. For the 93rd men, accustomed to the half-hearted enemy fighter resistance around the Mediterranean, the lion’s den beckoned.
DOC PAINE’S SCOTCH-SOAKED CELEBRATION of the 93rd’s return to England proved premature.
The first week of February came and went without the anticipated orders for the move. Another week passed without orders or further word. And then another.
The pace of raids on the Italian ports tailed off because of poor weather and overworked aircraft and crews. The 93rd was down to nineteen aircraft, and the Liberators still flying had gone without proper maintenance for more than two months. Sand-scoured engines failed more frequently, and that put crews in peril during missions and made it increasingly difficult for the airmen and their handful of mechanics and technicians to keep the B-24s battle ready.
The 93rd logged its first mission of the month on February 3. Ben and his crewmates didn’t see action until bombing Naples on February 7 and Palermo on February 10. They were Ben’s twelfth and thirteenth missions.
The men of the Epting crew could count themselves more fortunate than most of their comrades. Only two members of the crew—Ed Bates and Bill Dawley—had been injured thus far, and both Bates (frozen fingers) and Dawley (flak wound) had recovered and were flying again with the 93rd’s 329th Squadron back in England. Furthermore, Jake Epting and his men had avoided the ravages of combat stress that were creating holes in some crews.
The 93rd made it through the first two weeks of February without the loss of an aircraft or a single fatality. But the mounting losses of their new 98th and 376th Bomb Group neighbors at Gambut Main served as unnerving reminders to Ben and his comrades.
On February 4, generals Brereton and Patrick Timberlake flew in from Cairo for an awards ceremony for the 93rd men. They pinned various valor awards—the Distinguished Flying Cross for a few officers, the Purple Heart for several enlisted men who had sustained combat wounds, and the Air Medal for those who had completed five missions or Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster for those who had passed the ten-mission milestone. Among those honored and photographed were the combat-stressed pilots George Piburn and Robert Quinlivan.
More festivities followed on February 5 when the entire 93rd contingent assembled for a rousing review and retreat parade in honor of their operations officer, Major K. K. Compton, who had been tapped to take command of their Gambut Main neighbors, the 376th Bomb Group. The 93rd men were anxious to get back to England, but Compton would be making his home in the inhospitable North Africa desert for the foreseeable future.
THE RAINS OF LATE JANUARY AND EARLY February had complicated daily life for the men of the 93rd, but there was one delightful benefit: The wadis and escarpments around Gambut Main erupted with desert flowers. By Doc Paine’s count, there were no fewer than twenty-two varieties of flowers blooming in the area. Paine was among the men who marveled at the welcome burst of color on their target-shooting forays, which had become a favorite pastime of those officers who had procured German Luger pistols and Mauser rifles from Bedouin tribesmen.
The 376th had a recurrence of bad luck on February 7, when the groups at Gambut Main combined forces for a raid on Naples. Twelve 93rd crews, including Jake Epting’s Red Ass lads, were dispatched and returned safely; three 93rd men returned with mild cases of frostbite, and one officer had been wounded in the thigh with a piece of flak, which Doc Paine removed and sewed up. That was the extent of the group’s casualties. The 376th, on the other hand, had ten men killed in action when one of their bombers was shot down in the target area.
Despite the losses, Ken Cool was ecstatic. The raid’s exceptional accuracy would have justified the loss of all twenty bombers that reached the target, Cool enthused. BBC News echoed that view in a shortwave radio broadcast monitored at Gambut Main the following evening. It declared the strike “the best raid put on by any American bomber in the war.”5
On February 10, during their raid on Palermo, Ben and his crewmates experienced some anxious moments with the failure of one of their superchargers, the device that compensated for the loss of engine power at higher altitudes. Adding insult to injury, poor visibility forced the B-24s to drop their bombs in the sea rather than risk excessive civilian casualties, so the raid had been a waste. The Epting crew sweated out their solitary return flight to Gambut Main in the dark. They landed after seven hours and forty minutes of flight with the knowledge that the seemingly indestructible Red Ass was beginning to show the effects of two months of desert duty.
