Edward Weir interview with Bill Kubota, August 29, 1998, Most Honorable Son documentary, unedited footage.
2
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 47.
3
Al Asch written account, quoted in Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, pp. 47–48.
4
Information on the physical attributes of Robert A. Johnson was drawn from his World War II Army Air Corps enlistment record. Details on his crash were drawn from newspaper articles found on the Crawford County, Iowa, IAGenWeb, under the headings “Military-World War II-News About Military Personnel-1943,” http://iagenweb.org/crawford/military/ccmilitaryww2.html, accessed on November 12, 2022. Also see Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, pp. 47–48.
CHAPTER 13: “NOW, I BELONG”
1
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 49.
2
Ibid.
3
The presence of the Jewish workers on the ground in Tunis is recounted in Rick Atkinson, Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), pp. 239–40.
4
Atkinson, Army at Dawn, p. 218
5
Recollections of Ben’s first mission are drawn from Bill Kubota’s interviews with Ben Kuroki and Bill Dawley and Ralph Martin’s account. See Ben Kuroki interview with Bill Kubota, August 26–27, 1998, Most Honorable Son documentary, unedited footage; Elmer (Bill) Dawley interview with Bill Kubota, November 12, 1998, unedited footage; and Martin, Boy from Nebraska, pp. 91–94. Dawley said in his interview with Kubota, “The next thing I know, bang, I’m gone. A chunk of flak hit me and that was the end of me.”
6
As Ben recalled: “He got hit in the head and we couldn’t even help him until we got out of the flak zone and out of the enemy aircraft. [Hap] Kendall came back and was going to give him a morphine injection and I waved him off and told him not to because I remembered what they had taught me in gunner’s school in England: A morphine injection to a serious head injury could be fatal.” Ben Kuroki interview with Bill Kubota, August 26–27, 1998, Most Honorable Son documentary, unedited footage.
7
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, pp. 50–51. The three members of the Ambrose crew who died in the crash landing were Lieutenants Walter R. Erness and Estell A. Martin and Sergeant Henry M. Elder.
8
Ibid., p. 51.
9
Various accounts about the 93rd’s movement from Tafaraoui, Algeria, to Gambut, Libya, all place the movement as occurring in the third week of December 1942, but they differ as to the date. The official 328th Squadron History for December 1942 lists December 20 as the date of the 93rd’s movement from Tafaraoui to Gambut. Years later, in his unofficial history of the 93rd, Cal Stewart cites December 15 as the date of the movement. See Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 51. In their official history, Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate cite December 16 as the day of the arrival of the 93rd bombers at Gambut. See Craven and Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 2. Europe: Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943 (Washington, DC: Superintendent of Documents, 1948), pp. 97–98. Other 93rd Bomb Group accounts fix December 18 as the date of the group’s arrival at Gambut after a flight that began late in the evening of December 17, and that’s what I have used.
CHAPTER 14: GAMBUT
1
Craven and Cate, Europe: Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943, pp. 97–98.
2
Lewis H. Brereton diary entry for December 13, 1942, published as Lewis H. Brereton, Lieutenant General, USA, The Brereton Diaries: The War in the Air in the Pacific, Middle East and Europe: 3 October 1941–8 May 1945 (New York, William Morrow and Company, 1946), p. 174.
3
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 57.
4
Wilmer H. Paine journal entry for December 23, 1942, published by Paine’s son as Flight Surgeon: The Journal of Maj. Wilmer H. Paine 93rd Bombardment Group Eighth Air Force (W. Paine Jr., 2006).
5
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 58.
6
Brereton diary entry for December 13, 1942, Brereton Diaries, p. 174.
7
