Wakey-wakey, today’s the day you die.

The door of the Nissen hut banged open and a voice called, “Mission today.” I slid gingerly out of my cot and scuttled over to stoke the remains of last night’s fire. Once I got some heat going, I called across to my co-pilot Bobby, “Roll out, we’re on.”

Bobby’s job was to rouse the rest, Eldon our, navigator and Whizzer Wiznooski our bombardier. The four of us lived in a gloomy, half-cylindrical corrugated-steel home, with two other 432nd crews. The 432nd was one of four B-26 Marauder squadrons that comprised the 17th Bombardment Group. We’d been based near Cagliari since the end of 1943.

There was very little talking as we pulled on long johns, wool shirt, trousers, and two pairs of socks, it’s cold at 15,000 feet. My leather flight jacket had our squadron insignia on the front, a flying grim reaper, sickle in hand. On the back were two rows of ten bright yellow bombs and one of three, representing 23 combat missions, along with the name of our Marauder, “Beautiful Betty.” As the pilot I had naming rights and I’d named mine after the love of my life, Betty Moran.

I had the usual pre-mission jitters. You have to believe that you’ll get the job done and come home alive. But there were so many ways to die. It could be a blown tire on takeoff, or an engine failure, or a mistake in the clouds during assembly. We flew in tight defensive boxes.

Those were just the operational problems. There was always the flak. In my mind’s eye. I could see the Marauder in front of me take a direct hit from an 88 and just disintegrate. The crew lived in our hut. I helped gather their personal effects for shipment back home.

Still, the B-26, could take care of itself. We had one fifty-caliber stinger in the nose. Whiz operated that. I had four forward firing fifties in blisters under the cockpit, and there were two tail mounted fifty-cals plus a dorsal turret with fifties. But the main advantage was the Marauder itself.

The B-26 was a medium bomber. Unlike the heavies, who carpet bombed from 25,000, we hit hard from treetop level, up to fifteen thousand feet. Legend had it that the Marauder was so accurate that she could deliver two tons of bombs into a pickle barrel.

The original version killed so many crews that she was nicknamed, “The Baltimore Bitch.” The accident rate led to design changes that made the updated version one of the fastest and most reliable bombers in the whole Army Air Corps.

It was a little after 0500 and still pitch black when we jumped into a canvas-draped deuce-and-a-half and found places on its uncomfortable wooden benches. I was staring into space as we bumped along. I’d done that a lot recently.

When the truck stopped, Bobby nudged my shoulder and said gently, “Come on, Jed, let’s eat.” Eldon was the joker of the crew. He laughed and added in a sing-song voice, “Wake up, Jeddy, it’s chow time.”

All four of us slid out of the truck and strolled into the officers mess, which was alive with chatter from the other crews. The serving line was short, the fare was the same; scrambled “eggs” in a ghastly shade of yellow and a nice big slice of fried spam. Since it was a mission, we got all the coffee we could drink.

I swore I wouldn’t do it. But I pulled out her letter and read it one more time.

Like most small-town romances, I’d grown up with Betty Moran. We’d met when she transferred into my sixth-grade class. She lived behind me. So, we’d stroll home together after school. Betty loved baseball which was one of the many things I liked about her.

I was slow on the uptake when kids started coupling up. That was mainly due to the fact that my little friend had developed into such a pretty girl. She had one of those heart shaped Betty Boop faces, with huge blue eyes and cupid bow lips and dark hair in a bob. But it was her round butt, long legs and lithesome body that had all the fellows following her around like dogs.

Fortunately for me, Betty knew what she wanted, and she wanted me. She never wavered. Whether it was my animal magnetism, which I heartily doubted, or the deep sense of camaraderie that we’d built up as kids, I quickly fell in love with her.

Hence, we had one of those idyllic teenagerhoods. There wasn’t a single day we were apart. We were in classes together, studied together and hung out at each other’s houses. Some people might get bored with the same-old-same-old. But we thrived on it.

Still, a little rain has to fall into everybody’s life. Our mutual problem was Duke Williams. Duke was the king of the smooth operators. He wasn’t exactly good-looking. But he was big and brash, with the confidence born of being the son of a rich man.

Betty gave Duke a huge hard-on. So, Duke made it his personal crusade to take Betty away from me. He’d do all sorts of things, including showering her with attention and incessantly asking her out. She was always polite when she refused him. At least, when she was with me.

Duke also had a special “thing” for me. He might have been big and entitled. But he wasn’t exactly gifted, and he was bone lazy. I was smart, and I worked hard. It wasn’t just the teachers who noticed. So did Duke.

Of course, Duke’s attentions to my girl pissed me off. But he was a big fat slippery weasel. He never did anything overt. So, I couldn’t call him out without looking like a paranoid weenie. Most of the time I just heard mocking comments from him and his pack of ass-kissers. I ignored them. Because, my only goal was to get out of that town.

My folks wallowed in routine. My dad worked in a dairy. He was a manager, not a milkman. He loved his job and he wanted every minute of every day to be just like the one before it. My mother was a creature of habit too. She did things exactly the same way from time immemorial. If I saw mom doing the laundry, I didn’t need to look at my watch. I KNEW it was nine o’clock on a Monday.

I was different. I might have enjoyed the boring regularity as a child. But as I grew older, I began to sense the inherent futility of small-town life and the thought of drifting into meaninglessness horrified me.

If you want to see what I’m talking about, walk through your town cemetery. Do you know any of those people? Probably not - still, they were once living, breathing human beings who thought they mattered. Newsflash - very few people really matter. Especially in a small town.

Maybe I read too much. Maybe I was smarter than some. Maybe it’s because I never really felt like I fit in. But I had a world view that involved more than just getting married, raising kids, and being buried with a bunch of nonentities. I wanted a meaningful life.

I actually envied the guys who only wanted to get laid. They had no goals, no dreams. Most were happy. A few were pissed at their lot. But none of them had the stones to do anything about it. Me? I had to make a difference. It was a curse.

If I could use one word to describe myself it would be, “pragmatic.” I approach things analytically and I’ve always been a problem solver. I don’t know why I’m like that. Maybe it’s genetic. Or, maybe I’m just socially retarded. But I never ask if the glass is half full, or half empty. My only interest is in finding the right size glass.

So, when the government offered a free pilot training program, I was one of the first to apply. It paid all the ground school and flight instruction costs for anybody willing to become an “Air Cadet.” There was even a commission involved. Of course, you had to join the Army to get into the program. Still, it was a way to do something with my life, other than just drift into irrelevance. It was also a free education.

Air Cadet volunteers initially had to have four-year college degrees and I was only in my last year of high school. But they lowered the requirements in 1940. So, all you had to do was pass a two-year college-equivalency test. I took the exam and passed with flying colors. I felt pretty good about myself and my future.

I knew that I would end-up going to war if the U.S. got into the scrap over in Europe. But no eighteen-year-old has an idea of what war’s really like. It just seemed like a glorious and exciting adventure. Plus, I figured that we’d all get swept up in the draft anyhow. I was 1-A like every other boy in town and I knew that I would rather fly than walk. Like I said, I was clueless.

Betty’s view was the same as everybody else’s in that town. She didn’t see any reason why anybody would want to live anywhere but there. And she simply couldn’t understand why I wanted to be a flyer.

My argument was that I would have a valuable skill and a high paying job. I told her, “If I can’t do anything special, or don’t know anything useful, than the only thing I have left to sell is my time. And I don’t want to spend my life working for hourly wages.”

She looked unconvinced so I added, “The faster I get a good paying job the sooner I can support you and we can get married.”

That sold her. Betty couldn’t start making babies fast enough. Betty’s life ambition was to have her own little brood and she was keen on whatever got her to that goal the fastest. That fact would come back to haunt me.

It was the night of Betty’s eighteenth birthday. She was wearing a grey cashmere sweater that emphasized her big, perfectly shaped tits and a pleated skirt that showed off her slim rounded calves. She had the obligatory pearl necklace that every girl wore, and her thick light brown hair was pinned back by two red barrettes. She looked like a cocker spaniel.

We’d done the presents and cake, and the party was settling down for an evening of drinking and conversation. Betty looked as bored as I felt. I nodded toward the French doors and we walked out onto the back lawn holding hands. Her perfume was giving me a hard-on.

We lived in an affluent neighborhood and our property adjoined across a little tree-lined creek. There was a bridge over the creek, that led into a small hedged-in side yard with a gazebo. I took her hand and we strolled over to sit on the big bench facing the creek. It was humid. You could hear the burbling of the water and the chirping of the katydids.

Betty plastered herself against me when we sat. Her proximity filled my heart with peace and happiness. But I needed to get something important out of the way. I thought I knew the answer. Even so, I was nervous. I said, “Betty, I’ve loved you since we were kids and I’m worried about what will happen when I have to leave for pilot training.” She looked upset, like she thought I was going to break up with her

She said with measured seriousness, “I love you too. I will always love you. I can’t imagine being with anybody BUT you. Why are you asking me this Jed?”

I said, “Because I want you to accept something,” and I produced the ring box. It was a quarter caret diamond; all I could afford at the time.

Her eyes softened, she bashfully held out her finger and I slipped the ring on. She held it up to look at it sparkling in the dim light. She said nothing. Then she turned and grabbed the back of my head and dragged me into a passionate open-mouthed kiss. That answered the question.

She lay back on the bench, eyes glittering with a strange new emotion and said simply, “I want you.” It didn’t matter that both of our parents were less than a hundred yards away. This was a private spot and the Rubicon had to be crossed.

I gathered her to me and kissed her. She moaned with the sensation. The primal strangeness of that sound was incredibly stimulating. We were still dressed. But she had hiked her skirt up. I put a hand on one of her big pneumatic tits as we continued to kiss, and she moaned a bit louder.

Her breathing accelerated as I squeezed and manipulated her boob. There was now a hard point that I could feel through her bra. Her legs began to thrash, and she said through gritted teeth, “Touch me.” I was a virgin. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she was asking. So, I moved my hand down the length of her body and under the waistband of her panties and fell into the gap between her widely spread legs.

It was alien territory and intimidating at first. The whole area was hot, and slippery and there was a pheromone smell. I had gotten a hazy concept of female genitalia from a furtive attempt to beat off using my parents copy of Gray’s Anatomy. Yes, I know. That’s pathetic. But I was a horny teenager and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Thus, I knew about the lips. But there was a strange little bump that made her grunt with sensation. I moved further down that hot and slippery crevice and found my destination. Betty groaned and began to thrash. The sense of intimacy that I got from putting my finger in my childhood friend’s most secret and intimate place nearly made me come.

In concept, I knew what to do. I was eighteen years old, for God’s sake, and guys talk. But we were both so inexperienced that it took a lot of fumbling before I could get my pants down, her panties off and me properly positioned. Betty had entirely lost it by that point. She had always been so shy and reserved. Now, she was desperately whispering, “Put it in me!! You have to put it in me!!”

At that point, I had my cock in my hand and I knew where it was supposed to go. So, I put it at her opening and began to push. Betty was so well lubricated that the head slid right in; even though she was incredibly tight. I encountered the expected obstruction. I pushed, there was resistance, she gave a shrill little shriek, and then I glided rapidly to the top.

She let out an unearthly groan of pure sensation. I waited for a second while she gathered herself. At first, her beautiful blue eyes were round with distress. Then they clouded with lust and slowly rolled up in her head.

She now engulfed me in every place. Her arms were clasped tightly around my neck; her legs were gripping me like she was riding a horse, and of course, her secret place was clutching and churning around me. The heat and silky wetness was incredibly stimulating, too stimulating!!!

It felt like a blockbuster exploded in my loins. The problem was that occurred an embarrassingly short period of time after I’d entered her. I gave an unearthly grunt and groan and emptied myself.

That set Betty off on a sequence of bucking and gyrating maneuvers, accompanied by muffled shrieks. My weapon had discharged, and I expected it to shrivel out of her, but Betty’s continued gymnastics kept me harder than an iron bar.

I was moving with her. That was just instinctive, when suddenly she stiffened, and I could almost feel the cargo shift down there. It was like a rumble in her loins. Her passage gripped me and then she began to mutter, “Nyaahhh!!! Nyaahhh!!! Nyaaaahhhhh!!! OH, MY GOD!!! AHHHHHH,” and it sounded like she was choking to death as her legs thrashed. To say the least, our first orgasms were memorable.

Betty finally went completely still. I remained buried deep inside her, hard as titanium. I knew I might have knocked her up. I didn’t care. I gazed into her eyes and said, “If that made you pregnant then so be it. If we started a family earlier than planned; then more the better. All I care about is that you are truly mine.”

Her face lit up with joy and she threw her arms around me. She said, “I am yours for the rest of our lives and I will happily bear your children. I love you so much!!” There were no babies produced that evening or any of the many times afterward. As things turned out, that was probably fortunate.

Our plan to marry after high school went up in smoke on the afternoon of December 7th, 1941. That’s the problem with plans. You never really know what the future holds.

I remember, I was sitting with my dad, listening to the Washington Redskins play the Philadelphia Eagles on our big Zenith radio. The announcer broke in to announce that the Japs had bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor and the next day we were at war.

They needed pilots right away. I was eighteen and I’d already signed the contract. So, I got a letter telling me to report for induction. My folks drove me over to Milwaukee where I would board a train with a bunch of other scared kids. We didn’t know where we were going.

The ride to the induction center was in complete silence. I just stared out the window. It was beginning to sink in that my old life was over and whatever came next terrified me. I had the bitter thought, “So much for me being the bold adventurer.” But unfortunately, change is inevitable, and success rests on how well you deal with what comes next.

Betty wouldn’t stop crying. She kissed me and told me she loved me. She said she would wait for me forever. Of course, that’s been the story since we lived in caves.

The Army knew that its recruits were entering a brave new world and they had a plan. It wasn’t exactly kidnapping but it was pretty close. An NCO herded all of us draftees to the front of a train car. The ensuing day-and-a-half ride down to Fort Jackson was one I’ll never forget.

The NCO was sitting in the back trying to make time with a pretty little southern belle. While the rest of us just stared off into space, lost in our thoughts and numb with shock. I was utterly alone. The car was dark. I couldn’t sleep. The only sound I heard, besides the clickety-clacking of the train, was the woman-moaning from the back of the car.

I was by myself for the first time in my life and all I could feel was panic. All of my pretensions about making a difference were buried under the simple reality of separation. I’d thought it would be easier.

Our arrival for “recruit training,” they didn’t call it “basic training” back then, was anything but enjoyable. South Carolina in the month of June sucks. Whether it was the rain, the heat, or the bugs, Fort Jackson had it all. We were herded into a line in the stinking South Carolina humidity. Every passing soldier encouraged us with, “You’ll be sorreee!”

They gave us numbers, not names. Then, our heads were shaved. We were stripped of our civilian clothing and personal belongings. We stood in a naked line while we were issued new shirts and pants and socks and underwear. We were charged twenty-five dollars for the army’s largesse, four dollars more than they paid us that first month.

If I thought I was scared before, I hadn’t met the guys in the round hats. Their job was to shape us into real soldiers. Sergeant Hunt was terrifying. He was tall and easily seventy pounds heavier than I was. I just stared at him with dread creeping up my spine.

He must have noticed me staring. Because he strolled over, situated himself roughly two inches from my face and shouted, spit flying, “What’s the matter with you boy??!! Do you have homosexual tendencies??!!”

Strange question, I said, “No?” Big mistake, he yelled even louder, “THAT’S NO SIR!!” I shouted back, “NO SIR!!” I was getting the hang of things.

He said, “Then why were you gawking at me instead of standing eyes front??!!” I shouted, “I’M SORRY,” my little voice kicked me in the ass, and I added, “SIR!!” Hunt got a sadistic look and said, “Well then, let me jog your memory. Drop and give me 30.” That was my introduction to Army life.

You grow as a person by overcoming challenges. Most people face the usual things like school, jobs, even getting married. But the people who grow the most learn how to survive the impossible tasks, the things that you thought you could never do; those are what make a man. The first six weeks in the Army did that for me.

Finding out I could handle all the stuff that the Army threw my way gave me confidence. It taught me how to take control of my life. And in that respect, I went from crying in my bunk in the first couple of nights, to a man who believed that he could accomplish anything no matter what the odds.

There were two parts to recruit training, basic and then advanced. We took the Army General Classification Test about half way through the process. It was supposed to help you decide what to specialize in.

Most of the recruits were draftees. So, they specialized in marching and being shot at. But I was already contracted for flight school. So, after the recruit segment I was moved to the 63rd Army Air Forces Contract Pilot School in Douglas, Georgia.

This was the stage where the Army decided whether I would be a navigator, bombardier, or pilot. The first part was academic. Thirty of us lived in a big barracks while we learned the mechanics and physics of flight. You became an “Aviation Cadet” when you passed that phase. I studied hard and came out top of the class. So, they made me a pilot.

Then, for the next ten months, you learned all the things you needed to know to become an Army Air Corps flyer. I started out in a Stearman Kaydet, which was a simple, sturdy aircraft. You had to solo in order to not “wash out.”

That was a stressful time. I remember, we had one guy who was very religious. He used to lie in his cot saying prayers. One night somebody asked him if had just soloed. Without even looking up he said, “You bet your ass I did” and continued with his prayers.

After graduation, we were assigned to either fighters, or bombers. Of course, we all wanted to fly fighters. But the strategic bombing campaign had just kicked off over Germany and they needed a lot of new bomber pilots. If I’d thought about that for a minute, I would have figured out why. But I was still dewy eyed innocent back then.

I was smart and I paid attention to detail. So, I was toward the top of the class in every phase. Thus, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in May 1943, and designated to learn the ins-and-outs of the new B-26B Marauder. We got three months of stateside training in those aircraft before we were certified for combat duty.

I was assigned to the 17th Bomb Group. They flew B-26s out of Decimomannu Air Base, just outside the city of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia. I was dropped off there as a “replacement” pilot by the Liberty Ship John Banvard in November of ‘43. The last day of that trip was my first introduction to the war.

The Banvard was passing south of the Island of Sant’ Antioco when a flight of three JU 88s showed up. Italy had already surrendered. But the Krauts were alive and well and conducting the war out of airbases in central Italy.

We had a three-inch gun forward, and a four-inch gun aft, along with ten twenty-millimeter antiaircraft guns. So, we could defend ourselves. But those black shark-like Nazi aircraft skimming overhead were still a fearsome sight.

The guns made a lot of racket. The JU 88s took a couple of desultory bombing passes and departed. There were some big booms and a few nearby geysers of water, nothing else. I gave the Germans failing grades for accuracy. But it looked like they were just going through the motions.

That was my first insight into war. I had imagined a daring and implacable enemy who would do whatever was necessary to kill me. Whereas, most of the other side was just like I was. They were kids doing their duty and trying to avoid getting killed in the meantime.

Sure, there were Hun fanatics who would’ve defied the odds to hit something. But close enough was good enough for sane people.

The Marauder was a relatively compact plane. And at just 58 feet it was laid out a little different than the nearly 80-foot heavies. The most important difference was in the cockpit. There was a small passage in the instrument panel to my right. It was where Whizzer squeezed through into the bombardier’s position in the Plexiglas nose.

The passageway began at Bobby’s left knee. So, Bobby only had a wheel, but no rudder pedals. Eldon sat behind a bulkhead aft of the cockpit. The tunnel, dorsal and tail gunners sat behind the bomb bay in the back. Needless to say, it was tight.

I’d been in Bobby’s seat for the first ten missions. Those were primarily milk runs over the landing at Salerno. The people on the beachhead were getting all they could handle from the Germans.

We were throwing every available bomber at them to break open the lodgment, including the heavies. But it was the low-level bombing of the B-25 and B-26 crews that killed the German armor. We were just across the Tyrrhenian Sea on Sardinia. So, we were flying a couple of sorties a day well into September.

The Marauder could carry 2,000-pound bombs in the forward bomb bay. But we were loaded with smaller, antipersonnel, and anti-armor ordinance on those trips. Our four blister machine guns also let us strafe the Nazi formations and those passes wreaked havoc.

I was promoted to the pilot’s seat when Captain Morrison was rotated home after 35 missions. I also got a second silver bar with the move. Morrison was a good mentor and the crew was top-notch, so the transition was relatively painless.

That was when Bobby came on board. He was a year younger, twenty-one to my twenty-two. His family was Italian, and his Bronx accent was so thick you could spread it on a bagel. He liked the Sardinian girls and they liked him.

Me? I lived for V-mail. There was a letter from Betty in every batch. It was mainly homesick inducing stories, with a lot of breezy gossip about life on the home front. A piece of news that I didn’t like was the fact that Duke had been classified 4-F.

It seems that poor Duke suffered from the dreaded malady of flat feet. He regretted being unable to serve his country. But he was doing his part working at his father’s bank. Perhaps that was the reason why Betty’s letters began to come less frequently. Then the final one put the stake through my heart.

I wrote Betty whenever we were stood down. But we were flying at least three missions a week and sometimes five or six. We had been spending the winter bombing the Krauts on the Gustav line. The Marauders and Mitchells were the only really effective way to deliver the stuff that the Brit and American ground-pounders needed to crack that nut. The heavies lacked the precision.

After we flattened the old Benedictine Abby at Monte Casino in February of ‘44, things began moving up the peninsula. Still, it was slow going. Then, for some reason we shifted our focus. We started hitting the railyards in Marseille and Toulon almost daily in April and May.

The events of June sixth answered the question about why we were doing that. Interdicting railways made a lot of sense now that our forces were fighting their way out of Normandy. But at the time, I couldn’t understand why we were wrecking rail junctions in places like Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand.

Everybody in the briefing room gasped when they pulled the curtain back. Today’s mission was to two big marshalling yards in Lyon. We got the job instead of the heavies because the railyards were right in the middle of the town.

It was at the absolute limit of the Marauder’s range and it was obvious from the recon photos that the place was heavily defended. Concrete flak towers were everywhere. We knew that a few of us wouldn’t be coming back.

Dawn was breaking. It looked like it was going to be a clear and sunny day. But the Brit’s pathfinder Mosquito over the target reported that it was cloudy. So, we lounged in the sun next to the plane until almost mid-afternoon. It was an interesting dichotomy, the serenity of the farmers working their fields on the other side of the security fence, juxtaposed against us and our waiting instruments of war.

I thought they might scrub the mission, since it had gotten late. We’d been sitting next to the plane for several hours when the “follow me” jeep exited the control tower area and we knew it was finally on.

We scrambled back into our positions, closed the hatches and the ground crew started walking the big four bladed propellers around to prime the engine. The Coffman charges fired and Beautiful Betty’s two Prat and Whitney R-2800s roared into life.

At that point, taking off was like commuting to work. I was just a twenty-two-year-old kid. But those skills had been drilled into me by endless repetitions. So, it was second nature. We took off at twenty second intervals and formed up at ten-thousand feet in a box composed of two echelons, three planes each. We were flying almost wingtip to wingtip and that took concentration.

The Mediterranean was bright blue and calm. The French coast east of Marseilles was picturesque. This was the legendary Riviera, where all the beautiful people sunned themselves a few years earlier. They would have a hard time doing that now, with the barbed wire on those beaches.

The Mighty Eighth had done a good job of pulling Luftwaffe fighter command’s fangs. So, we didn’t see any 190s or 109s during the three-hour trip over. The sun was setting as we passed the IP and began to track in on the bomb run to the Lyon railyards.

We bombed on the lead plane in the high echelon. The bombardier on that plane was the one with the Norden bombsite. We were the lead in the low echelon. The rest of our echelon bombed on us. That made us the front plane in the second wave of the box, which put us smack dab in the middle of the aiming point for the flak gunners below.

The flak was so thick you could walk on it. The relentless explosions and buffeting kept me busy just keeping the plane level and on course. We were the last box to bomb. So, the Heinies were really getting the range as we came over the release point.