What did you do in the great war, Daddy? Recruiting placard, 1914 war stories are written, for the most part, about combat and combatants: about the grunts of the trenches, the infantry, the flyer, the tanker, the artilleryman, the submariner, the sapper, the paratrooper the fighters out where the dying is done. But some military personnel during the modern wars never see the enemy nor do they experience the terror and carnage of battle. They experience war more as an observer than a participant. They are the lucky ones. Welford Park The Flight Control Center at Welford Park Air base in England, near Reading, was a small gray concrete two-story building with a handrail enclosed walkway outside the top story that extended around the front and half of each side. Also an observer's glassed booth sat atop the building for times when closer supervision was necessary. Large windows occupied the front and adjoining sides; this gave an unobstructed view of the runways and airspace before it. office space, a luncheon area, and rest room were on the first floor; also there were folding cots, bedding, canned food, and other supplies stored for emergencies. If it had been located in an urban area, and if one ignored the many antennae protruding from its roof, it could have been mistaken for a family dwelling. Two British airmen operated it when we assumed control and in consideration remained as a transition team the first week. Then the 435th Troop Carrier Group and its five squadrons nervously took over and experienced the reality of air traffic in a war zone. It was during this period that Churchill is reported to have said, "I like to learn but I hate being taught." We in the control tower were "taught" how to operate in a war zone. It was almost traumatic; because, conditions in the seemingly peaceful, English countryside were quite different from conditions under which, we trained in the States. For example, a false airport, with painted cardboard that resembled aluminum planes, sat on the other side of a nearby valley as a decoy. Nazis radio stations, on Europe's coast, transmitted pervasive, unending radio jamming an all frequencies. This unrelenting noise grated on the ear and nerve as it reverberated in a continuous cacophony of ear numbing clamor in and out up and down day and night harsh then shrill in a constant din. Occasionally, as weather changed, snatches of conversation could be heard. Once a terror stricken teen age voice, in German, was heard with the sound of a runaway engine in the background. Tense, faultless, English sometimes broke through with brief instructions to unseen planes. Taut Yankee voices might answer a slow talking Alabamian about "unknown planes at one o'clock high." Convoys of trucks could be heard, day and night, on the roads in the valley below us. while on duty, one cloudless night, I watched the bombardment by the Luftwaffe of a town miles to the south; bomb blasts could be seen but not heard as tracer bullets of antiaircraft artillery and shell bursts created a cone of streaking fire high in the sky over the stricken city. The seemingly peaceful English countryside seethed with war and preparation for it. Air Traffic Control Experimentation helped to partially quiet the jamming as unneeded receivers were turned off and others were used only when necessary. New technology improved conication quickly but Allied dive bombers, with radio homing devices, quieted much of the interference when some Nazis jamming stations were obliterated. Old primitive, tried and true, workable methods were revived for air traffic control. An effective spotlight with a sighting device and a three way color switch made it possible to signal individual planes (A modern laser light would be only slightly better). It was effective and simple: red for "stop", green for "proceed", and amber for "caution". We revived the old "KISS principle"; that advised, "keep it simple, stupid." There were also three signal guns loaded with the three colors. I once shot a red flare in front of a plane poised for takeoff with all wing locks in place and long red ribbons fluttering from them. A messenger from the control van at the runway's end ran out and pointed at the fluttering ribbons. The crew chief and pilot became conversant. If traffic were excessive, a mobile van, with phone linkage to the main control tower, was used for control at the end of the active runway. A gunnery dome salvaged from a crashed B1.7 sat atop it and from this dome we could signal with light or signal flares. If there were mass flights, the control officer sometimes gave hand signals while standing on or beside the runway somewhat like a policeman at a busy intersection. There was, of course, a "follow me" jeep for those occasions when darkness, fog, or other conditions required closer supervision. This jeep was used to good effect one hectic day when a B25 squadron, of more than twenty planes, unable to land at its home base because of fog, landed at Welford. Planes had to land at less than minute intervals while engines roared and tires squealed from radical braking. Crowding at the active runway's end became acute and the "follow me" jeep shunted most onto grassed areas of the airfield at risk of planes miring down. and landing gear's collapse. Our troop carrier squadrons flew the all-purpose, Douglas C47, or DC3, or Dakota; a civilian aircraft developed before the war for the airline companies. It was a well built plane and easy to maintain many are still flying a half century later (somewhat like the old Ford tri-motor, they may fly forever). Those wonderful dual. engine planes flew paratroopers, towed gliders into combat, supplied forward troops, evacuated wounded, flew P.O.W.s home, flew secret missions behind enemy lines and did much more. Their versatility was unlimited. One crew chief, Sgt. Butler, bragged that he threw hand grenades from an open door as he flew over the Nazi lines during the Battle of the Bulge, thus converting the C47 into a bomber! The B47? Many were lost. Some from enemy fire from freakish weather from malfunction from carelessness and "Gremlins"! All those lost planes were flown by men known to the ground crews, often lay first names. However, most planes returned from missions, were patched and flew again. The Battle of the Bulge was a particularly trying time when it became necessary, because of snow and fog, to fly within pistol range of the Nazi guns. A barracks mate, Sgt. Mongeau, who survived a crash in those perilous times, joined the infantry in Bastogne and fought for weeks. He returned to the squadron toting a liberated German P38 pistol. He was fifty pounds lighter and a lifetime older in civilian life, he did not survive long enough to attend a reunion of the 78th squadron. The "sweating-it-out crew" in the tower was always joined by the ground crews when planes were expected back from a mission. This larger sweating crew would quietly assemble and sit about the tower area waiting for some word until the first plane was sighted. Then they would stand and silently count each plane as it landed. They always remained until duty called them away. Sometimes the ground crews returned to barracks that had empty bunks. Today, the sweating-it-out crew has its counterpart in the friends and family of victims at the emergency rooms of all American hospitals. Keeping Track I was often assigned the duty of recording serial numbers as planes left on missions. This log listed time of take off as well as destination, if known, and other pertinent information. I also recorded the plane's return; if it did not return, an immediate investigation began, and ended only when the plane's status was known. Some investigations continue even today as Europe's fishermen find plane wreckage entangled in their gear. A news item as of 12\20\'93 was about wreckage recovered from the Mediterranean's waters that solved the mysterious loss of the writer, Antoine De St. Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, who vanished while on a military reconnaissance mission back in 1942. Humorous incidents also occurred: in the states, plane crews wrangled reasons to fly to certain air bases near their home; when there, the planes often malfunctioned and forced them to remain overnight. There is a picture in my WWII album of a plane sitting in a cow pasture in Minnesota. It landed there when the intense longing of the pilot caused the compass to point erratically. A night spent at home gave him the knowledge to repair it and return to base. Later, in Europe, we noted the same tendency when planes landed at other airfields because of fog or something. When we relocated to an old Luftwaffe base near Paris, our commanding officer instructed the tower to allow no unofficial landings. However, one day a P51 (Mustang) circled the base and requested landing instructions. These were refused, but the pilot landed in spite of the refusal and was immediately arrested by the MP's. The pilot was polite, contrite, submitted to arrest and told this story: At the war's beginning he became a Polish refugee stranded with kinsmen in Chicago. He later joined the US Air Force, became a fighter pilot and later flew the P51. After the liberation of Paris, word came that a family member, he thought lost, was at a refugee center. He was willing to risk anything to get to Paris. We believed his story and with the tower personnel's cooperation he was driven to the nearby train station and seen off to Paris. He reappeared two days later with a beatific smile and, upon being airborne, buzzed the tower with waggling wings. All record of his landing and arrest were misplaced. During our time in England, the rolling green pastoral, presumably peaceful countryside surrounded us. On our days off or when on leave we could catch a bus to Reading for a day of pub crawling or punting on the Thames or even entrain to London, only two hours away. After our move to France, we could see the top mast of the Eiffel Tower from our control center. A convenient railway station made the Champs Elysees an hour's journey away. I walked through the Arc de Triomphe; visited Napoleon's Tomb; got a picture of the Eiffel Tower and attended a showing of the Casino de Paree. I can also confirm that Paris, even in war's drab aftermath, was a sight worth seeing. "How're you gonna keep 'em down on the farm...?!" Our duties often appeared unacceptably easy when we gave thought to the fate of the paratroopers we saw loading into planes. We also knew the destiny of the fragile gliders and their crews. Flight crewmen occupied the bunks next to ours; these bunks were sometimes empty until assigned to replacements. The bombardment of London placed English office workers in more jeopardy than us tower operators. A recent examination of an album of WWII pictures shows friends and me boating in Reading, on the Thames, the day before the invasion maybe to convince Nazi spies that all was normal. The English girls in the picture were polite, pleasant, and well groomed, even after years of war and deprivation. The uninformed would never suspect the misery, pain, and poverty those islanders endured. At a recent reunion of the 9th Army Air Force, 435th Troop Carrier Group's, 78th squadron, we survivors, now aged seventy to late eighty, reviewed a listing of the many WWII casualties from the 78th squadron. This listing reminded us we survivors are indeed lucky ones. McWilliams is an 81 year young Mensan with a youthful mind and vivid memories of the "Good War." Back to Cry Havoc #37 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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