It was a dark and stormy night in the Shores. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and the rain was beating against my window. I was leaning back in my electric lift chair relaxing and watching an old movie on TV. That’s what old men do when they are home alone. The movie, “Twelve O’ Clock High”, takes place in England in the Spring of 1943, when the US 8th Air Force was making daylight bombing raids into Germany. Losses were very high; flight crew members were required to fly twenty-six missions before returning to the states. The chances of flying that many missions without being wounded, shot down, or killed were about fifty percent. Ground crews were in England for the duration. It was a high stress situation.
Through my bedroom window came a blinding flash of lightning immediately preceding a deafening crash of thunder. The lights blinked, then went out. Suddenly total darkness. The flash and boom were a shock. It took a second or two for me to know that I was alright. I then realized I could not get out of the chair. I was stuck until the lights came on or until dawn. My mind started working overtime thinking “what if”, what if the lightning started a fire, what if the roof was leaking, what if??? To avoid panic, I concentrated on the movie. I thought about the men and boys of the 8th Air Force. I remembered a close friend who at nineteen was a waist gunner on a B-17 in the 8th Air Force. Jimmy was shot down on his thirteenth mission. He spent nineteen months in a German POW camp, Stalag 17. After the war, two of his fellow prisoners wrote a play titled “Stalag 17.” The play was later turned into a great movie with the same title. I then remembered Clay.
I met Clay at church in 2002, when he was in his early 80’s. He was quiet, soft spoken and a little difficult to talk to; I liked Clay. Over the next couple of years, I made a continual effort to talk with him. Slowly, he began to talk more and more. Clay told me that he had grown up on a farm in rural Kentucky during the depression. He did not like farm work and was willing to do most anything to get away from it. At the time there was no work other than farm work to be found near his home. In the summer of 1941, he walked and hitch hiked more than twenty miles to the nearest recruiter to joined the US Army Air Force. He was accepted and after completing basic and mechanics training, at the age, of twenty, he became a B-17 crew chief in the 8th Air Force. In the late fall of 1942, he shipped out to England to fix um and patch um for the next three years. Clay was very proud of his military service; however, he was slow to talk about it. Over the next year or so, Clay and I talked about the endless hours that he and his crew of four put in to make sure that their plane was ready for the next mission. On mission days, they checked the bombs in the bomb bay to verify that they were hung correctly and that they would release on command. They checked engines, controls and other mechanics of the aircraft. Between missions, when his aircraft was ready, he and his crew helped other crews with their aircraft.
Over time Clay’s memory began to fail. Clay’s wife, Dot, told me that Clay had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In a short time, our talks were over. When Dot brought him to church, he sat through the service motionless, blankly staring ahead. When greeted, he often shook hands and gave his stock reply, “I’m fine; how are you?”. There was little if any change in expression and seldom any further conversation. As he walked, his head was down and his feet shuffled. Clay was in the full clutches of Alzheimer’s.
I read in the newspaper that a B-17 was to visit Cecil Field in Jacksonville, FL and that it would be open to tour. The next Sunday, I asked Dot if she and Clay would go with me to tour the plane. She replied that she would love to; however, she did not know how Clay would respond. Some days were difficult and it was impossible to predict how cooperative he would be. I told her that we would play it by ear. If Clay was having a bad day, we would cancel out.
When the day came, I picked them up. Clay got in the backseat while Dot sat next to me in front. Clay sat motionless with a blank expression on his face, his eyes staring straight ahead; he did not say a word during the forty-five-mile trip to the airport. On the way, Dot told me that they had met and were married shortly after WWII. He never talked about the war and all she knew was that he was in the Army Air Force, served in England, and worked on bombers. She had always been curious about his war experiences, but he did not want to talk about them.
When we arrived at Cecil Field, we walked through a gate, around the corner of a building and onto the park ramp. There setting in front of us was the Aluminum Overcast, B-17, in all her glory. Clay stopped and looked with what appeared to be total disbelief; the blank stare was gone. Dot took his hand and we walked to the table where I signed us in and left the donation. As we walked to the airplane, Clay never took his eyes off it. When we got closer to the plane, the shuffle disappeared and was replaced by a spring in his step. Clay was the first to the steps. As he climbed the steps with the agility and confidence of a 20 year old, he said to Dot, “Honey be careful it is easy to fall and there are lots of things that can snag clothes or skin.” When we were all aboard, he began the tour. He pointed out the crew stations and the responsibility of each of the ten crew members. A B-17 had as many as thirteen .50 caliber machine guns. On long missions each gun had as many as a thousand rounds of ammo. He said that it was not unusual for some of the guns to be out of ammo when they returned to base. Clay explained that they bombed from 20 to 30 thousand feet altitude where the temperature was as low as 40 degrees below zero F. The two waist gunners faced a two hundred mile per hour wind blast through the open gun windows on either side of the aircraft. The only thing that saved the air crew from freezing was the fleece lined, electrically heated flight suits. He then talked about how he and his crew patched bullet, cannon, and flack holes. At times there was structural damage that he had to decide what to do with. Often they had to call maintenance for help. If the plane could be repaired on line, they would do it, if not, the plane had to be taken off the line to go to the maintenance area. It was his decision as to what was safe for the flight crew; the responsibility for the lives of ten men bothered him. He never knew in advance when the next mission would take place; it was he and his crew’s responsibility to have the plane ready. When his plane came back from a mission they worked until it was ready to fly again. Often it was all night and into the next day or longer.
As we went forward along the catwalk through the bomb bay, Clay explained how the bombs hung on either side. Should a bomb not release, a crew member had to try to manually release it while standing on the narrow catwalk over the open bomb bay in the cold wind. When we went into the cockpit, one of the tour crew members was there. Clay told him that he was a crew chief during the war. He invited Clay to sit in the pilot’s seat. As Clay sat down he told about the thrill of a lifetime testing the engines: “As you ran the engines up the noise grew louder, the plane shook, and you could feel the power.” He said that it was the same thrill every time. The crew member asked Clay how many missions he crew chiefed. Clay said that he had no idea, but it had to be well over one hundred, and may have been nearer two hundred in the two-and one-half years. Clay then said that the thing he was most proud of was that every one of his planes came back. He attributed this record to a lot of prayer, a good airplane, good maintenance, and a lot of luck. Some returning planes were towed off the runway or taxiway to the bone-yard to be used for replacement parts for other aircraft. Sometimes wounded and/or dead were onboard, but all of his planes came back. Then he talked about “sweating-out” missions and going to the flight line when it was time for the planes to return, and how they strained their eyes to identify their plane as the formation circled the field for landing. They counted the number of planes returning and emergency flairs that indicated wounded onboard or other emergency. Most of all, they looked for their plane. When they spotted it, they rushed off to the hardstand to greet the flight crew and inspect the plane.
As we exited the plane some of the cowl panels had been removed from one engine; there were four fellows up on the wing looking it over. Clay immediately went over and started a conversation. I could not hear what was said, but Clay was very animated and each appeared to understand what the other was talking about. Clay told Dot, “They have the same oil leaks that we had.”
As we passed the table on the way to the car, I purchased a B-17 pin; Dot pinned it on Clay’s shirt. It was obvious that they were both very proud. It was remarkable that Clay was not transported back to England and the war; he was in the present, remembering the past and sharing it with his wife and an old airplane.
When we got in the car, Clay again sat in the backseat. He did not say a word all of the way home or when I dropped them off. However, he did have a smile on his face the whole way. Dot said that the day had been a true miracle. She had seen Clay as a young man again, learned of some of his war time experiences and was so proud of him. Clay had talked more in an hour than he had in the previous two years. He was lucid, asked and answered questions, was animated and had a spring in his step. Clay had called Dot “Honey” for the first time since the onset of Alzheimer’s. That brought the tears that she had previously hidden on the steps.
On the next Sunday morning Clay sat in church motionless with the blank expression. When I greeted him after the service, he shook hands and said, “I’m fine; how are you?”. I spotted the B-17 pin on his shirt and I noticed that every minute or so he reached up and touched it and smiled. Clay died about two years after our visit to the B-17. As far as I know, he never had another lucid moment. Every time I saw him during that period he had the B-17 pinned on his shirt. His face had a blank expression and he was lost; however, he often reached up and touched the pin and a faint smile crept across his face. At Clay’s funeral he had the B-17 pinned on his lapel.
Suddenly the lights were back on. The storm had passed. I raised my chair to a sitting position. I still thought of Clay and Dot. I had witnessed a man return from the storm clouds and depths of Alzheimer’s. A true miracle. It was only for a short time, but a true miracle.
My father, Don Wolfe, took a precious real life experience with a friend and wrapped it around a stormy day flashback to create a essay for a writing contest in St. Augustine, Florida. Well done, Dad.