Baa Baa Black Sheep (10 page)

This may all seem pointless. But this lone character turned out to be Big Jim Howard, Newkirk’s second-in-command, to whom we fellows always gave a horrible ribbing, for he acted so gullible.

After Big Jim’s AVG days he went on, and they gave him the Medal of Honor for his work over Germany. I can imagine how he baffled the German pilots, thinking they were up against an automatic pilot, or something out of the ordinary, at least. Jim who didn’t give a damn about the odds Madame Chiang had made book on. Though I considered Big Jim one of the better boys, I somehow had a feeling that I was as close to him as I was to a cigar-store Indian.

The pleasant company of Jim Adams and Bill Tweedy was too good to last, and I knew it. The Japanese ground forces had steadily marched on west, with poor old General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell one jump ahead of them.

I first met the general at Mingaladon Field. Even now I can still see him as he was during those days. Of course nobody would have recognized him as a general in the clothes he was wearing at the time. Stilwell informed me at Mingaladon that he was without American troops, and the few Chinese and Burmese with him were forced to move back all the time. But I believe Stilwell knew that if he had so much as stopped to tie his shoelaces, let alone fire a round, the Japs would have surrounded them.

Well, whenever we stopped at an airfield, along the road would come General Stilwell with a group of refugees. I’ll never forget the time at Magwe, Burma, a west-coast town,
where they evacuated refugees to India. One of our mechanics was opening a can of tomatoes and he turned around to the general and said: “Hey, bub, do you want some of these too?”

The general answered: “Sure thing.”

They ate out of a can and slept practically beside each other on the ground all night, and it wasn’t until the next morning that the young mechanic learned the identity of the man he had called “bub.”

Getting back to our genial hosts who were saying good-by, for Rangoon was in the process of being almost flanked from the north, the only way out. Jim called me in one day in early March and told me of the plan to evacuate Rangoon. He said he had talked to the servants; and they were willing to remain with us pilots. So I was instructed briefly in how to manage these servants. Jim suggested that we double their wages because of the uncertainty of things. You could have knocked me over with a breath of cool air when I found that by doubling the help’s wages it was still only thirty-some dollars a week. Whether this included the supplies the cook bought I can’t remember offhand. Anyhow, it would be little more.

Then I was the head of the household, a position I have never been able to manage very well at best, but I pretended to carry on the routine, the same as Jim Adams had, if for nothing other than to keep his excellent help around.

The Indian cook would bring in his ledger before dinner, every other night or so, and I would pretend to study his ledger with care, as I had observed Jim do so often. It was impossible for me to tell up from down about the damned thing, for I couldn’t even pronounce the few words I knew in Hindustani. Anyhow, I would point at some item at random on the page, and pretend I was angry, like a wrestler does in exhibition. Then the cook would be all explanation and apology. I never will know how much he fooled me, or I him. Much the same as a game of darts in the dark.

The most pitiful sight I ever saw was when these two Scots were leaving Rangoon. They had said farewell, and were to travel by foot with light bundles over their shoulders. As they walked down the road, they looked much like two of our own Knights of the Road back home. Before they started, I asked: “Anything I can do for either of you after you go?”

Bristol Blenheim

And Jim had said: “Set a match to it. It’s too good for the Japs.”

Angus, the great Dane, was left behind also, for Jim had made me promise to shoot Angus before the Japanese arrived. Little did Jim realize that I would have less trouble shooting one of the pilots than I would slugging old Angus.

Another thought ran through my mind, watching the two balding gents go their way with my pity, about how relative everything is. Only a couple weeks ago we had been complimenting our hosts on what a great way to live, and bachelors, too. And Bill Tweedy, the spitting image of the actor Charlie Ruggles, had said: “I’ll have you know it was
much more exciting than this, for once upon a time, these hallowed halls were occasionally blessed with beautiful Anglo-Burmese girls who came to dinner.” And he had said this with a delightful chuckle.

Since February there had been South African crews in twin-engined Blenheim bombers, carrying bombs into next door Thailand. And from our old training base, Toungoo, a squadron of Kashmir Indians was flying ancient, single-engine Lysanders loaded with bombs. Neither the South Africans nor the Kashmir Indians needed or accepted fighter cover, and they never appeared to get much higher than the jungle terrain they flew over, either. How I admired them both!

Though the Japanese ground forces came steadily onward, averaging roughly ten miles per day, about as fast as they could walk in a day, the air was commanded by a handful of RAF and AVG. We were getting few alerts by then. One of the last alerts of any size came around the middle of February, but I never saw any bombers personally. Some of the pilots spotted a few, and knocked a couple down, far away from Rangoon. All I could see were fighters that apparently had been up for some time. By then I had learned where to find some easy shooting, when the enemy is going home low on gas with his guard down. If one wanted to run into anything going home after a raid, he had to get down low, or he would never see an enemy. The Nips would be taking a free power glide, their attention being taken up somewhat by the gas gauges and the anxiety to get back whole, getting closer to the terrain as they approached home base. So it was extremely difficult to pick them up, but there were some fairly easy pickings if you did and had a lot of gas left.

As an aid safely to searching down low I found something, quite accidently, I was to use to good advantage thereafter. Pilots had been coming out of the sun since World War I, and so did we. But to make certain that no one sucked me in for a sun approach, or if he did and I couldn’t avoid it, I used a trick to keep track of him: I closed one eye, holding the tip of my little finger up in front of the open orb, blocking out just the fiery ball of the sun in front of my opened eye. I found that it was impossible for an enemy to come down from out of the sun on a moving target without showing up somewhere outside of my fingertip if I continuously kept the fiery part from my vision. This is mentioned only because I
assumed that others were doing the same thing, but the war was over before I knew that most of the pilots I talked to didn’t.

Anyway, with this little bit of knowledge, I felt comparatively safe this day, chasing some homeward-bound Nips. And it paid off, too, for I was able to get two Nip fighters with short bursts, one after the other, only seconds apart. There were no flames from either one, both were perfect no-deflection shots. As a matter of fact, this was the only shot I ever had complete faith in, regardless of all my practice back in the States—a no-deflection shot.

The third fighter didn’t go down quite so easily, it seemed, and something made me feel squeamish. Air fighting had become impersonal, for there was no personal contact—except on this one occasion.

As a boy I remember reading the air stories of World War I, and how the opposing pilots at that time, in their rickety machines, did everything except fire revolvers at each other. And, on remembering some of these stories, I think that at times the pilots did even this.

On this occasion I had sent a burst into this little fellow. He had an open-cockpit fighter. The plane didn’t burst into flames, and it didn’t fall apart, but was definitely going down, out of control. As I flew right beside him, I could see his arm dangling out of the cockpit, flapping in the slipstream like the arm of a rag doll, and I knew definitely he was dead. For no other reason, or maybe because we were supposed to bring a claim back in our teeth to get credit, I sent another long burst into his plane and literally tore it up. That was the only time I ever felt squeamish about the entire affair.

From this time on the AVG pilots knew that unless they came down practically within the city limits of Rangoon they would stand little chance of getting back at all. The Burmese members of our help disappeared without notice one day. Their action frightened so badly our Indian servants, who were definitely not pro-Japanese, that they announced they would be on their way to India on foot.

Ed Liebolt, one of our pilots, forced down with engine trouble on the outskirts of Rangoon, was expected back, surely, for some other pilot had seen Ed get out of his wheels-up landing in a rice paddy and commence running.
However, Ed Liebolt never got back, so we can only assume the Burmese had killed him.

We discovered that the Burmese had turned pro-Japanese in a hurry, and for safety we moved back out to Mingaladon Field, where we could fly out on a minute’s notice and set explosives to anything we had to leave behind. Our ground crew had been sent on to the next base of operations in trucks, Magwe, Burma.

Remembering my promise to Jim Adams, I had to think fast, so I talked Bob Smith into going back to set the fire and kill Angus. I was flying out of Rangoon with seven P-40s in need of complete overhaul, before the last of the AVG was to leave, so I told Bob that I didn’t have time to do this unpleasant task.

The next time I saw Bob Smith I didn’t even bother to ask him if he had set fire to Jim’s house. My only concern was whether he had found Angus, and Bob answered meekly: “Yes.”

“Did you shoot Angus?” I asked, not daring to look Bob in the eyes.

“I shot at him. But I missed him. He got away,” was Bob’s rather weak answer to my inquiry.

No further inquiries were necessary.

Seven tired P-40s left Rangoon in early March 1942 for the last time. These same planes made brief halts on their way north, such as Magwe, Mandalay, and Lashio, Burma. We remained about three days in each of these places to provide cover for the trucks and refugees coming along by road.

The last members of the AVG to leave Rangoon were making a good account of themselves, we heard, as they too were stationed briefly in the same places we seven had
recently moved out of, these same cities I had stood by to defend when no Japs came over. It was probably just as well this way, for our seven P-40s were in the saddest condition of the lot.

All seven pilots were happy to get back to old Hostel Number Two, as bad as we thought it was. We had timed our arrival to the day with our ground crew, who had come in by truck. When they unpacked, we found that they had brought back a few unexpected purchases. One mechanic had bought a tame female leopard. The lad kept her for a mascot on the end of a leash and collar, tied to a truck bed out in front of our hostel, with a mattress for her to sleep on. The mechanic had said that this leopard was tame, but I had my doubts. Especially so after witnessing the big cat awaken from a pretended sleep and then pounce upon a mongrel that was about to steal a meal from some of her leftover food. And again, when I had been informed that this large puddycat wouldn’t harm humans, I didn’t know what to think. In any event, I followed the instructions of the cat’s master and played with her like the others. This leopard would permit rolling back her huge pads, where one could see long claws tucked underneath the pads. When the cat playfully cuffed one, it felt the same as soft boxing gloves, as she never extended a single claw. And her natural instincts were playfully displayed when she rolled one over, placing the two bottom fangs underneath the base of one’s skull below the ear, and the upper fangs somewhere over one’s opposite temple. And then the cat would gently twist the head, but never roughly, I’m happy to say. The leopard’s tongue, which felt much like a number-ten-grade sandpaper, would lovingly lick the back of your neck after she released the hold upon your head.

We found that there had been no action around Kunming all the while we were south, but I couldn’t help wondering why none of our staff ever seemed to leave China. I could only assume one thing: Our glorious staff had patted themselves on the back for running events by remote control, in the meantime living as ladies and gentlemen should live. Work was for the coolies. Fighting was for the troops.

At this particular period the AVG, as small as it was, happened to represent the only citizens of the United States who had not only held their own but had gone on to create a
most enviable record. Their success, not defeat, was by far the greatest in the war to date. So, a high-ranking general in the Air Corps recognized personal glory to be within easy grasp if he could but annex this group of civilians to his command.

One other minor little detail had to occur to make this proposed annexation complete before this general would be able to boost his stock and yet give a legal appearance. All of the AVG pilots had to be inducted, as it was so aptly worded for lack of better words, into the Air Corps. I personally considered this to be the rottenest kind of a farce, for, though Chennault himself was a dyed-in-the-wold Air Corps man, he had earned his reputation with a crew of pilots of which better than 50 per cent had come from Uncle Sam’s Navy and Marine Corps.