Letters From New Orleans by Rob Walker

From Campus to Combat:
A College Boy Becomes A WWII Army Flier
by James Alter
2006
ISBN: 1-1891053-81-7

Excerpt from
From Campus to Combat
by James Alter

We climbed out of our wounded airplane and warily watched the men strolling toward us. I had my hand on my .45 although God knows what I could do with it at this point. They were plainly Soviet soldiers and their leader was a major. We all pointed to the American flag patch on our jackets and they all started to shout "Americanski" and we knew we were probably okay. They seemed very glad to see us. The reason they fired at us, they told us, was that the Germans had strafed them a few weeks ago in a captured B-24.

Their small detachment was on this field for some time and it was clear they were dying of boredom. We were probably the first new faces they had seen since they arrived. The major was all gold-toothed smiles, but not much English beyond Americanski and tovarisch. There was a young lieutenant, however, who had workable, if heavily accented, command of Soviet-taught English. We were invited into the larger of two cement buildings. It was a headquarters office, eating place, kitchen, and day room.

First things first, so we were all offered cups of vodka and we politely accepted. As it got dark they lit some oil lamps -- no electricity here. At suppertime we were offered some pretty good soup and rather old bread. We talked, and the lieutenant, translating for the major, told us that they would drive us to a railhead tomorrow in one of their trucks. From there we could get a train to Budapest and maybe find someone to fly us back to Italy.

We discussed this for a while and everything seemed fine. Then the major asked us what we wanted to do about our airplane. We knew that it would never fly again. The latest model B-24s were now streaming into Italy. The U.S. Army was not about to fly mechanics and new engines into this remote field to fix up our old wreck, and at worst, the war was going to be over in a few months. So our pilot sort of shrugged.

"Can we have it?" the major asked. Our guy shrugged again. "We'll buy it," the lieutenant translated. We all looked at each other. Why not, it wasn't going anywhere, we silently agreed. We asked how much they wanted to offer. Since we were all bushed, and to make a long story a bit shorter, we settled on some vodka and Soviet cigarettes. Our co-pilot was inspired to write up a bill of sale and I tore off a piece of my navigator log for it. We three officers duly signed the bill and now everything was legal. I wondered only momentarily what U.S. laws we broke and whether anybody would ever find out. I decided that no one would even care.

We also traded a few Colt .45s for some Soviet and German pistols. When our co-pilot handed over his .45, the major pointed it straight up and fired. I looked up and saw that the ceiling was pockmarked with dozens of holes and realized that shooting at the ceiling must've been a local sport.

We tried to make ourselves comfortable on the concrete floor. We had our flying clothes and parachute packs for pillows and it wasn't too bad. Some time after midnight we were awakened by machine gun fire. It was very dark and cold. Someone said that the Russians were firing machine guns on our airplane and should we do something? Someone else pointed out that the fifties now belonged to them. Didn't they pay for them? We went back to sleep.

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