MISSISSIPPI CENTRAL RAILROAD

I grew up on the Mississippi Central Railroad about half way between Mile Post 33 and 34 from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in the small town of Bassfield.  The Mississippi Central Railroad ran from Hattiesburg to Natchez.  Natchez was 116 miles from Bassfield. Our house was located beside the railroad.   

In the 1930’s, I watched practically every train that passed.  I believe every hobo stopped at our house. We called them tramps.  My Dad always said, “Feed a hungry man.”  However, he believed in the work ethic also, and required the hobo to cut some stove or firewood before Mother would give them some food. 

Until the mid 1930’s, we had four passenger trains pass our house each day.  I always ran to the crossing and waved my arm up and down so the engineer would blow his whistle many times.  I remember two of the engineers quite well.  One was Tynes Hatten and the other was Rube Evans.  They always waved and blew their whistle at me. Tynes Hatten was the engineer on engine 98 and Rube Evans was the engineer on engine 99. They were identical 4 4 0s built by the American Locomotive Company.  Engine 98 is the only Mississippi Central steam engine still in use and it’s on the Wilmington and Western Railroad as a tourist train.  Engine 99 became famous because of colliding with a school bus in Bassfield in 1934.

The passenger engines were 4 4 0s with an engineer and a fireman.  Behind the tender was the baggage car and then the passenger cars.  The Mississippi Central passenger cars were segregated.   There was a conducter and porters on the train.  In the baggage car there were two individuals.  One sorted the mail and the other dealt with the railway express shipments and baggage.   I became acquainted with Mr. Lee Hemby who worked as a porter and conducter on the Mississippi Central Railroad for about 50 years.  After he retired he would come out to Bassfield and we would follow the then Illinois Central Gulf Freight Trains.  Some of these trains would be two miles long and have 250 cars. We went to Hattiesburg on several occasions and followed the freights all the way to the big Georgia Pacific paper mill near Wanilla, Mississippi.  The Illinois Central Gulf routed all its Northbound traffic out of Mobile thru Bassfield to Memphis from 1975 to about 1980. This was during the time that the ICG was rebuilding its rail line from Hattiesburg to Jackson. 

Until the mid thirties, passenger Train 1 arrived from Hattiesburg to Bassfield at 7:34 a.m.  It arrived at Carson 10 minutes later and Prentiss at 8:00 a.m.; Silver Creek at 8:26 a.m.; Wanilla at 8:50 a.m.; Brookhaven at 9:51 a.m.; and Natchez at 12:45 p.m.

Eastbound passenger Train 2 arrived in Bassfield from Natchez at 10:14 a.m. It arrived in Hattiesburg at 11:45 a.m. 

The evening passenger train 3 headed Westbound to Natchez arrived in Bassfield at 3:58 p.m. and got to Natchez at 9:05 p.m.

Passenger Train 4 Eastbound got to Bassfield at 6:26 p.m. and Hattiesburg at 7:45 p.m.

It was the two evening trains on Sundays that we would meet at the depot.  I enjoyed watching the engineer, Mr. Rube Evans, oiling the train around the drivers when he stopped at the depot and looking at his watch studying how far behind schedule he was and whether he could make up any lost time.

The maximum speed of passenger trains was 40 miles per hour.  On one occasion, I remember Mr. Rube saying he could get up to 50 miles per hour between Epley and  Hattiesburg as the track was relatively straight and he could make up lost time and arrive in Hattiesburg on time.      

In 1937, the Mississippi Central on its east bound passenger train also had freight cars or what we called “a mixed train.”  I remember that my sister, Myra Louise Deen, got on the mixed train one afternoon to Hattiesburg and then to Newport News, Virginia. The mixed train did not last very long.

On several occasions my Mother and I rode the passenger train to either Silver Creek or Wanilla to visit my Grandmother, Myra Greer, at Monticello, Mississippi.  My uncle, Ted McCullough, or his daughter, Dot, would meet the train.  Not long before the passenger train was taken off, my Mother and I rode from Brookhaven to Bassfield.   I always hoped that I could ride the train to the far west, which I then thought to be Natchez.

Our next door neighbors were the Holland family. Mrs. Holland’s father was Sam Harper, who lived to 99 ½ years.  He fought in the Civil War and following its end, he walked from Atlanta to Bassfield.  His son, Sam, Jr., was a conductor on one of the passenger trains.  I thought he was rich because he would always ride out to Bassfield from Hattiesburg in a four hole Buick automobile. Uncle Sam, the confederate veteran, often walked the half mile to the depot to meet Sam Jrs’ train.

All freight trains coming east from Natchez had difficulty getting over Geneva Hill at Carson, about four miles northwest of our home. This was the ruling grade between Natchez and Hattiesburg and all steam power and tonnage had to be computed based on this grade. Many times, at night, I have heard the steam engines trying to get over the hill. They would sound like they were saying “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” until they started slipping.  On many occasions, they had to double the hill. In other words, they would cut the train in half and put one half in the siding at Carson and double back and get the remaining train before proceeding towards Hattiesburg. This was very time consuming but there is more than one way to skin a cat.

The West Bound Freight train number 51 in the1930s departed Hattiesburg at 8:05 P. M. and passed through Bassfield at 10:03 P.M; Prentiss at 10:43 P.M. and got to Brookhaven at 1:10 A.M. where it met the through East Bound Freight number 52 and later arrived in Natchez at 5:25 A.M.  The East Bound Freight Train departed Natchez at 7:00 P.M. and passed through Prentiss at 3:53 A.M.; Bassfield at 4:37 A.M. and arrived at Hattiesburg at 7:30 A.M.

In addition to the through trains, we had local freight train 11 which departed Hattiesburg at 7:00 A.M.and got to Bassfield at 10:14 A.M. and only went to Brookhaven and got there at 2:15 P.M. The local only ran on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Local 10 ran from Brookhaven on Tuesday. Thursday and Saturday to Hattiesburg and got to Bassfield at 11:20 A.M.

A lot of the trains had to get water from the water tower at Prentiss which was located on the East side of Whitesand Creek.   I remember the west bound morning passenger train would always stop there and take on water.  On other occasions I saw freight trains like wise take on water at Prentiss.   At other times the Mississippi Central would run shopped engines out to the Y just beyond Jay Bird Creek and turn them around and head back to Hattiesburg.  When additional power was needed to get over Geneva hill at Carson they would send a helper engine to assist the other engine in climbing the hill. After the Mississippi Central got Diesel engines they had no difficulty in getting over Geneva hill. The days of steam on the Mississippi Central Railroad were fascinating to me. Maybe I should have been an engineer.

  

Riding the passenger train during the depression on the Mississippi Central was not too expensive.  The Railroad only charged a penny a mile.  You could ride from Hattiesburg to Natchez for $1.50 cents. However, money was scarce and I can remember my parents wondering how they were going to pay Home Owners Loan Corporation a $8.00 note each month.

About once a year the Mississippi Central would run the president’s special from Hattiesburg to Natchez and return the same day.  It was exciting to watch as it went very fast and was pulled by one of the passenger engines or the Mikado 120s.  On one occasion some officials of the Rutland Railroad were on the president’s special which consisted of the office car and a passenger car.

Until around the mid 1930s, on July 4^th each year the Mississippi Central would commemorate the holiday by giving all its employees a picnic on the banks of Pearl River. It had the engine decorated and had eight cars.  

One of the exciting times occurred when circus trains belonging to Barnum and Bailey and/or Cole Brothers would pass our house.  Mr. Will Kerley of Bassfield would always feed the animals on the circus train when it stopped at Bassfield.  I saw my first elephant on a circus train at Bassfield.

One of my classmates at Bassfield, Hurd Robbins, lived in a house Southeast of Bassfield in the Melba community.  His Parents home was about fifty feet from the railroad.  I spent the night with him and I will never forget the trains going thru that awoke me.  It sounded like they were coming through the house.                                                                                                                                          

Not all of the conductors of the various trains were nice to me.  Around 1938, the work train which was pulled by Engine 115 was doing some work by our house.  I went up to the railroad and saw the caboose and started walking toward it.  About that time the conductor, Jack Ptaschek saw me and told me, “You little S.O.B. get your ass off the track”.  Actually he was warning me that it was dangerous to get close to the caboose as it could be knocked backwards quite a ways once the engine connected to the train. Anyway he was the first man to ever call me an S.O.B.  Later on in my life I heard it so often that I was beginning to think it was my name.

My Daddy had a steam powered cotton gin in Bassfield.  He also had a spur off the railroad to the cotton seed house where the cotton seed were loaded into a box car for shipment to Jackson, Mississippi.  A local came by the gin six times a week.  On one occasion, I was permitted with others to ride in an empty car that was being switched.

The steam cotton gin had a boiler which was fired by a black gentleman whose name was Luke Otis.  The steam generated a huge wheel on which there were many belts that operated the gin.  Luke was also used by my parents as my babysitter when they would go shopping in Hattiesburg or Columbia.  He would always give me some candy.  Today, if a parent left their child in such a dangerous place the authorities would place the child in a foster home.

Mr. Will Burkett managed the gin for my father.  Denton Reddock assisted him and in  later years lost one of  his  hands in another gin.  Around 1936, my Dad sold the gin to Ernest Clinton who operated it for a couple of years until it burned.  Mr. Clinton also had a movie theater in Monticello where he lived known as the Mono.  Many times I would ride with him over gravel roads to visit my Grandmother.  Mr. Clinton drove very fast, sometimes doing 75 mph on narrow gravel roads.           

In addition to growing cotton, we also sold our red Irish potatoes on a platform by the railroad.  I helped load the potatoes onto the box cars.  We also had a cucumber patch and we took our cucumbers to the platform and sold them.  They were then loaded in vats and put in salt.  They were later shipped via rail to Wiggins, Mississippi, to Brown-Miller Company.

Our big money crop was cotton.  My Dad in the 1930’s had three farms and almost 900 acres of land.  We farmed this land with mules pulling the plows. We picked the cotton by hand by placing same in a cotton sack until we filled the sack. We then took the sack of cotton to the barn where we weighed it and put it in the cotton house.  When we got 1200 pounds, we would load the cotton onto a mule wagon and take it to the gin.  We tried to get a 500 pound bale of cotton.  The rest of the cotton was seed which was extracted from the lint cotton by the gin.

Bassfield was noted for the uniformity of the length of its lint.  The cotton lint was sometimes used in making gun powder.  Two other places in the world were noted for its uniformity in the length of its cotton lint.  These were Cairo, Egypt and Yuma, Arizona. 

The cotton was sold on what we called the cotton platform on the siding across from the depot.  There were two other gins in Bassfield during the 1930’s.  One was owned by the Faler Brothers, John Adam, Andrew, and Martin and the other was owned by Mississippi Power Company and operated by Mr. Beasley as well as the Ice House and Mississippi Power Company. There were two other gins near Bassfield in the country, Wilkes and  Lipsey.  I have seen the Mississippi Central local freight train pick up twenty five box cars loaded with bales of cotton at Bassfield for shipment at one time.  A cotton gin could produce 48 bales of cotton in a 24 hour period.    

We had several cotton buyers who worked on the cotton platform.  There were O. T. Hathorn and Sons, A. F. Carraway Store and Ray Hathorn.  When a bale of cotton was taken to the platform by the farmer, they would cut the bale and examine the cotton and make a bid therefor.  One of the most colorful buyers was Bill Doris, son-in-law of O. T. Hathorn. Gus Carraway bought for AF Carraway Store and Ray Hathorn for the store owned by Ray and his brothers Kermit and Billy Hathorn.

We boys used the cotton platform as a meeting place.  During potato season we would take the culled potatoes and see who could throw them through a knot hole in a big warehouse owned by Faler Brothers just north of the cotton platform. Kermit Hathorn was the champion.  We also played Hide-And-Go-Seek and Come to Court.  In addition, we talked extensively about the girls.     

In the spring, we had to have fertilizer and this was shipped into Bassfield by the local freight train.  Mules, not tractors, during the depression, provided the power for                plowing the land.  Will Kerley had a barn and traded and sold mules. On some occasions, he would have 4 cattle cars with mules shipped from Ft. Worth unloaded at the corral on the siding.  They would then drive the mules down Main Street to the barn.

The economic benefits of the railroad were very closely interwined with our lives.  I knew every freight engine and its whistle from Engine 115 through Engine 142.

The Mississippi Central had five passenger engines. They all had 62 inch drivers.   They were numbers 98 and 99 built by ALCO-Schenectedy.  Baldwin manufactured engines 100 and 102.  Rogers built engine number 101 which was originally known as Union Pacific Number 768 and it pulled the last Eastbound Mississippi Central passenger train on February 27, 1941 and my father, mother, sister Marjorie, and I all gathered on the front porch of our house and waved to the people riding the last Eastbound passenger train through Bassfield.  I believe there were 8 cars. The next morning, the last westbound train past our house headed for Natchez.  Public transportation didn’t end as buses started running from Natchez to Hattiesburg through Bassfield and the bus station was at City Drug Store on Main Street and Hawkins Avenue.  Tri-State Transit, later known as Trailways, provided Bassfield bus service during World War 2 and they ran 4 buses in each direction a day.  On weekends, I recall there being as many as four buses on each schedule. They would be full with a lot of soldiers who were going to and from Camp Shelby.      

The passenger trains also carried the mail and parcels of freight like UPS carries today.  Joe Evans, whose wife was Nicie, was Postmistress, and the post office had a two wheeled cart which Joe used to take the mail from the train to the Post Office.  The parcels of freight were kept in the depot and the agent took care of same.  The depot agent also sold the tickets to people riding the passenger train.  In those days there were two waiting rooms.  Also, the passenger cars were segregated. One was for whites and the other was for colored.  The depot agent also had a telegraph in addition to a telephone. Meads Ballard was the depot agent at Bassfield in the 1930s. There were always advertisements about train trips by the American Association of Railroads in the waiting room that intrigued me. I longed to see the world.  Many years later my dream was fulfilled after my daughter Rebecca graduated from high school and our entire family took a rail trip via Jackson, Mississippi to Chicago and San Francisco.    

In the 1930s, the railroad was maintained by a section crew.  They lived in 4 houses facing the tracks.  The section foreman lived in a larger house that faced east.  They maintained about 8 miles of track.  Wardell Gray’s father, who lived to be 115 worked in the section gang part of the time.  The section gang also had a motor car with a trailer.  It was a fascinating moment watching and listening to the chant of the section gang as they installed and lined up rail.  It was team work at its best.  The motor car was locked in a shed when not working.

During the depression, numerous poles for piling were loaded onto gondola cars by Mr. Sam Graham from the New Chapel area of Covington County.  These poles were loaded by placing two poles onto the gondola car and pulling the pole with a truck wench or mules onto the car.  Also, many people cut cross ties with an axe and would load them onto a box car. 

There was a large paper mill at Bogalusa, Lousiana.  Pulpwood was also loaded onto paper wood cars at Bassfield for shipment to the paper mill.

The freight trains during the war did a big business.  There was two locals during the war  and they generally had 30 to 40 cars and the Mikado 120 engines or one of the 130s pulled them.  In the evening, Train 51 would usually have about 75 cars and was double headed by one of the 120 engines and the larger 140s engines.  I would try to work until about 6:30 p.m. when Train 51 would pass our field. It was a thru train that took freight off of the Southern Railroad in Hattiesburg to Natchez and then on the Louisiana & Arkansas to Dallas and to Hope Arkansas.  The Eastbound train 52 would come by Bassfield in the early morning hours.       

When I was 13 years old, WW II was well underway.  One Sunday in June we returned from church and I heard Spec Brinson on old 123 blowing his whistle about 2 miles below Bassfield.  I told my parents that I was going to go up to the crossing and watch the train.  I knew that it had to be a troop train as there was no regular train scheduled at that time on Sundays. 

I went to the crossing and observed a double-header steam train coming around the curve just west of Bassfield.  It was pulling flat cars loaded with tanks, half tracks, and other armored vehicles; I counted 75 cars.  It was the 43^rd infantry division armored equipment heading for the Far East in the war against Japan.  There was a guard on each car.  On the rear of the red caboose there was a soldier with a submachine gun .  I waved to him and he aimed the gun at me and fired it and I heard bullets whiz by my head.  I took to the ditch. 

When I got back to the house I told my Dad that the soldier had shot at me and he called the Sheriff.  The Sheriff told him that the soldier had shot into a house down at Melba about 7 miles southeast of Bassfield and that he was already going to stop the train.  They did stop it at Prentiss and found that the soldier had “gone off his rocker.”  In any event, I was nearly the first casualty in Bassfield from WWII.  I never heard anymore from the soldier. 

One of the saddest things as I now look back that occurred on the Railroad by our house during World War 2 were train loads of Japanese-Americans who had been summarily evicted from their homes in California and placed in camps.  One of the internment camps was located at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.  These trains came over what is now known as the Burlington Route from the West Coast to New Albany, Mississippi where they got onto the GM&O Railroad and stayed on it for the next 10 hours until they reached Wanilla, Mississippi where they transferred to the Mississippi Central Railroad for the final route to Camp Shelby where they were interned.

My obsession with the Mississippi Central Railroad during WW2 was great.  My daddy purchased a palomino horse for me.  I had the horse for a week.  My black friend, Dale Hut, let my friend, Tommy Carraway, ride the horse.  Tommy got on the horse and followed a car that was slowly moving southeast on gravel State Highway 42 and started passing the car and collided with a truck belonging to a merchant in Bassfield loaded with fertilizer.  The collision killed the horse and severely injured Tommy, who only lived a few hours after the accident. 

Sometime later my father purchased a white horse for me which I named Tony.  Tony was the fastest horse in the Bassfield area.  No other horse that I raced with Tony ever beat us.  I always knew during World War 2 when a troop train was going to come from the direction of Wanilla as the double-header steam engines with a caboose would come out of Hattiesburg and pass our house about 4 hours before they returned with a troop train.

Following the end of WW2, Camp Shelby was a separation center for troops returning from overseas.  The railroad sometimes had fifty troop trains a month during this period.  Most of those troop trains came over the Southern Railroad and then got on the Mississippi Central at Hattiesburg to Camp Shelby but quite a number came from Wanilla off of the Gulf Mobile and Ohio railroad and passed through Bassfield.  One day as I was standing near a railroad crossing, George William Thurman, was standing in the door of the rear car and hollered for me to call his Dad and tell him to come to Camp Shelby, which I did.                                       

When the troop train came from Wanilla it had to get over what we called “Geneva Hill” at Carson.  All loads and their engine power had to be computed based on the “Geneva Hill” which was the ruling grade for trains headed East on the Mississippi Central Railroad.  The grade on that hill is 1 to 1.7%, which means it went up 1 foot every hundred feet or 1 and 7 tenths of a foot every hundred feet.  At Jaybird Creek, three miles northwest of Carson the elevation is 250 feet above sea level.  At Carson the elevation is 492 feet above sea level.  I could always hear the train trying to get over this ruling grade.

 

After I got my horse  Tony, when I heard the whistle of the train on “Geneva Hill,” I would ride toward Carson and wait for the train.  Old Highway 42, which was then graveled, paralleled the Railroad and the right-of-way was cleared.  When the troop train, most of which were double-headers pulled by two steam engines with 17 cars passed Tony and me, I would let Tony loose and we would race the train.  By the time we got to Bassfield every soldier was sticking his head out cheering us on and we would pass the engines.  Tony could run almost 45 miles per hour.  We would always pass the train after about 1 ½ miles. 

One morning in January, 1934, my father took me with him to our cotton gin where he was checking on shipping some cotton seed to Jackson, Mississippi via rail.  After we got through, we went uptown about one-half block to my Uncle’s store where we all gathered around a pot bellied stove burning coal.  At that time there were four passenger trains passing through Bassfield each day.  It was about 7:35 a.m. when I heard engine 98 blowing for the crossing by my father’s cotton gin.  A few minutes later a black man named George Taylor came running into the store and told us that the train had hit a school bus.  My daddy, Uncle Boone, and every other man ran to the railroad.  My daddy told me to stay in the store with the lady clerk, Lillie Mae Carraway.  I was three years old, and my curiosity would not allow me to do so.  I went to the train wreck and there I saw a little Stapelton girl cut in half and several injured pupils of the school.  I also remember Mrs. Bessie Puckett comforting a little Aultman girl on a bench in front of the drug store.   The little girl also died.  A Roberts child died too, and many children were injured.  There were 42 passengers on the school bus and litigation later ensued and the issue was whether the bell of the locomotive was ringing as was then required by State law.

The school bus had a wooden body.  After this accident, the Mississippi Legislature outlawed school buses with wooden bodies.   The train wreck also resulted in the construction of new Highway 42 in 1936.  New Highway 42 was constructed from Carson to Bassfield to eliminate two crossings over the railroad.

The engineer on the train that hit the school bus was Mr. Rube Evans of Hattiesburg.  He and I often talked to each other in later years.  He said that he rang the bell.  Mr. O. T. Hathorn testified that he did not.  Mr. Rube never liked Mr. Hathorn as he felt he had perjured himself.  The case finally went to the United States Supreme Court.  Rather than having the bell ringing question ever rise again, Mississippi Central Railroad installed two bells on their steam engines, one of which rang all the time. 

Another interesting sight on the Railroad about every year during the 1930’s was circus trains, which came by our house.  They always stopped in Bassfield and Mr. Will Kerley would have hay and feed for the animals.  I would go look at the lions, elephants, and tigers while they were being fed. 

One time there was a special train which pulled two major league baseball teams from McComb City to Hattiesburg via our house at Bassfield.  All the switches were open for this important train.  The train was not allowed to exceed 25 miles per hour due to the fact that it was carrying such a valuable cargo of baseball players.  The two baseball teams were the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians. 

One of the great places for socializing during the depression was gathering around the depot on Sunday afternoons waiting for Trains 3 and 4 to pass by.  I can remember to this day seeing Mr. Harry Applewhite and his wife Gladys parked in their car along with other couples at the Depot on Sunday evenings.  We would all look and see who would get on and off the train.  That was the big news of the day.  

 

My mother during the depression did not use clocks to get the time.  When No. 2 went by our house at 10 o’clock, she would always ask me to go get the stove wood and bring it in the house and would start noon dinner by cooking on the wood stove. 

A lot of my education was obtained on the front porch of the only house I lived in until I was grown.  Every night our entire family would sit on the porch and discuss various things including the progress being made by our soldiers in WWII.  At 10:03 p.m. train 51 would pass our house west bound.  This would end our discussions for the day. I am now semi retired and again live in the house I was raised in during my youth.   

My closest friends in the 1930’s were the children of the depot agent’s, George, Terry, Frank, and Barthwick.  Mr. Meads Ballard was the depot agent and he was married to a lady we called “Mrs. Jake Ballard” who originally was a Holloway from Carson.  I envied them very much during the 1930’s as each summer they would take a vacation on the train.  Mr. Ballard and his family had a pass, and could ride trains for free all over our Country.  I enjoyed very much listening to them tell about the places they had been.

The Depot at Bassfield was painted light brown with a darker brown wainscoat about 4 feet from the ground up. On the East side there were two waiting rooms, one for whites, and, one for colored.  In the middle Mr. Ballard , the depot agent,  had his office, and it was secure from the public.  There were two windows with bars where the agent sold tickets to passengers or attended to freight shipments.    There was a phone and telegraph which was extensively used.  Railway Express items were stored in the West part of the building.  There was a wagon which was used to unload items from the train.  There was a coal burning stove in the agent’s area.  There were advertisements of places to see posted in the waiting room.  Some of these were from the American Railway Association.   The Depot Agent also took care of carloads of outbound and in bound freight shipments. There were no restrooms in the Depot but two outdoor privies for whites and colored. There was a long pole located near the agent’s office and on it was the semaphore with a white board and a red board.  The red board informed the train approaching the Depot to stop while the white board was clearance to proceed.     

Around 1940 the Ballard’s moved from Bassfield and this was a shock to me to lose my friends.  However, we have kept in touch occasionally with each other to this day.  George and Frank live in Reno, Nevada.  Barthwick lives in Denver, Colorado.  Terry and his sister Doris live in Eureka, California. I don’t know where Gerald lives.

We were sitting on the porch one night in 1937 as Train 51 approached when Russell Irby of Brookhaven, who had married my cousin Bernice Garraway, called and told us that Paul Deen had eloped with my sister, Myra Louise, and they were going to honeymoon in New Orleans.  Paul had been in the Marines and this excited me.  Also, it was a relief to my Mother who had previously expressed her concern over my sister’s attraction to Lamar Puckett, who imbibed alcohol.  Most of the sermons of the Baptist preachers in those days, following the end of prohibition, were about whiskey.  It sounded like everyone who took a nip was going to hell.

Around 1946, we had a Daley Family that lived across the railroad from our home. One of the guys was named Benny.  He was a hobo who traveled all over the Country. The evening thru freight, which was being double headed by two engines, passed our crossing and it was really moving and Benny jumped up and got on the train and he was slung against the car he caught very hard but hung on as the train sped away.

 When I was in Korea in the Air Force the Mississippi Central dieselized and got rid of its steam heritage.  There is only one Mississippi Central steam engine still in existence, and it is passenger engine 98 which is on the Wilmington and Western tourist railroad in Delaware.  The Mississippi Central Railroad was later purchased by the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad in 1965.  The Illinois Central continued using the railroad by my house until around 1983, and it has since been abandoned.  The railroad is currently the Long Leaf Trace rail trail.  The railroad may be gone, but its memories will live on in my mind forever.

522nd Fighter Escort Squadron

In 1948 I attended Hinds Junior College at Raymond, Mississippi.  A group on campus was organizing a National Guard Unit.  They needed a few additional members and one of my friends said they would pay him $20 to get another person to join.  I joined, and we split the $20.  I was then in the 106 Clearing Company of the 31^st Infantry Division also known as the “Dixie Division”. 

During the summer of 1949 we rode a troop train from Raymond, Mississippi through Jackson on the Illinois Central to Meridian, Mississippi.  We then proceeded on the Southern Railroad to Birmingham, Alabama.  The final segment of our trip was on the Central of Georgia Railroad to Columbus, Georgia. 

We were then stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.  The first four days we slept in tents, and then we bivouacked in the woods for two nights.  It was the first time I had ever slept on the hard ground and the last time.   After bivouacking, we worked in a hospital in Fort Benning.  One Saturday afternoon a soldier was brought in who had not urinated in about two days.  He was in great distress.  I couldn’t find a doctor as they had all gone into the Town of Columbus.

Rather than listen to the guy groan and moan, I found a catheter and performed my first catherization.  After the guy finished peeing, he grabbed and hugged me.  At that time, however, I knew I would never aspire to be Surgeon General of the United States.

I had Sunday off at Fort Benning and rode in the rear of a six by six Army truck to Warm Springs, Georgia and visited the little White House where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.   

The next summer our Guard unit went to Fort McClellan, Alabama near Anniston for our two week camp.  While there, on June 25, 1950,  North Korean troops invaded South Korea and the forgotten War got started.  We were notified that the Dixie Division was being put on an alert status.  On the weekend I toured Anniston.  Fort McClellan was a nice place nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. 

The GI Bill of rights was not then in effect.  I felt it would be reinstated, and about a year later the GI Bill of rights was reinstated.  The Army had started drafting men into the Army, and I was already a member of a National Guard division that had been put on alert status.  Also, I did not have enough money to go to a four year college.

 

I was attracted to the Air Force and decided to enlist, and on July 31, 1950, I signed up for four years.  The next day I was sent to Lackland Air Force Base via the City of New

Orleans from Jackson, Mississippi on the Illinois Central to New Orleans and then on the Sunset Limited on the Southern Pacific to San Antonio, Texas arriving about 1:00 a.m.

We were at Lackland five days and then 28 bus loads of us were transported to Sheppard Air Force Base at Wichita Falls, Texas for our basic training.  There were 28 bus loads because many airmen enlisted in the Air Force to avoid the draft.  We traveled up U.S. 281 through Johnson City, Marble Falls, Burnet, Lampasas, Stephenville, and Mineral Wells.  It took nearly the whole day.  I was getting an eye full of Texas in a hurry. 

When we got to Sheppard Field, they put us in barracks that hadn’t been used since World War II. The first week we cleaned the barracks, mowed the grass, and pulled the weeds around the buildings.  Then we started marching and going to classes.  The classes were similar to college and they had good instructors. 

We had one day on the firing range.  It was about 10 miles Northwest of Sheppard near the Red River which divided Oklahoma and Texas.  We had to walk back to the base after our firearms training.

Wichita Falls had the worst electrical storms I ever witnessed.

The worst day at Sheppard was when our whole barracks pulled KP.  This was only one time that I was placed on KP during basic training.  I had to wash the pots and pans for 5,500 airmen who went through the mess hall three times that day.  We worked in the mess hall from 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.  Around mid September 1950, we completed our basic training.  We thought the Air Force would give us leave to go home after basic training, but the War had changed that policy. 

Some men from my outfit stayed at Sheppard to go to aircraft mechanic’s school.  Some men were sent to Keesler AFB for further training with radar, and some were sent to Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio.  My group was sent to Wichita Falls, Texas where we were put on one Pullman passenger car of a train for transport to Austin, Texas to Bergstrom Air Force Base.  I enjoyed this train ride very much.  We went parallel to the Red River.  I enjoyed seeing the cotton fields along the way.  They made me homesick.  We went through little towns like Bassfield named Henrietta, Ringgold, Nocona, and Whitesboro. Our car was a Pullman and we had a long wait at Whitesboro for the Southbound Katy train which took us during the night while I was asleep to Austin.  About 9:00 a.m. we went via bus to Bergstrom Air Force Base.

At Bergstrom they literally didn’t know what to do with us.  They assigned most of us temporarily to Food Service.  I then pulled KP full time.  It was quite different from Sheppard as we didn’t feed very many airmen.  Furthermore, we only worked one shift   as did the regular personnel.  I had run track in college and resumed running.  The duty was easy, but I wanted to do something more challenging.  I had completed two years of college.

 In October, 1950, I got permission to talk to the Acting Base Personnel Officer, Major Joe Herold, and told him that I was interested in getting into cadets and would like to be assigned to operations so I could be around flying pending my taking the test.  There were three fighter squadrons in the 27^th Fighter Escort Wing, the 522^nd, the 523^rd, and, the 524^th.  Each squadron had about 25 F-84E planes.  These squadrons had been ferrying F-84s to Europe for NATO.   The Wing was a part of 8^th Air Force and was in General Curtis LeMay’s Strategic Air Command.  Its prime mission was to escort bombers.

The 27^th Fighter Escort Wing was later awarded the Mackay Trophy by General Hoyt S. Vandenburg.  The trophy was won for its mass movement across the Atlantic of 180 Republic F-84 Thunderjets, in two flights of  90 each from September 15 through October 30, 1950 during a time when there was not any in flight refueling.

Earlier, on October 1, 1950, 2^nd Lt. William P.  Martin of the 522^nd Fighter Escort Squadron , suffered a loss of power during takeoff from  Wayne-Major airport near Detroit, Michigan and his plane ran off the 7000 foot runway  and caught fire on impact and at about 100 mph crashed thru a cyclone fence, crossed two ditches and Lt Martin only had minor injuries though his plane was extensively demolished.    

On November 9, 1950, Bergstrom was put on alert for overseas.  November 11, Armistice Day, was the scheduled date of deployment.  There was all type of activity on the Base.  Military air transports, and civilian air lines landed planes at Bergstrom for shipments overseas.  We were not permitted to tell anyone we were going overseas.

On November 10, I completed pulling KP and was taking a shower when the First Sergeant shouted for me to come to the orderly room.  That was the last day I had to pull KP.  The First Sergeant handed me my orders assigning me to the 522^nd Fighter Escort Squadron.  I reported to then Major John W. Lafko.  Major Lafko was the Operations Officer for the 522^nd Squadron.  He told me to not unpack my bags as I was going on the first plane to San Diego the next day.  He further told me that the wife of a tech sergeant who had worked in operations was gravely ill and that he had been granted a compassionate leave of being required to go overseas and that Major Herold had recommended me.  I couldn’t tell my parents about the change of circumstances or that I was going overseas.  We were not allowed to make phone calls since we were under a war alert.

The next day I boarded a C- 97 aircraft around noon at Bergstrom and we were soon airborne.  We flew over El Paso, Tucson, Yuma, and landed at San Diego Naval Air Station.  It was my first time to see the Pacific Ocean.  We were then taken to the aircraft carrier Bairoka.  This was my first time on a naval ship.  Our F-84Es were loaded onto the aircraft carrier and three days later on November 14, 1950, we departed California.  I shall never forget standing on the fantail of the ship and seeing us leave the good old USA.  I was going to war in a far away land some ten thousand miles from Bassfield.  As we were leaving the dock, the song Harbor Lights was playing.  Harbor Lights was a popular song back then.

The USS Bairoko was a small CVE115 Navy  aircraft carrier.  The Carrier traveled

At 19.1 knots.  At San Diego they asked for volunteers to work as waiters in the Chief

Petty Officer’s galley and I volunteered.

  

We were on the aircraft carrier until November 30 when we arrived at Yokosuka, Japan.  Enroute I heard one of the naval guys who slept in a bunk across from me say he was going down below to the bottom of the ship and lift weights with Shirley.  At Hinds Junior College I knew a guy from Alabama who lifted weights, and his name was Shirley.  When we finally got to the bottom of the ship there was old Shirley I knew at Hinds. 

Until we got north of Midway Island everything was fine. Then I got seasick and I mean sick.  I never realized anyone could vomit so much and be so nauseated.  It lasted two days.  You can have the Navy.

In the meantime the Chinese had gotten in the Korean War.  The news was posted daily on a bulletin board on the ship.  We were going over TDY which meant for temporary duty.  However, we knew that with China in the war we wouldn’t be going back to Bergstrom anytime soon.

On November 23, 1950 I celebrated my first Thanksgiving away from home on the USS Bairoko (CVE115).  Its Captain was W.A. Raborn Jr., USN, Commanding Officer; Commander M.C. Reeves, USN Executive Officer, and Lieut. Cmdr, B.C. Beaston, USN Supply Officer.  The Thanksgiving dinner menu consisted of Cream of Tomato Soup, Saltines, Shrimp Cocktail, Roast Tom Turkey, Giblet Gravy, Oyster Dressing, Candied Sweet Potatoes , Buttered Peas, Snowflake Potatoes, Stuffed Celery Stalks, Cranberry Sauce, Quartered Lettuce, Russian Dressing,  Ripe and Stuffed Olives, Sweet Pickles, Pumpkin Pie, Parker House Rolls,  Butter, Mixed Candy, Mixed  Nuts in Shells, Coffee, Fresh Milk, Cigarettes and Cigars.

They gave us a Thanksgiving Day Prayer which stated “Most High and Mighty Ruler of the universe, by whom our nation hath been established in and preserved in union; in this feast of harvest we thank Thee also for the fruits of the earth. We thank thee also for the rich land given unto us for an inheritance, and the great power entrusted to the people; for protection from outward dangers, and deliverance from inward strife; for an honorable place among the family of nations, and for the opportunity of increasing service to the world.  This day we are especially reminded of thy goodness and we pledge thee thy gratitude anew.  Continue, we pray Thee, to keep us and our loved ones safe beneath the shadow of Thy everlasting arm.” 

The Navy personnel were all friendly.  One of the sailors got me a bunk where his group slept. Many of the airmen slept on cots in the mess hall.  

The Pacific is one hell of a big pond.  I never fully realized how immense it really was until I went overseas.  However, the seas were relatively calm our entire 16 days.  I went upon the flight deck and fantail many times and just stared at all that water.

We pulled into Tokyo Bay in a dense fog.  Then we had the difficult job of taking our baggage, which consisted of a knapsack strapped onto our backs with our carbine, and lowering ourselves off the flight deck on a net ladder to a LST type boat many feet below us.  I am not sure how many feet we descended, but my best guess at this time was that it was well over 40 feet.  The LST boats took us to land.  I was amazed to see so many old abandoned Japanese ships from World War II still in the harbor.  We were then driven to Yokota Air Base near Tokyo.  We then stayed in a barracks.

While I had been at Hinds Jr. College, I had watched a Cuban guy hypnotize some students one night.  At Yokota, I decided I could do it.  I then got my high school class ring and kept telling a guy named Carter that he had to watch the ring as I waived it before his eyes and that he must listen to my voice.  That at number 10 he would close his eyes and go to sleep.  When I got to number 10 he closed his eyes and I had told him when he awakened he would take a drink and get drunk.  I gave him a drink of water and he got drunker than anyone I had ever seen.  When I had counted to 10, another fellow named Bergeron from New Orleans was listening very intently from his top bunk and he went to sleep at the count of 10 also and fell onto a foot locker hitting his head.  He had to be taken to the Base Hospital emergency room and it took several stitches to sew the contusion on his head.  I had a time getting Carter sober.  This was the last time I ever hypnotized anyone.

Buford Blount from Bassfield, Mississippi,  was already in Japan and  was the commander of a C-119 Troop Carrier Squadron, had written his wife, my first cousin Cecil Glynn, that my outfit was going to be stationed at Kimpo near Seoul.  My Mother made me a Black fruit cake for Christmas and it went to Kimpo.  We originally were to go to Seoul, but the Chinese were getting too close so they changed our Korean operation to K-2 near Taegu. 

While at Yokota, we were outfitted with winter clothing which would later come in very handy. We got the winter clothing at the nearby base named Tachikawa AFB. Yokota was a nice base and on a clear day one could see the snow on Mt Fuji.

In order to get to Korea, we were taken to Haneda Airport which was then the main airport for Tokyo.  I was on the manifest as the sole enlisted man.  I got on the plane and then an Army Colonel climbed aboard and said he was going to have to bump the lowest ranking man.  He wanted to know the lowest ranking man and I told him I was a recruit private and couldn’t get any lower than that.  I was bumped.

 I reported to the only Air Force Officer at Haneda that I could find.  He quartered me in a gym known as Beekman’s Gym at Haneda, and I stayed there for about a week.  I think I could have spent the War there as I was truly lost in the shuffle.  There were a lot of wounded marines in the gym from the Chosin reservoir battle.  One marine who was about my age slept on a cot next to mine.  His ears had frozen and he was waiting to return to the States.  He asked me if I had much experience with my carbine.  I told him I had shot it four times at Sheppard Field.  He then told me that at times everyone, regardless of their duties had to fight when the situation got tense and that he would teach me all about it.  In a few days I could take my carbine apart blindfolded and put it back together.  After four days he went back to the States.  I then inquired if I could be sent back to Yokota.  

Finally I got sent back to Yokota where the mechanics were getting the F-84Es ready for war.  It was about a 30 mile trip.  I was the only passenger on an Army bus going from Haneda to Yokota.  The driver took his sweet time.  He visited three whore houses enroute to Yokota.  He did business at only one.  The other two were too expensive.

It was at Yokota that I got to meet my boss Sergeant Reece Street.  Other than our planes being there I recall there was about 2 B-50s and a B-45.  They were used for secret intelligence gathering reconnaissance over flights of China and Russia.  A guy told Reece and me that if they became missing no one would ever know it.  When Boris Yeltsin became head of Russia, it came out that Russia had captured 132 airmen whom they had shot down performing these secret missions.  Yeltsin promised to help locate any survivors in Russian prisons.   None were ever were found. 

After a week in Yokota, I was sent back to Haneda.  On December 6, 1950, I was flown on a C- 54 to K-2 Air Base near Taegu, South Korea. The flight took several hours and I will never forget the noise of the metal planked runway when we finally landed just before daylight.  There were many F-51 Fighters, F-80 shooting stars and Sabre jet F-86 fighters as well as our F-84s and B-26s parked there. There was also a C-46 CAT Chinese Nationalist plane which was also rumored to belong to the CIA.

The South Koreans had erected our tents.  Our squadron operations was in a tent with a wooden floor and a pot bellied stove that burned kerosene.  It was then that I did my first work in squadron operations.  My first assignment by Major Lafko was tracing a map of Korea down at Base Operations which was hung on the wall in our Operations.  

Sergeant Street was a great guy.  He taught me everything he knew.  Each pilot had a flight record.  His flight time was kept on a form.  In addition his instrument time was

recorded along with his night flying time and type of combat mission.  These forms were called Form Fives.  We sent them to San Bernardino, California each month.

Our Operations Officer was a wonderful guy to work for, and his name was Major John W. Lafko.  He was highly intelligent, had attended Columbia University, and was a fact finder and a thinker.  In addition to keeping the pilots’ time, I would drive them in our weapons carrier to their planes.  Also Reece or I would have to type the mission assignments for the next day and take them to the Officer of the Day so he could awaken the pilots for their assigned missions.  Major Lafko or his assistant Captain Clark P. Manning had to wait for the frag order to come down before they could make the mission assignments while we were at K-2.  This would be about 3 a.m.

Our Squadron flew its first mission on December 7, 1950.  Street and I lived in the squadron operations tent on the flight line.  We both were awake most of the first 15 days, and then we took turns sleeping.   Street would sleep one night, while I prepared mission assignments.  I would sleep the next night, while Street prepared the mission assignments.  

On Christmas Eve 1950 we lost our first pilot, Second Lieutenant Roger Bascom, whose F-84 while on a combat mission crashed near Kopo-ri, Korea, about five miles southwest of  Kimpo.  Lt Bascom was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal, as were others in our squadron, who were killed in action.      A few days later on January 2, 1951, we lost Captain Charles McWhirk.  I was fast learning how dangerous and sad war could be. 

K-2 was situated in a valley.  To our south there was a high group of mountains.  Some of our officers went hunting and killed some pheasants.  I never got off the base the entire time I was in Korea.  It was very cold, especially at night.  I previously said my Mother had made me a Black Fruit cake for Christmas.  It went to Kimpo, and I read in the Stars and Stripes that the post office there had burned.  However, my cake was one of the last items mailed out.  I received it a few days before Christmas.  It was good.  Christmas 1950 was my first away from Bassfield. We had a good dinner with turkey and dressing.  I was really homesick. On the Christmas Dinner Menu, our Wing Commander, Colonel Ashley B. Packard, had a message:  “TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE 27TH  FIGHTER- ESCORT COMBAT ECHELON:  It is self- evident that Peace on Earth is to be achieved only by force.  We have been selected as one instrument to inflict that force on the enemy.  We can take small comfort from this so-called “joyful” season of the year, but each of us can gain a personal satisfaction if we accomplish our job in the best manner possible so that more of our aircraft with more ammo, rockets, bombs, and napalm can strike the enemy.  You have each suffered personal inconvenience and hardship in the past and will be expected to face it in the future.  Let your determination never waiver.”

Guy Razzeto of the 524^th Fighter Squadron gave me a good account of flying out of K-2 on the pierced steel runway: “K-2 was situated just a few miles from the City of Taegu.  It was in a valley that retained the smoke from the native’s charcoal cooking stoves.  During the winter months there was usually a temperature inversion which kept the smoke down below a few hundred feet much like an early morning fog.  The runway was only about 5500 feet long which was short compared to the 10,000 feet we were used to.  We had a few pilots that had difficulty in operating off of such a limited runway.  I vividly remember my first arrival there when we flew into Taegu from Yokota Japan. The runway was rough and a little slippery as compared to nice dry concrete.  My biggest shock came, after taxing back on a pierced steel taxiway to our squadron area, when our squadron maintenance crews signaled me to turn off of the steel into the DIRT.  We had always been so meticulous about ramp cleanliness, this was a little hard to accept.

The runways were under constant repair.  We had to be alert to the welder’s locations…

Taking off from K-2 was interesting as we were always loaded to the max depending on the temperature.  The rough runway and the smoke/haze/smog didn’t allow you to monitor much in the way of engine performance (tail pipe temperature etc.). Walter Craig aborted in front of me one early/dark morning – he didn’t sound off that he was aborting so I didn’t realize it until I could see him in the overrun, about 2,000 feet ahead.  I couldn’t jettison my load of armament as it would have hit him, so I just waited until the last second and pulled it over him.  He later said my tailpipe nearly hit him in the head.

The wind was normally out of the Northwest so we used runway 31 which aimed you at a little saddleback hill a few miles off of the runway.  As we were always trying to accelerate after takeoff, there was a temptation to leave the nose down and go through the saddle – until we found out that there were high tension lines running between the two high spots.  We usually turned slightly to the right, down the river, and then climbed out over the mountains to the North.

On occasion, we made JATO assisted takeoffs when we had large/heavy loads.   Once the first ships got off, there was so much smoke in the valley that everyone after that had a real instrument takeoff.  Luckily, by the time you got to the saddleback hill most of the smoke was behind you.  I guess the people in town thought we were cooking on a lot of charcoal burners. 

Even though the runways were so substandard we were able to operate there for a few months without too much difficulty. Having our field maintenance back at Itazuke made maintenance more difficult for our maintenance crews.  They did a fantastic job in keeping us in safe fully operational airplanes. They did it by working long hours in very difficult working conditions.  I could never praise them enough for a job well done.  I only flew 25 missions out of K-2.  After I had the 25 mission requirement I was assigned to a Forward Controller spot with the 7^th ROK Division.  When I returned to K-2 two months later the 27^th had moved back to Itazuke.  I caught a ride to Itazuke and operated out of there until we finished our tour in the Summer of ‘51.”     

        

My first week in Korea was rather exciting.  Our adjutant was Captain Charles F. Minter from Georgia.  He had found some lumber down at base supply.  He told me where it was located.  The base supply people wouldn’t let him have it on a requisition.  He ordered me to get it anyway.  He instructed me to go to the place where it was openly stored and told me how much to get.  I took our weapons carrier and got the required amount of lumber and then left Base Supply.  It was about a mile to our squadron operations.  I had hardly got out of Base Supply when I heard the MPs giving chase behind me.  I put the pedal to the metal and got to our operations tent when they arrested me.  Fortunately, Major Lafko heard me call for him and came out and persuaded them to release me.  They persisted and were threatening to court martial Minter as well as myself.  It took Major Lafko going to our Wing Commander, Colonel Ashley B. Packard, to get the matter dropped.  I was guilty of following orders which could have got me in serious trouble. 

During the Cuban crisis in the 1960’s I talked to Minter.  He was investigating the crash of a U-2 near Lumberton, Mississippi where I then practiced law.  He was then stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base. 

Minter retired a Major General on July 1, 1977, and died July 24, 1999.  I am glad that he became a General.  Had Major Lafko not got us out of trouble, his career could have been over.

We partitioned the tent with the lumber we stole and made a personal equipment room where the parachutes were stored.  Charlie Farside was in charge of the parachutes.  Charlie was an enlisted man from Vineland, New Jersey. 

On December 28, 1950, I was very homesick but was elated when Major Lafko told me he had Captain Buford Blount on the phone and that Buford wanted to talk to me.  Major Lafko let me visit him in his C-119 troop carrier plane parked at Base Operations.  Buford told me that they had made some supply drops not far from K-2.  He requested Major Lafko to let me have orders to take the weapons carrier to Pusan if we had to evacuate.  I visited with Buford in his plane that afternoon for about two hours.  His roommate from Millsaps College, prior to his entering West Point, Major William Fullilove, of the 524^th Squadron also came by for a visit. 

As I was leaving, Lieutenant Ralph J. Maglione accosted me and said he understood I had a friend who commanded a squadron of C-119s.  Lieutenant Maglione said the officers had a problem; they didn’t have any beer.  I told him I would do what I could but would need a quid pro quo (i.e., something for something).  He wanted to know what I needed.  I told him I needed a promotion.  Maglione said he would get me promoted if I could get Buford’s outfit to bring some beer, which they did.  I was now the Squadron’s bootlegger.  Also, I got promoted and I was made Sergeant in a year. 

Later, in early 1951 Maglione got the unlucky card, the ace of spades, and had to go to the front as a forward air controller.  Enroute in the weapons carrier to the Base Operations I told Maglione that I would like for him to get me one of those Russian type submachine guns if he got the chance.  A few weeks later the outfit to which Maglione was attached was attacked by the Chinese and all the Army Officers were killed.  Maglione (an Air Force officer) then took command and told the men “Let’s retake the hill”.  Maglione told me that they were shooting at them with a submachine gun and that as he went up the hill he kept thinking that he had promised to get me such a weapon.  They retook the hill and he got the gun and was awarded the Silver Star. However, he wasn’t allowed to bring the gun out of Korea.  

Korea was the coldest place I had ever been to, but our living conditions were much better than the Army’s.  Even though we were in a tent, I slept with my clothes on in a sleeping bag and still got cold.  One night a B- 26 Bomber crashed near our tent.  I never heard it.  On another morning I was awakened by our Commanding Officer, Colonel

Roswell Freedman.  Colonel Freedman was greatly distraught.  The Officer of the Day never received the mission assignments for the day.  Street came to my rescue and told the Colonel that it was my night off and that he had overslept and failed to get the mission assignments to the Officer of the Day.   Colonel Freedman gave Street a written reprimand.  I think that sealed Street’s fate with the 522^nd Squadron as he later reenlisted for six years and was sent to Morocco upon our return to the States.  Major Lafko told Reece his hands were tied.  I always believed Colonel Freedman or someone was giving Street further punishment for oversleeping. Colonel Freedman retired from the USAF after twenty years and did graduate work, then teaching part time, and was employed many years writing textbooks for the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base.  In 2004 he was 89 years old and is still highly intelligent and a good communicator.  

Our pilots were busy as hell flying missions.  When they would return from a mission they would be debriefed by Intelligence.  I would overhear them.  I remember my assistant operations officer, Clark Manning, complaining about the 1^st Calvary Army Division leaving so many trucks operable when they were retreating without destroying them.  On another occasion around January 21, 1951, I overheard Captain Allen McGuire telling about an Escort mission to the Yalu River and that he thought the B-29s weren’t too concerned that day about straying into China while bombing a bridge.  Captain McGuire and Captain William Slaughter of our squadron shot down two Russian MIGS on these escort missions. Captain Slaughter later got shot by ground fire and wounded in the shoulder.    With Captain Billy Edens flying his wing he was able to get to Suwon and get treatment.  Captain Slaughter was awarded the Purple Heart.  He got out of the Air Force and now lives in Cabool, Missouri.  Our operations Officer, John W. Lafko was a very aggressive pilot.  He flew 134 combat missions and our Captain Richard Rutherford flew 136 missions, which was the most missions flown by any pilot for our Wing.  Major Clark Manning flew 115 missions.  I also recall one of our pilots complaining about faulty intelligence. They had bombed a school building and killed a bunch of school children. This affected him greatly.  He said he was getting out of service when he got out of the war.

Our planes carried 50 caliber bullets, bombs, napalm and rockets, depending on the mission.  On heavy loads they had to have assistance to get airborne and this was through JATO bottles.  Our public relations officer, Captain Burton Wilder, had me to go to the end of the runway one day and took my picture waiving to our planes returning from a mission.  He later showed me a copy of The New York World Telegram Newspaper depicting the picture.

Major Manning had a very effective mission with napalm.  In early January, he was led to a place where there were a lot of enemy soldiers by a Tactical Control plane and gave them the napalm heat treatment that killed over 200 enemy soldiers.  Manning was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for that mission.  Another of our pilots, Lieutenant Paul Hummel, who flew 130 combat missions had great success on a late afternoon mission with napalm and shooting 50 caliber guns at the enemy.  Manning retired from the Air Force and then worked for the State of Texas pension retirement program.  Hummel got out of the Air Force, and became a professor at Nebraska and Hawaii.

On January 21, 1951, a MIG15 shot up the airplane being flown by 1^st Lt Grant W. Simpson of the 523^rd Fighter Escort Squadron causing the plane to burn and the pilot to bail out.  Lt Simpson died while a POW.  This was the only plane in our Wing that I recall being lost to a MIG15.

Colonel William Bertram of the 523^rd Squadron, on January 21,1951, shot down a MIG 15.  Later, on January 23, Lt Jake Kratt of the 523^rd shot down two MIG15s and on January 26 a Yak-3 plane.      

Captain Billy Edens was an outstanding pilot. Edens was an ace in World War 2, and shot down 7 1/2 enemy aircraft while with the 56^th Fighter Group, 62^nd Fighter Squadron, 8^th Air Force and destroyed 5 aircraft on the ground.   Edens, also, on June 8,  following D Day, rammed the tail of a German plane with his P-47 when he ran out of ammunition in assisting a fellow pilot and was awarded the silver star and received two purple hearts during the time he was in service. Also he was awarded the DFC with 3 OLCs  and Air Medal with 15 OLCs   He bailed out and made it to the American lines.  He crash landed a F-84 plane in a Texas field prior to our going overseas.  He was in a German POW camp in WW2 having been shot down on his last mission and then was rescued by the Russians and fought with them against the Germans.  When the War ended the Russians took him and 200 other American Officers prisoner.    Edens and one other Officer escaped from the Russians and in a month reached the American lines.  The other 198 were never heard from by anyone.  On one of the missions to MIG Alley, Edens calmly radioed that he was cornered by 4 MIGs and requested some help from his fellow pilots.  Edens stayed in the Air Force 32 years and then became a successful financial adviser for the next 30 years in Chattanooga, Tennessee.   

Captain W.O. Cottingham, on March 4, 1951, had a  round of 50 caliber ammunition to  enter his aircraft shattering his glass canopy.  Though partially blinded by glass fragments which struck his eye, he was able to maintain control of his aircraft and landed at K-2, and, was subsequently the first member of the 27^th Fighter Escort Wing to receive the Purple Heart for action in Korea. 

A few days later, on March 21, 1951, 1/Lt James L. Savage while on a combat mission over enemy territory received hits on his aircraft which caused a loss of power.  Lt Savage bailed out and landed in enemy territory.  After a short period of successful evasion towards friendly lines and rescue by a friendly patrol he was treated for his injuries and also received the Purple Heart. 

On May 25, 1951, sixteen Thunderjets of the 27^th Fighter Escort Wing had a very successful late afternoon mission.  A mosquito observation aircraft sighted some 10,000 enemy troops withdrawing near Inje, Korea.  The sixteen aircraft were credited with killing over 700 casualties and the four flight commanders, Captain John P. Torland, Captain Eugene MacMurray, Captain Edwin R. Dischinger and 1^st Lt. Guy B. Razzeto were awarded distinguished flying crosses and the other pilots, 2^nd Lt. Henry J. Sullivan, 1^st Lt. Roger L. Cooper, 1^st Lt. John Birt, 2^nd Lt. Clifford C. Calloway, Jr., 2^nd Lt. Billy P. White, 1^st Lt. Lester K. Sweat, Captain Marshall M. Barton, 1^st Lt. Max G. Gibson, 1^st Lt. John E. Bridges, 1^st Lt. James C. Scheuer, 1^st Lt. Charles E. Toynbee, and 1^st Lt. William Y. Smith, were awarded Air Medals or Oak Leaf Clusters to the Air Medal. 

On one mission to MIG Alley, 1^st Lt. Alton Pendleton and 2^nd Lt. James West both got lost from their wingman and returned safely to K-2.  Pendleton wrote a book “Three O’Clock High” which is on the internet and vividly describes that mission. 

Not all napalm runs were successful.  On June 1, 1951, 1LT Lester K. Sweat while on a napalm run, was killed when his plane crashed into a hillside near Mundung-ni, North Korea. LT Sweat was from Plant City, Florida.  

Another pilot in our squadron, 1Lt David Porter Barnes, a West Point graduate, was shot down by anti-aircraft ground fire on April 22,1951,  near Kumwha, North Korea,  successfully bailed out of his plane, but died June 20, 1951, while a prisoner of war.  He was from Crawford, Nebraska. We lost a helicopter trying to rescue him.  Seeing the movie, The Bridges Off Toki-Ri, always reminded me of Lt Barnes.    Lt Barnes father was a General and both he and General Van Fleet lost their sons in the Korean conflict.

                                                                                                                                                                                                

I believe some people actually have premonitions of their death.  During World War II, I took some cotton to a gin.  The fellow there whom I talked to was William Earl Burkett.  He showed me his draft notice and said that was his death warrant.  A year later he was killed near Normandy.   I took Lt Ernest Hutchens in the weapons carrier from squadron operations at K-2 in Korea to Base operations.  He had been selected to go to the front as a forward ground controller.  He told me that was his death warrant.  It was.  He died from a gunshot wound to the head and reportedly had his body pulled apart by two vehicles.    

After I got out of the Air Force, I got to see Maglione again.  Fourteen years later, I read in the newspaper that the Thunderbirds were coming to Columbus Air Force Base at Columbus, Mississippi and that their Commander was Lieutenant Colonel Ralph J. Maglione of Nellis Air Force Base.  I called Ralph and told him I would see him in Columbus, which I did.  He was the same old guy.   

A few years later I walked in my bank at Lumberton, Mississippi and my Banker, J.V. McElveen, told me he had a problem.  He stated that his nephew who lived in Washington State was trying to get into the Air Force Academy but had failed to get admitted.  I suggested that they contact Senator John Stennis who was then the chairman of the Armed Forces Committee.  I also suggested that it wouldn’t hurt to contact Senator Magnuson of Washington State.  McElveen said they had already done this to no avail.

I told McElveen that he just didn’t know enough people and to dial the Pentagon and ask for General Maglione.  When Maglione answered I introduced him to McElveen and told him the problem and inquired whether or not he could assist the nephew in getting admitted to the Air Force Academy.  He said, “Garraway, is there a cow left in Texas?”

Maglione told us that he had two appointments in his pocket and that he would help us get the nephew into the academy.  About 11 p.m. that night, just after I had gone to sleep, McElveen called and said you really have a friend in Maglione. “Guess what?” A few minutes ago my nephew called me from the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs and told me that Maglione had sent a plane to Seattle and flew him to the Academy. 

Major General Maglione retired February 1, 1977 and died July 15, 1990.  He was a great friend.

Getting back to Korea.  My time in Korea was coming to an end in January due to the Chinese pushing further south.  Our base was overly crowded and on January 22, 1951 I was sent to Itazuke Air Force Base at Fukuoka, Japan to set up squadron operations there. We departed K- 2 in a C-54. On takeoff the number three engine conked out.  The pilot

told us we may have to throw out some baggage.  Fortunately he was able to get above the mountains and we proceeded south without further difficulty.  It wasn’t long until we crossed Pusan and the Sea of Japan.  We flew near Nagasaki and finally landed at Itazuke Air Force Base.  About a week later, our F-84Es arrived from K2 and started flying combat missions to Korea from Itazuke.  Reece Street and I always thought we were safe living in the squadron operations tent.  However, assumptions always get you in trouble.  The following is Sergeant Street’s account of what happened the night after I left Korea:   

I don’t recall the exact date we were closing out our 27th Fighter Wing combat operations in Taegu (otherwise known as K-2) Korea.  I do recall it being in the

early spring of 1951, most probably in the month of May.

I was the senior NCOIC of the 522nd Fighter Squadron, Operations Office and it was my responsibility to send my assistant, Bobby Garraway, ahead of our       departing squadron to set up operations at the new location in Itazuke, Japan.

The weather appeared to be breaking quite rapidly, much of the compacted snow and ice had already melted, but the ice would reform again every night as the temperature dropped.

Bobby and I both bunked in the Operations Office on the Flight Line, a considerable distance from the remainder of our squadron.  We did however have Military Police patrolling the area and considered ourselves quite safe.  But, I found that our safety could be jeopardized.

I had been awake since about 3 a.m. on this particular day, and now it was about 10 or 11 p.m. that evening.  I had laid down on my bunk and had gone to sleep.  Colonel John W. Lafko, our Operations Officer was in the Operations Office with me, making out the next day’s flight schedules.

Colonel Lafko heard a guard call, "halt, who goes there,” right in front of the doorway to the Operations Office tent.  Lafko woke me and told me to check it out.  I started toward the door and he called to me, "where is your weapon?"  I picked up my carbine and started out again, the Colonel asked "is it loaded?"  I slipped a clip of ammo into the carbine and pulled the slide back to inject a round of 30 caliber ammo into the chamber.  Went out the door and was looking at the back side of a sentry who had challenged 2 "huge" Chinese soldiers that were standing on the opposite side of "The Gory Wagon."

(More on the Gory Wagon to follow)

I walked around behind the Chinese soldiers and poked them in the back side with my rifle, making them put their hands atop their head to form a surrender mode.  I called to Colonel Lafko to open the door and assist the capture of the only 2 soldiers that were captured in Korea by our 27th Fighter Wing.

Lafko told me to bring them inside the Operations Office, so he could frisk them of any weapons they may have concealed on their person.  As he was searching them, I stood behind them with my weapon trained on them in case they started to resist or cause any harm to the Colonel.

The sentry that had originally stopped them had called the Officer of the Day to come.  Colonel Lafko has by now emptied their pockets and assured that they did not have any weapons, as the Officer of the Day took them away for further questioning and incarceration.

Both the Colonel and I relax and I press the button on my rifle to unload the clip of ammo, pull back the slide to remove the round that was in the chamber.  I laugh, the Colonel asks, "what’s so funny?"  I said, "Colonel, we are two lucky people tonight, we just captured 2 enemy soldiers with an empty gun, my carbine was not loaded, the round of ammo did not go into the chamber."

I don’t recall if I was embarrassed or not, but shortly thereafter, while we were in Japan, having a beer at the PX, Colonel Lafko came in and asked if he could join the group.  He pulled up a chair beside me and of course the tone of the conversation changed now that our new Commanding Officer, Colonel John W. Lafko, had joined with the enlisted men to relax.  Lafko, said to the men, "Has Reece told you guys about the 2 Chinese soldiers that he captured?" "No Sir" was the reply around the table...."tell us, we were not aware of it.”  So, he did, but the Colonel added so much to it that was not true.  Word of his

story was related to my father by one of the men at the table, Lonnie C. Burchfield of Maryville, Tennessee.  After we had returned from the Far East, and had taken some leave, Burchfield and his girlfriend came to Johnson City Tennessee to spend some time with me and my future wife to be, Betty Bennett.  While he was there, he related the Colonel’s version to my father, who thought me to be some kind of a hero, but I was not aware that Burchfield had said anything to dad until later when he and I were fishing and

dad said to me, "tell me about the Chinese you captured."

We had a "Dodge made Weapons Carrier" assigned to operations.  Bobby lettered on the side of the vehicle "THE GLORY WAGON" because we used it primarily to chauffer the pilots to and from their F-84 Thunderjets. Captain Pat Lavy, one of the squadron pilots, rubbed out the "L" making it read, "THE G ORY WAGON".”

I was glad to be out of Korea. My stay there was barely a month and a half.  There were 36,000 Americans who gave their lives in that cold country.  To this day, we still have over 30,000 troops there.

On my first day at The Itazuke Strip (there were two bases called Base One and The Strip, about 4 miles apart), I saw a C-119 plane circling the base.  It was one of Buford’s planes bringing the goodies.  They had landed at K- 2 and they had learned I had been transferred to Itazuke.  Buford had them well trained to follow orders.  That ended my days of being the squadron’s bootlegger.

Itazuke Strip was a nice base, and the barracks were actually nicer than those at Bergstrom AFB.  It was a located about 10 miles from downtown Fukuoka.  Fukuoka is the place where there were many prisoner of war camps during World War II and one of our neighbors at Bassfield named Claude Leland Burkett, a marine, was there as a POW.  The Japanese made him work in a coal mine. Claude Leland was at Corregidor when it fell.  He survived the war.

I wrote a letter to Miss Ruth Boyd who was my English teacher at Hinds Jr. College after I got to Itazuke.  She read it to her class.  Two weeks later I received a letter from a student named Peyton who told me that he had been stationed at Itazuke during occupation and had met a nice Japanese girl and urged me to meet her which I did.  She was not only nice looking but was highly intelligent and spoke several languages.  We would attend French movies and she would tell me in perfect English what was being said.

On one occasion I went with a guy I hardly knew to a cabaret and rented a Geisha girl. There was no sex, just female company.  We drank some Nippon beer at the cabaret.  After we left the guy I was with confronted two girls while we were waiting for a bus.  All of a sudden he grabbed one of the girls and tried to rape her.  I grabbed him with a half nelson around his neck and pulled him off of her.  After that I never went with anyone I didn’t know to anyplace.  You live and learn.

There was a river in Fukuoka and I was amazed to see so many women scrubbing clothes in the River.

Every time I went into Fukuoka I would pass the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka.  A Mr. Bruce worked there and a young Japanese boy assisted Mr. Bruce with his State Department duties.  Never did I dream that years later when I was practicing law in Lumberton, Mississippi that I would again be living close to them nor that through the Japanese boy I would uncover the CIA in Lumberton.  After discovering the CIA presence, I contacted the FBI in Jackson, Mississippi by phone to inform them of the matter.  I told them the matter involved espionage and I did not know if it was the Russian’s KGB or the CIA.    The FBI immediately sent two agents to meet with me.  A week later the agents returned with congratulations from J. Edgar Hoover who said that I ought to be an FBI agent. It was the CIA I had uncovered.

There was a curfew on how long airmen could stay in Fukuoka at night.  I believe it was 12:30 a.m.  One night I was delayed and stayed in town all night.  The next morning I caught a train out to other base which we called base one and hitched a ride in a truck taking food to our base at the strip. I covered up real good and made it through the Base gate without being discovered.  Consequently I was not AWOL.

I witnessed several plane crashes while stationed in Itazuke.  One day I learned a plane was in trouble and was trying to make it back to base.  I ran out of our operations and watched him try to bring it in as the engine had flamed out.  He nearly made it but hit a light pole and the aircraft exploded.  I heard they only found one foot intact.  On another

occasion I was driving from Base One  to our Strip Base and saw the pilot eject from his F-80 fighter but his chute didn’t open and he landed on an anti aircraft gun killing him instantly.  I didn’t know either pilot as they were not in our wing.  Nevertheless, I hated to see them die this way.  On May 1, 1951 our Wing Commander, Colonel Ashley B. Packard and Major Maurice H. Smith, checked out of our squadron operations, boarded their plane,  and they were airborne only seven minutes when they crashed and died. As I recall they were in a T-33 headed for Tokyo. 

I visited Buford Blount at Ashiya Air Base on one occasion.  I wore civilian clothes.  I rode a bus to Ashiya from Fukuoka.  The road was paved but very primitive.  At Ashiya, I visited Buford in his quarters which was in a nice home.  I returned to Fukuoka on a train.      

I had an accident in Korea.  In unloading a 55 gallon drum of kerosene I accidentally let it fall out of the weapons carrier and it hit my nose resulting in me having to be hospitalized in a tent hospital at Itazuke.  I did not dare go the hospital in K- 2 as I was afraid they would transfer me out of the 27^th Fighter Wing into another wing.  I had a severe deviated nose septum.  When I returned to the States I underwent surgery and got a new nose

On May 17, 1951, our outfit was relieved by the 136^th Fighter Bomb Wing.  About a month later, we boarded a Capital Airlines plane and flew the Pacific via Wake Island, Hickam Field, Hawaii, to Travis AFB near San Francisco, California.   At Travis, we boarded a giant C-124 transport plane and flew to Bergstrom AFB at Austin, Texas.  I was on the second plane being rotated in the Korean War and returning to the United States.  I shall never forget going through the chow line at the Itazuke mess and a Sergeant who was frying my egg asked me how long had I been overseas and I told him since last November and he cussed the Air Force.  The Air Force had extended him for another year, and he had already been there for three years.  It was good to get back to Bergstrom.  I was ready to go home to Bassfield, but the City of Austin delayed us several days as they gave us a parade on Monday, June 25, 1951, at 4:30 p.m., when we all rode in convertibles down Congress Avenue, the main street of Austin.  I was in convertible No. 51.

After the parade I met Senator Lyndon Johnson in the Stephen F. Austin Hotel and I shook his hand.  I also talked with Lady Bird Johnson who told me her folks were from Alabama.

Immediately after the parade, I was given a thirty day leave.  I felt I had ridden enough airplanes, so I took a Greyhound bus to New Orleans via Houston.  The trip took all night and finally ended about 1:30 p.m. when we arrived in New Orleans.  I paid a surprise visit to my sister, Marjorie Garraway, who then worked for Shell Oil Company.  It was wonderful seeing her.  I then caught the next Trailways Bus for Columbia, Mississippi where my parents, sister Myra Louise Deen, and her husband, Paul Deen, met the bus. It was great to get back home.  I was then 19 years of age.

I spent the next 30 days enjoying Bassfield and my Mother’s cooking.  I also dated a Bassfield girl named Carolyn Lott who was attending summer school at what is now known as the University of Southern Mississippi.  However my romance with her was short lived as I received a letter from her soon after my return to Bergstrom AFB that she had married.   

I started taking in the sights of Austin after my return to Bergstrom AFB.  I bought a used 1948 four door Mercury.  It gave me great mobility.  Usually, on paydays several guys would talk me into taking them to a place called the Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, Texas.  It was a whore house.  They furnished the gas and paid for the amenities.  A movie was later made about the best little whorehouse in Texas.  I am glad the camera crews were not there then. 

The Chicken Ranch was frequented by the University of Texas men, as well as the Texas A & M men.  Years later in 1954, after I was married and working on my law degree, I was looking for summer work and walked one end of New Orleans to the other looking for work, all to no avail.  I wound up in the Office of Humble Oil Company and met their personnel director, Courtney Pace.  Mr. Pace told me that I should have applied in December as all jobs were then filled.  I thanked him and as I was getting up to leave saw that he had a University of Texas ring and told him that I had attended UT while in the Air Force and had also matriculated through the Chicken Ranch at LaGrange.  He said “hell, you go back to Bassfield and I will get you a job before the week is over even if I have to fire a vacation relief man”.  The next day he called and told me to go to Touro in New Orleans and get my physical and go to work on Humble’s Rig 29 in the marshlands of Lake Hermitage, south of New Orleans.  I did, and started working making $350 per week, which was good wages in those days.  I worked for Humble three summers.  So the Chicken Ranch wasn’t all bad.  It helped me years later to get a job.

I had an operation for my deviated septum at Lackland AFB in the summer of 1951.   While there I met a Lebanese fellow from Austin.  His brother had a lounge on Guadalupe Street across from the University of Texas.  I believe it was named Lido Lounge.  After my operation and subsequent return to Bergstrom AFB, I went to the lounge one day and the Lebanese fellow took me to a Newman club meeting of UT Catholic students.  There I met an attractive young lady, and we went steady for quite a while.  We had different goals.  I was focused on completing my education, and she wanted to meet my parents and probably get married.  We eventually broke up.

I also dated a girl at UT who worked on The Daily Texan.  Willie Morris also worked on this paper and later was its editor.  Willie and my path would later cross many years later. Willie wrote many books, and my favorite book was My Dog Skip.

I enjoyed going to Zilker Park in Austin.  Within the Park there was a swimming pool known as Barton Springs Pool.  It is one of the largest springs in Texas.  While there one Sunday afternoon I met an attractive lady.  .  We became good friends

and I took her out into the country west of Roundrock to what we thought was a secluded place.  I spread an Army blanket on the ground and we lay down on the blanket when all of a sudden someone fired a rifle at us and bullets started whizzing past our heads.  We got the hell out of there.  It was the second and last time someone had shot at me.

I also dated a girl I met at the USO on the base at Bergstrom.  She was from Edinburg, Texas.

Lt John Mead lost his wife while we were in the war.   Mead had a huge Boxer dog that he wanted to take to his Father’s home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.  He got a T-6 airplane and got me to take the dog in the rear seat. Everything went fine until we got to Shreveport and started letting down for Barksdale to get some gas and that Boxer went wild when his ears started popping.  Mead let down much slower when we got to Pine Bluff.  I rode a bus to Bassfield, Mississippi and met Mead and the T-6 at Barksdale for the return to Bergstrom. On the return to Bergstrom, we went via Love Field at Dallas.  At Love field Mead could not get the plane cranked with the starter. Mead then convinced me I could start the plane by turning the propeller which I did but it scared the hell out of me.

There was a national air show at Wayne Major Airport in Detroit in 1951 and Major Clark P. Manning got me a seat on General Samuel E. Anderson’s C-54 airplane and I enjoyed the trip and the air show.  General Anderson was then Commander of Eighth Air Force.  I was the only passenger on the plane.  The Air Force spent a lot on that trip.

On December 11, 1951, all the Officers and Airmen of the 27^th Fighter Escort Wing  were in a parade as we were being honored  for having  been awarded the Mackay Trophy. Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg presented the MacKay Trophy to the 27^th Commander Colonel Raymond Rudell and the four-foot silver urn was displayed in the Officers Club, then the NCO Club and in stores in downtown Austin.  The trophy was won for the mass F-84 flight across the Atlantic of 180 F-84 planes nearly 6,000 miles during the fall of 1950 in an operation known as Fox Able Three.

General Vandenberg said, “Just a few weeks after the peaceful operation that won this trophy the 27^th began to distinguish itself in the Korean War, in the same type fighter that made the long flight to Europe, pilots of the 27^th flew more than 12,000 missions and 25,000 combat hours against the Communist enemy.  These missions were principally to provide assistance for our ground forces but your pilots also managed to shoot down enemy jet interceptors, Soviet-built MIGs.  Some pilots of the 27^th flew more than 140 combat missions in Korea and the entire unit reached a high level of experience and training in varied combat duties.”        

I took geopolitics at the University of Texas in 1952 while stationed at Bergstrom AFB.  One of the top officers at Bergstrom AFB and I were recognized by the Professor as having the best grades.  My goal to complete my education became a top priority.  I wanted to be a lawyer as I had decided when I was eleven years old  

Having a car enabled me to get a three day pass every 90 days.  Actually it was a four day pass as we always had Sundays off duty.  We were not supposed to go further than 75 miles from Bergstrom AFB.  Why not go 600 miles?  Consequently, I would leave after 5 p.m. on Thursday and drive all night to Bassfield.  I was beating the system and never got into any trouble.

On the weekend of July 4, 1952, Charlie Farside, Dan Cambalik, Lieutenant Bruce Grant, and I drove to New Orleans.  Grant had been in a car accident in Monroeville, Alabama and was going to get his car.  After arriving in New Orleans, we dropped Grant off at the bus station.  Charlie, Dan and I checked into the St Charles Hotel and slept until afternoon.  We then toured New Orleans into the night, and then drove to Bassfield. 

The next day my Aunt Beulah Dickson got us introduced to some girls which we took swimming at the Prentiss School swimming pool.  One of these girls was Cleo Thompson to whom I was greatly attracted.  I determined then and there that I was going to get her. It was love at first sight.  After we returned to Bergstrom AFB, I had to go to our gunnery range on Matagorda Island.  I drove down to Port O’ Conner and rode a barge out to the Island.  While there I wrote Cleo a letter but apparently it didn’t impress her as she never answered.

On one of my days at Matagorda Island, Lieutenant James Nichols radioed “May Day” and said he was going to try and get back to the runway and land as his engine had flamed out.  However, he couldn’t make it.  Instead he landed by cart wheeling across Matagorda Island about a mile west of the runway.  I took a crew chief with me in a jeep and we got to him.  He had got banged up pretty good in the crash.  He also had attempted to eject as his canopy was off.  I just knew that the seat was going to eject while we pulled him out. Fortunately it did not.  Lieutenant Nichols fully recuperated from the injuries he incurred during the plane crash. 

I returned to Bergstrom AFB after about ten days on Matagorda Island.  On Labor Day weekend 1952, I returned to Bassfield with Charles Farside on a three day pass.  I dated Cleo, and this time we started writing each other often after my return to Bergstrom.  I knew then I was going to marry her.  We have now been married 53 years and have two lovely daughters, Rebecca and Belynda.  So love at first sight isn’t a bad thing.

In 1952, I took the test for cadets and radar observer at Lackland AFB.  Frances Powers also took the test.  He later was shot down in a U-2 over Russia.  I was provisionally accepted for Radar observer school, but never went. The war in Korea was winding down and I concentrated on getting my BA degree and later admittance into Law School by taking courses at The University of Texas.

After our return to Bergstrom from our Korean tour our Wing was equipped with F-84Gs.  Our planes could also handle nuclear bombs.  The F-84G was the first single seat fighter with the ability to carry nuclear weapons.  Each pilot, under the war plan, had a target to drop his bomb in the event of war with Russia.  One Sunday, General Curtis E. LeMay, Commander of Strategic Air Command, checked out in one of the 522^nd Squadron’s F-84Gs.

On October 7, 1952, an RB-29 stationed at Yokota Air Force Base, Japan, while on an intelligence mission with a crew of eight was shot down by Russian fighter pilots flying  two LA-11  fighter planes north of Hokkaido Island, Japan.  Previously, on June 13, 1952 the Soviets shot down another RB-29 from Yokota Air Force Base in the Sea of Japan.  During these cold war times matters were tense with Russia.

All good things have to come to an end.  In October 1952, we were alerted again for overseas duty. Our F-84Gs made the crossing of the Pacific utilizing in-flight refueling in a move called Fox Peter Two.    This time the rest of us went in a C-54 military air transport plane to Misawa, Japan via Travis AFB, Hickam AFB, Wake Island, Haneda and Misawa AFB. Our flight squadron stayed at Misawa AFB about five days and then went to Chitose AFB on Hokkaido Island.

Our Wing Commander on this trip to Misawa and Chitose was the famous World War 2 ace, Colonel Don Blakeslee, who shot down 15.5 planes in Europe and who was a great leader of the units he commanded in World War 2.  Blakeslee, like LeMay, was a native of Ohio, and the Fourth Fighter Group which he commanded became the top fighter group in the Eighth Air Force and destroyed over 600 Nazi airplanes and had over 50 aces.    

For the second time in my career with the Air Force, I nearly got a court-martial.  On our second day at Chitose AFB, Major Manning.  who was the Operations Officer, went downstairs to brief the pilots about our role as air defense for Northern Japan.  I was instructed to stay by the hot line telephone to FEAF in Tokyo.  Our code name was Sebastian.  A few minutes after Manning started his briefing, the hot line rang.  I picked up the phone and said, “Sebastian”, which was our code name.  The person on the other line said, “Test red alert” and gave me the coordinates, routing, and altitude for our planes to target, but due to the poor reception I did not hear the word “test”.  I then took the information to Manning who read it and scrambled a bunch of planes.  I did tell Manning that the reception was poor and that he had better verify.  

A few minutes later after Colonel Lafko came upstairs, he answered the phone and a General in FEAF Headquarters told him he wanted to talk to the guy who had taken the call.  I then got on the phone.  It was a General.  The General wanted to know my name, rank, and serial number, which I gave him as requested.  He then told me he was sending a plane from Tokyo to Chitose AFB with MPs to arrest me for trying to start World War III.  I said, “May I explain my defense sir”?  He said I didn’t have to say anything as it might be held against me.  I said I understood, and that my defense was that phone reception was poor and that I had told my boss that the reception was poor and that he

needed to verify.  Further, I told the General that I had studied history and that on the island of Oahu on December 7, 1941, a radar observer reportedly told a Lieutenant that he had spotted numerous planes headed toward the Island and the Lieutenant did nothing, which resulted in the Pearl Harbor disaster and that a week later nearly all our planes on the ground at Clark Field in the Philippines were destroyed by the Japanese bombs and that I always said I wouldn’t be afraid to make a decision and act on it.

Colonel Lafko then told the General that he had to back me up, and that the General would need to court-martial both of us.  But if he would just get us a good phone - we would do our job.  That ended the matter.  Lafko was a good leader.  The planes headed towards Russia turned around.

A few days after we got to Chitose AFB, on October 10, 1952, we had a practice scramble of two planes; Clark Manning, my Operations Officer, and another guy, Paul Hummel, were supposed to fly.  However, Captain Robert Walker talked Manning out of flying the practice scramble and flew it himself.  On takeoff, I heard Walker say May Day.  I asked what the matter was, and he said his plane was giving him some difficulty and he was going to belly it in.  I wished him good luck.  That was one of the last voices he ever heard as the plane then exploded, killing him.  My future Operations Officer, William Eichelberger, was a close friend of Walker and his death was devastating to him.  I recently talked to Walker’s daughter in Memphis. 

On October 19, 1952, we lost another pilot, Jesse O’Brien, of San Antonio, Texas.  Captain O’Brien was a new pilot in the 522^nd Fighter Squadron.  He told me that he had a family in Texas and had made an error in staying in the reserve and had been called to duty.  On said day, Captain O’Brien and Lt. Clarence Harris took off on a scramble mission.

The following account in the Times Picayune Newspaper of New Orleans, Louisiana, Sunday, January 25, 1953, stated, “The tragic, agonizing story of a United States fighter pilot who clung to his parachute harness with bare hands and finally dropped to his death was pieced together at this air base Saturday.

The pilot was Captain Jesse C. O’Brien, of San Antonio, Texas, an easy going, blond, blue-eyed six footer whose body was recovered this week from the snow frosted slope of the highest volcano in Northern Japan.

Lt. Col. John W. Lafko of Austin Texas, and Poughkeepsie, New York commanding officer of the 522^nd Strategic Squadron of F-84 Thunderjets defending Japan, told Saturday of grim evidence of O’Brien’s last terrific struggle to hang on to the parachute.  He lost the struggle perhaps within only seconds of safety.

It was on October 19, Lafko said, that O’Brien and a buddy, Lt. Clarence W. Harris, Jr., of Austin and San Antonio, Texas, took off from a Northern Japanese base on an emergency patrol into Northern Hokkaido, Japan’s northern most island.

It was a “scramble” mission in which pilots must run to the planes, don Mae West lifejackets and parachutes and adjust innumerable harness inside their planes and take off within five minutes.

O’Brien was an old hand at harness buckling with him it had become second nature.  But on this day he somehow failed to buckle the leg straps of his parachute.

As they swept near the towering volcano, Asahi Dake, in North Central Hokkaido, a compressor in O’Brien’s jet engine exploded.  A moment later the plane, at 15,000 feet altitude caught fire, Harris saw the fire and called O’Brien by radio.

The Texan replied coolly: “I’m bailing out.”

The opening jolt of the parachute probably slid O’Brien through the chest harness, Lafko thinks.  But evidence indicates that the Texan caught straps of the chest harness as he was falling free-- and held on.

The altitude at that moment was about 10,000 feet.

Harris circled, watching O’Brien descend and radioed American bases for aid.

Harris saw the chute disappear behind a ridge and marked the spot well.  Paramedics jumped into the area.

O’Brien’s chute was found snagged in the top of a 90 foot pine tree.  The harness, undamaged, dangled to a height of about 50 feet above the ground.  The leg straps were unbuckled though the chest straps were locked in position.

There was no sign of O’Brien.

An intensive, four day air and ground search was futile.

On January 17, a lumberjack in the area was startled to see one ungloved hand protruding just above the snow.  Lafko traveled by plane, train, snowshoes and skis and arrived on the scene two days later. 

He identified the body as Jesse O’Brien.”

While we were at Chitose AFB, Japan Airlines started making flights from Tokyo. After a few days Emperor Hirohito got off one of their planes and I got to see him from our Operations Office.

In November and December it got very cold at Chitose.  I recall it got to 44 degrees below zero.  One cold day, Lieutenant Maglione asked me if I would like to take a flying

Trip with his roommate, Victor Ralon, in a T-6 to a radar station about 200 miles south where he was taking some movie film.  I told him “yes”.

Ralon and I went to Base Operations, and he checked out the T-6.  The Base Ops Officer came out and told him the magneto had been acting up and to watch it.  We took off with me holding the movie film we were taking to the radar station. 

In a few minutes Ralon spotted an active volcano and we circled above it and could see the fire coming out of it.  We then climbed to 6,000 feet without any heat.  It was colder than the Dickens.  Rather than fly the land route, Ralon flew us across part of the Pacific Ocean as it was the most direct way to the radar station, which was at an unused airfield at Hakodate.  Going the land route would have been about 150 miles further.

When we got to the town near the radar station, Ralon buzzed the town.  Had I been lying on the wing I could have touched every light pole.  When we got to the radar station he flew the plane between two hangars and then did barrel rolls.  Finally, we landed and I handed the film to an airman and we took off again.

We climbed back to 6,000 feet and were crossing the Pacific towards Chitose AFB when he spotted a Japanese ship in the Pacific and told me he would show me how to dive bomb it.  Away we went down, down, and down and then he pulled up.  We were doing about 6 Gs and I passed out.  When I came to we were leveling off.

Then he said we would do a glide dive and we went over the ship so close I could see sailors on its deck and the plane leveled out when all of a sudden the engine went dead.   Ralon tried to start the engine.  The old starter just ground and ground, but nothing happened.  It reminded me of my Dad’s bulldozer on a cold morning.  Here though it was 40 below zero.  Ralon got on radio with May Day!  May Day!

The plane started losing altitude.  You would not live 5 minutes in that cold ocean. Finally I pulled my “Mae West” and inflated it and got out of my seat belt.  If we crashed the plane into the water I was going to be floating.  He tried to start the engine again, and this time it started and the propeller actually hit the top of the waves.  I had been calm till then and all of a sudden on the Radio I shouted “Momma”, which was heard over the entire Far East.  We didn’t do any other crazy stuff and flew straight to Chitose.  

Maglione told me the next day that Ralon told him that this was the most dangerous mission he had ever been on including combat.  Ralon now lives in Wyoming.

The rest of our time at Chitose AFB was quite boring.  We played a lot of ping pong and every night I wrote Cleo.  Later in March 1953 we flew back to Bergstrom AFB.  I got a leave and on March 19, 1953, Cleo and I got married. It was the best decision I ever made.

Getting my law degree then became paramount.  The Korean War ended in the summer of 1953.  The Stars and Stripes newspaper had an article a few weeks later that there was going to be a reduction in force in the Air Force and listed the military occupational specialists that would be discharged.  Mine was not one of them.  I went to my Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel John W. Lafko, and asked him to help me so I could continue my education.  Lieutenant Colonel Lafko had my military occupational skill (MOS) changed to clerk typist, and five days later I was honorably discharged.  That weekend, my wife and I drove to Bassfield and spent the night.  The next day we drove to Ole Miss where I enrolled in the University of Mississippi.  For a year I missed the old 522^nd Strategic Fighter Escort Squadron and its personnel. In 1957 I got my law degree and have had a good life.  Being associated with the men of the 27^th Fighter Wing in the Korean War benefited me in many ways as a lawyer.