Lines of Battle by Annette Tapert

Author:Annette Tapert [Tapert, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81877-5
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2012-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Sergeant James McMahon

2.20.44. Well my next raid was Gotha. It’s a wonderful trip. I was in the nose turret and I didn’t even see a burst of flack. This raid is a milk run. Too bad they can’t all be like that. Well now comes the next one. This one will slay you.

BERLIN! on the 6th March. I was in the tail turret and we were high element and “coffin corner”. The sky was perfect, no clouds, which meant the fighters were going to come up and the flack would be accurate. On this raid I should have been as nervous as hell, but I thought of Thom, Henn, Fred, and all the fellows I had seen go down. I figured if I came back, O.K., but if I went down it would be for Thom. Gee I felt glad. Well, all the way in to the target the flack was bad, and the Jerry fighters sure played hell. Our fighters sure gave them hell too. Well I didn’t get any more shots at fighters till the target. I saw one FW-190 shoot down one of our planes which went into a dive and went straight down. Then all hell broke loose. The flack was terrible and the fighters everywhere. The group right behind us was catching hell with fighters (FW-190s) and I got in about 10 squirts at them. We kept flying through the flack and made two runs on the target which took about 20 minutes. All this time I can see Berlin, and man there are 24’s and 17’s all over the place. I see our bombs hit smack on the target and my heart bleeds for those damned Krauts down there. Well after that for 100 miles I can see the fires and smoke. It looks like all Berlin is on fire. Boy do I feel good. I’m laughing like hell for some reason. I guess it is because I am still there. Well after I get back to base (after squirting those Jerry fighters all the way home) I go to sleep and dream of Thom. All the time over the target I was thinking about him and Dad and Mom and Sis and … Everything was going through my mind at once. I sure feel good, ’cause we knocked the hell out of them. We didn’t even get a scratch on the plane either. And that sure is something for the books. By the time you get this letter, I will probably have 5 or 6 more raids in, but I will explain them to you myself. I want you to promise that you will not tell about anything in this letter. Except maybe that I’ve been to Berlin. I am sure proud of my record. 9 times over the target and 7 times deep into Germany.

I want you to know that if anything ever happens to me that I think I have the most wonderful and courageous parents in the world, and the most beautiful and wonderful sister on this earth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.