The Ride by Anthony Faikus

Author:Anthony Faikus [Faikus, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Anthony Faikus
Published: 2016-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

1st Lt. Faikus with a new “Jug,” P-47-D28 with wing tanks.

My tent being constructed in the Philippine Islands.

13. THE PHILIPPINES AT LAST

We took off for our new base in the Philippines at a place called Mangaldon. It was a great camp. I hired a house boy and he took good care of us. We had fresh vegetables and eggs, our own chickens, and my tent was decorated with bamboo sides and a woven bamboo floor. It was really deluxe and I have a nice picture of it. I also bought a fighting rooster named Lepar, which came to a bad end when he crowed too loudly in the morning and somebody shot him. The swimming here was great. We were camped just off the beach, and we used our air mattresses for surfing. If it weren’t for the war, this would have made a great vacation spot.

We had a big grassy field about one mile square on the Lingayen Gulf. From here we could dive-bomb Baguio and the old walled city in Manila.

There were many targets for us to hit, and we also did a lot of jobs for the Army. Whenever they encountered stiff resistance, we would get a call and almost always be able to help them out by strafing ahead of the troops or dropping napalm bombs in some appropriate area.

The Army was moving up a highway in the Cagayan valley on the island of Luzon. The enemy had fortified a cliff and had command of the road. I was sent up in an L-5, a Piper Cub, to see the problem. We landed on a road near the problem area and went by jeep up a steep hill to a high bluff to get a good look. The jeep was at such a steep angle going up, I thought it would fall over backwards. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want them to know I was scared. I walked around at the top and looked over the problem and decided we could skip-bomb the cliff by flying right down the road.

I noticed the soldiers were all hunched over and had branches stuck in their helmets for camouflage, and I realized the zipping sounds I heard were bullets coming our way. One of the men remarked, “You guys don’t care where you go.” He must have thought I was brave, but I didn’t know any better.

We went to the command post, which was a tent full of Army officers and I went in to give my opinion. They were expecting a senior Air Corps official and the first thing I heard was, “He’s only a kid.” I tried to make my voice sound mature and told them we could skip-bomb the caves and the job could be done the following morning.

We arranged for a radio with our frequency to be in a jeep and when I came with my squadron, we would call in and make sure we were in the right place. Things look different from 10,000 feet than from the ground.

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