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- [00:01]
Apple Product Announcer
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- [00:30]
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- [01:43]
Meg Bowles
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Today we have stories from moth stages around the US Meet New York City, Cincinnati, Ohio, Kansas City, Missouri and Traverse City, Michigan. Each of the storytellers in this hour has their own unique experience with various branches of the armed forces. Stories from the front lines, both at home and abroad. Our first story comes from Jill Morgenthaler. Jill shared her story at an evening we produced in Cincinnati at the Anderson Theater Memorial Hall. The theme of the night was Intrepid.
- [02:18]
Jill Morgenthaler
I am a Marine brat. My father was a career Marine. I adored him. I wanted to be him when I grew up, which wasn't likely in the 1960s. The women who served then, the Wacs and the Waves, they were secretaries and nurses. They weren't allowed to command men. They weren't even allowed to have weapons in Vietnam. Well, in 1969, my father got orders for Vietnam and he sat me down in the living room and he told me I was going to be in charge of my younger brother and sisters. I was not thrilled my brother could be such a pest. And my father reminded me of the military code. You leave no one behind, even pesky little brothers. Well, fortunately, he returned. And when I was 18, I was preparing to Go to Penn State University. My father came home from the Pentagon one evening where he worked now, and he told me that the army was going to try an experiment. They're going to actually train women with men. Men. And the experiment was going to take place at 10 universities and Penn State was one of them. So I put in my application and I was one of 10 women to get a four year Army ROTC scholarship. Well, after my junior year, it was time for us cadets to head off to leadership boot camp. And all the cadets in the eastern universities were heading to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And in that experimental boot camp, there were 83 women heading to a military post of 50,000 men. Yeah, I remember when the bus arrived at Fort Bragg, I looked out the window and everywhere there were men, men marching, men running, men barking orders. I just felt lost in this sea of testosterone. And then when Carol and I, and Carol also was from Penn State, when we started to get off the bus, TV cameras were shoved in our faces and reporters started barking at us. Do you think you're better than men? What do you think of this experiment? Why do you want to kill? And I knew things weren't going well when I saw all the soldiers stop and glare at us. I just wanted to disappear into the earth. Well, after Carol and I in processed, we were heading to the women's barracks and that's when the name calling started. Butch, Bimbo. We stopped at a Coke machine. As I started to put money into the machine, a soldier came up and just knocked me out of the way. Go home, bitch. And I just didn't get it. Why couldn't I serve my country too? Well, I soon got it. The West Point officers were furious because women were about to start at West Point and they couldn't stop it. The enlisted men were furious because once we became officers, they'd have to take orders from a skirt. And my peers were furious because they thought women were going to get all the cushy jobs. And they all came after us. One morning we were standing at the bottom of a 50 foot tower. The sergeant looks around, he points at me and says, blondie, you're first. So I climb up to the top of the tower and the sergeant up there asks me if I know how to rappel. I have to admit I don't even know what the word means. So I explained he was going to put me in a harness with clamps and I would bounce down a vertical wall. So he told me to back up to the edge of the platform, but keep looking at him. And lean back. So I did. Lean back some more. So I did some more. Next thing, I am hanging upside down, dangling 50ft off the ground, and I can hear the soldiers on top of the platform just laughing their asses off. I'm terrified. I thought I was going to fall to my death. Finally, a soldier rappels next to me. He uprights me. By the time my feet hit the ground, I am just frustrated. I mean, every day I was trying so hard to fit in. Every day I was trying so hard to just be one of them. And they didn't get it. They didn't get why I wanted to be a soldier and hunt down communists instead of hunting down a husband. But I started to make inroads. One afternoon, we had to turn our uniforms into rafts and float down a river. And one cadet, Moskorski, big guy, he came up and asked to be my buddy. And I asked why. And he whispered to me that he didn't know how to swim okay, but why me? And he told me he knew I wouldn't leave him behind. Yeah, I was honored. Well, by the end of the six week boot camp, I had a sense of accomplishment. I mean, I survived. But more than that, the army did a peer rating, and my peers had to rate whether they would follow me into combat. I got a 100%. But then came the day before graduation. I'm sitting outside with my squad of guys, and our commander, Captain Mitchell, comes up and he tells us that the army realized that because there's women at boot camp, there should be a beauty contest.
- [09:17]
Apple Product Announcer
Yeah.
- [09:18]
Jill Morgenthaler
Ms. Foxhole, 1975. I was disgusted. Right. Really? And he looked at me and said, morgenthaler, you're in it. And I tried to explain, I don't want to be a beauty contestant. I just want to be a soldier. And he told me he didn't care what I wanted. It was an order. And at that moment, Muskorski raised his hand and said, sir, I'll be in it in drag. Wow. Muskorski was watching my back, and Captain Mitchell said, fine. With Morgenthaler, nothing I could do. It was an order. So that evening, we're sitting in a tent behind an outdoor stage, and around the outdoor stage are 5,000 men yelling obscenities. Inside the tent, I'm in a blue cotton dress. The only dress I brought that summer. Muskorski is in an evening gown. Captain Mitchell's wife lent it to him. Well, as each of the other women go out on stage and they sing or they Dance. And I'm listening to the cat calls. I just feel like I'm about to be thrown to the wolves. Everything I had achieved that summer was about to be just wiped away. Well, soon it got down to Muskorski and me. And he tried to tell me, oh, just go out there and get it over with. Well, I stepped on stage, and the men started grabbing my legs. And then they started saying dirty things about my body. And I realized I had gone from being a member of the squad to just a bunch of body parts. And now I'm pissed. I stepped to the center of the stage. There's no way I was going to dance for them. There's no way I was going to sing for them. I stepped to the front of the stage, and I flipped them the bird. I flipped off 5,000 men. And then I did an about face. I marched off the stage through the tent, and then I broke into a run. And I managed to hold it in until I got behind the women's barracks. And then I broke down crying. I felt so betrayed. I had given the army everything I had that summer. I believed them when they said, leave no one behind. And I cried. And then I heard a thunder of feet. And I look up, and here comes my squad of men, and they are laughing and joking, and they grab me in a hug, and they're like, morgenthaler. We told Captain Mitchell, don't you put her on stage, sir.
- [12:55]
Apple Product Announcer
You do not know what she will do.
- [13:03]
Jill Morgenthaler
And then we heard thunder, Morphy. We look up, and here comes Muskorski, still in drag, and he gives me the biggest bear hug, and he says, morgenthaler, I don't know what you did on stage, but they crowned me Ms. Foxhole 1975. I went on to serve for 30 years, peacetime and war. As a colonel in Iraq. I was in charge of the international coverage of Saddam Hussein's trial. And when I look back at the 30 years I am just so proud to have served, to have been part of. Of that band of brothers and sisters. And when I look back at that experiment, as tough as it was, it really taught me not to ever leave anybody behind. And by the way, there Never was a Miss Foxhole 1976.
- [14:20]
Meg Bowles
That was Colonel Jill Morgenthaler. Jill is the author of a book entitled the Courage to Take Leadership Lessons from a Military Trailblazer. Jill has led hundreds of women and men around the world in peacetime and in war, and she is the recipient of the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit for her lifelong leadership. You can see a picture of Jill and her fellow female cadets at Fort Bragg on our website, themoth.org coming up, a young soldier searches for meaning in the chaos of war when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [15:09]
Moth Radio Hour Producer
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by prx.
- [15:17]
Intuit Advertiser
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- [17:56]
Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. The U.S. military is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world. Our next storyteller, Dylan park, spread served as a member of a US Air Force Special Operations Security Forces squadron and was deployed to Iraq. Here's Dylan park live in Traverse City, Michigan.
- [18:18]
Moth Radio Hour Producer
After graduating high school, I was looking for a way out of my quiet hometown in Northern California. A military recruiter on campus told me that if I enlisted, they'd pay my college tuition, I'd get to travel the world, and if I was lucky, I might get to blow some shit up. He sweetened the pot by saying that he'd give me a $10,000 bonus by extending a three year enlistment to a short six year enlistment. And $10,000 was a lot of money for a 19 year old. So I was sold. Now, about six months after I finished my military training, I found myself in a place called Kirkuk, Iraq, which is one of the largest oil fields on the planet. It's also a hotbed of terrorism and one of the most violent places on the planet. My job there was to patrol the city around the base's perimeter most days. But some days I'd be posted at a front gate or a checkpoint somewhere where I'd spend a dozen hours patting down potential suicide bombers, just praying that I'd get to live another day. Working those suicide gates was like playing this sick lottery, this Iraqi roulette that you didn't want to win. And over the course of that year, I knew a few guys that weren't so lucky. But for every suicide bomber, for every enemy insurgent, there were a thousand friendly faces in Krakuk. And one of those faces belonged to a teenager named Brahim. Now, Brahim was one of a group of kids that would follow us around while we were on patrol. They'd ask us for candy, soda, magazines. They'd want to talk American pop culture. And I entertained them all the time. I loved having them around. But some of the guys in my squad, not so much. Because after all, we were in this war zone where enemy combatants didn't wear uniforms. But in my heart, I knew these kids weren't terrorists. They were just trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Kind of like I was. Brahim reminded me of my younger brother Rory, back home at the Time, they were both the same age, 16 or 17, and they were both very mature for their age. Rory, when he was growing up, he would follow my friends and I around. So by the time he was in high school, he had this very adult sense of humor. And although he was four years younger than me, he was one of my best friends. We did everything together. And Brahim had that maturity about him, too, but for a different reason. Obviously, he grew up in a war zone, so by the time he was a teenager, he'd experienced things that many of us will never experience. And I missed my brother a lot that year in Iraq. And I think that Brahim filled this void for me because he became like a little brother to me. But while my brother was back home applying to colleges, going to prom, getting dumped by girls, doing things that teenagers do, Brahim was working as a janitor on a military installation in a war zone. And like an idiot, I asked him, why aren't you going to school? Couldn't that be a way out of here? And he looked at me and said, I don't have a school to go to. Ours was bombed out, and it's been too dangerous to go back. He said that he was biding time until he was old enough to become an interpreter for the US Military because that's where the real money was. He said you could make $200 a week. See, the US military had this agreement with Iraqi nationals that if they worked a certain amount of years as an interpreter, when their contract was up, they'd be given this special immigrant visa to resettle in the United States. But it was an incredibly dangerous job. At the height of the war, we were losing an average of one interpreter a day. But Brahim said that he understood the risks and that he was willing to do anything to help feed his family and to help end the war in Iraq. Now, as that deployment went on, I learned a lot of things about this kid. We became really close. You know, I learned how he was a sole provider for his family in this house that didn't have electricity. Most days, it didn't have adequate plumbing. So something as simple as personal hygiene was this huge struggle. And this broke my heart. I felt partially responsible, because, after all, I was a cog in this war machine that destroyed this kid's home country. I knew I couldn't do much, but I wanted to do something. So when I had a second, I went down to the mini mart on base, and I bought him 20, maybe $30 worth of soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste water, just the bare necessities. And the next time I saw him, I presented him this box of toiletries. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes, like I had just handed him the keys to a brand new house. And it was an incredibly humbling experience. And in that moment, I realized that I wanted to see how he was living. I wanted to see this country from a different point of view. So one day I snuck off base and he gave me a tour of the city. We hailed taxis, hitch rides, walked for miles. And all along the way, he pointed out these historical landmarks. He told me about the citadel that was built 2000 years before Jesus was born. He pointed out the tomb of the prophet Daniel from the Bible. He explained that we were walking around in the oldest region in the history of human civilization. And I could tell how proud of his culture tree was. It was incredible stuff. I told him that Campbell, California, the town I'm from, is famous for inventing the fruit cup. Towards the end of that day, we went by a bazaar, this outdoor marketplace, and we stopped for fresh baked bread and kebabs. And I don't know if I'm romanticizing this meal in my head, but to this day, I still think that that may be one of the best meals I ever had. And I remember asking Brahim how the bread was so good, even though it was so simple. And he looked at me and he rolled his eyes and he said, because we invented bread. Towards the end of my deployment, Brahim finally got his chance to be an interpreter for the US Military. For me, this was bittersweet, though. On one hand, he might be able to provide for his family, but on the other hand, I knew that he had just volunteered his own life. I knew that he had volunteered for his own death and that I was leaving him to die. But there wasn't anything I could do about it. And I wished him well. And I got on a plane back to America. Now when I got home, things were different. I was different. There was this ultra vigilant muscle memory that I have. I remember walking, you know, in downtown San Jose with my friends, and I would look at rooftops and windows, searching for snipers, or I'd be at a gathering somewhere. I'd be at a restaurant, and I would look at the torso of any. Every single person that walked in the building just to make sure that they didn't have a suicide vest on. It was just second nature at that point. And living like that can be hard. It can make a person angry. And my behavior was straining all of my relationships. And I decided that maybe I needed a change of scenery. So I packed my bags and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Now, Phoenix isn't a place where I had any connections. I didn't have any relatives or any friends or family there. I just did a little research, and it was much cheaper than the Bay Area, and it was sunny all year round, so it sounded great. I got to Phoenix. I started a job. I enrolled in college just to add some semblance of normalcy into my life. But things didn't get better. In fact, they got worse. And over the next four or five years, I struggled with my mental health. I struggled with drugs and alcohol. I couldn't keep a job because I was in and out of the court system. And I was even homeless for a period. But in between weekends in jail and weekends in homeless shelters, I went to class. I was a kid student. I ended up getting my college degree. And that opened some doors for me. I got a nice job, and things were looking up. And then one Saturday morning, I woke up to a dozen missed phone calls and text messages, which I thought was kind of odd. And I called my mother back first, because her name was the first and the last on the list. And when she picked up, there was this fear in her voice that I'd never heard before. And when she was able to collect herself, she explained to me that my younger brother, Rory, had been killed the night before in an attempted carjacking. At first, I didn't believe it, because things like that don't happen where I'm from. And ironically, I had just purchased plane tickets to fly home to spend the holidays with my brother. Only now I flew home to bury him. I remember spending that Thanksgiving in a morgue. And then a few days later, I spent my birthday staring at his freshly engraved tombstone. That Friday when Rory was killed, he was walking out of a grocery store with his best friend. You know, they were celebrating his new life. He just got a new car, a new apartment, a new job. He was starting his adult life. And as he was sitting in his brand new BMW, two men wearing ski masks, brandishing firearms ran up on him. And they told him to get out. But for whatever reason, they didn't even give him a chance to comply. And one of the men shot Rory three times in the chest and face as his best friend watched in horror from the passenger seat. And I know these details because I watched it. I watched the high definition security camera footage during his his killer's trial. I watched my brother take his last breaths. And it's something I could see every time I closed my eyes. I'd been through a lot in Iraq. I'd survived suicide attacks and mortar attacks and sniper attacks. But Rory's death caught me more off guard than any roadside bomb in Iraq ever could. I was destroyed. I decided that I should move home to be closer to my family. But before I could do that, I'd have to go back to Arizona to pack up my apartment. When I landed in Arizona, I got off the plane. I exited the terminal, and I remember thinking it was odd that the sky was gray and that it was pouring rain. I went straight down to the taxi stand and got on the first taxi I saw, and we were driving down the 202. And I wasn't feeling very conversational, but the taxi driver didn't know that. So he started up that standard small talk, you know, what do you do, where you from, why you here? That sort of thing. And obviously, I didn't want to talk about my brother's murder, so I half lied and said, oh, I just got out of the military a few years ago, and I got this new job in Californ. And when I said military, he asked if I'd been anywhere special. And I said, sure, I've been all over the world. I was in Iraq for a year. And when I said, Iraq, his tone changed a little bit, and he said, I'm from Iraq. And he said, where in Iraq were you stationed? And I said, in the northeast, in this city called Kirkuk. And he paused and he said, I'm from Kirkuk. And just as soon as the conversation started, it was over. And I knew something was wrong. And I was thinking, what just happened? Did I harm one of his loved ones intentionally or unintentionally? Or maybe he was really anti war, and if he was, could I blame him? And we sat there in silence for miles, and I could feel him staring at me in his rearview mirror, and I was trying to avoid eye contact by looking out my own window. And it was at that moment that I saw that he'd passed our exit, and now it was terrified. I told him that he missed the exit, and he didn't respond and just took the next exit. And when he got off, we went down a few blocks, and he just pulled the car over to the side of the road. And now the red flags were going off. I didn't know what he was thinking, but I could see him gripping his steering wheel, working up the guts to do something, what he wanted to do. I didn't know, but I didn't want to be there to find out. So I grabbed my backpack, I kicked open the door, but before I could get all the way out of the taxi, he grabbed my leg, and he turned around and said, hey, Dylan, do you remember me? It's me, Brahim. And I looked at him, probably like you're looking at me right now. And I just didn't understand what was going on. But he sat a foot taller. You know, his voice was deeper. His English was better. He didn't have that goofy bowl cut. But 7,500 miles away from Iraq, there was this kid who had saved my life a lifetime ago. We got out of the car and we were hugging and sobbing in the pouring rain, like a scene in the Notebook or something. And he explained to me that when I left Iraq, he was an interpreter for four years. And he finished his contract and got his visa. And they asked him where he wanted to resettle, and he said he didn't know, but he wanted to go somewhere where the weather was like Iraq. So they sent him to Phoenix, Arizona. I had learned a lot of things about survival in the military, and there's a segment of training. It's POW training. And one of the things they tell you is that sometimes the pain can be unbearable and life can look pretty grim. But you've got to look for these glimmers of hope to keep you going, to keep you going that next day. I think that that day on the side of the road in Arizona was my glimmer of hope. I lost one brother, and I got another one back. Thank you.
- [31:16]
Meg Bowles
That was Dillon Park. Dillon and Brahim eventually lost touch. Dylan believes Brahim has returned to Iraq, and contacting him has proved difficult. The Kirkuk Regional Air base where Dylan was stationed was handed over to the Iraqis when the war ended. But when ISIS took control of Kirkuk, the Iraqi military abandoned it and Kurdish forces moved in. In 2017, the Iraqi national army retook control. And the hope now is that ISIS is on its last legs. Coming up, two more stories. A family waits for news from the front lines in Afghanistan. And we'll hear a bird's eye account of D Day. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [31:56]
Moth Radio Hour Producer
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org.
- [32:09]
Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. For members of the military who are deployed, often there are friends and family back home anxiously awaiting their Return. Our next storyteller is Franny Civita. Her brother joined the army on his 18th birthday. She shared her story at a Moth grand slam at the Music hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Here's Franny Cibitano live at the Moth.
- [32:37]
Franny Civitano
My mom joked that my brother enlisted in the army to piss her off. This is because When I was 18 and my brother was 15, our dad died. I moved to college three days later. But my brother was left with the aftermath of a four person family that almost overnight shrunk down by two people. For my mom and my brother, this was a really rough few years. So as soon as he graduated from high school, he enlisted. One of the first things that I learned during my brother's first deployment was that only about 1% of of the American population serve in the armed forces. And for me, that was a kind of loneliness that I had no idea to expect until I was in it. It was something that gnawed at me every time my phone rang or I went on the Internet or I was having fun. And for a moment I forgot that Afghanistan even existed. Because how should I be able to exist if I'm not thinking about him 100% of the time? Because what if I stop thinking about him and something terrible happens? But I didn't want to pay attention. I did not follow the news. I didn't set up Google alerts. I didn't want to know. I didn't like calling home because I knew that my mom would want to talk about my brother. She dove headfirst into this. She set up all the Google alerts.
- [34:08]
Apple Product Announcer
She.
- [34:08]
Franny Civitano
She read every book on war. She made a Facebook group to talk to other army moms. She called me one night when I was at a game night in Bushwick and my heart leapt into my throat. I panicked. My mother does not call me. She texts a lot, but I call her. I picked up the phone and she said, he's fine. Your brother is fine. But I burst into tears. She said, I just want you to know, in case you saw something on the news, your brother's army base was attacked and seven soldiers died. But he's fine. Your brother is fine. I was angry after that call. Angry that I wasn't scared and upset before she called. But now I couldn't stop shaking. Angry that our Settlers of Catan game was ruined. Angry that I felt so guilty for not wanting to think about it. The army invited my mom and me to come to Fort Campbell, which is in between Kentucky and Tennessee, to join other families for a meeting on how to welcome your soldier home from war. So we made a weekend of it, our first weekend trip together. We got a hotel in downtown Nashville. We tried on cowboy boots. We toured an old print press shop on the base. We walked into this sun lit meeting room ready to take notes and ask all the questions. The room was mostly filled with girls my age or younger who were either pregnant or had recently had babies. The officer who was leading the meeting started off by saying he was glad we were all there because our guys coming home had had a particularly difficult deployment. They had lost 48 soldiers in their battalion alone. But we realized quickly that this meeting was not for us. It was focused on the wives who were instructed to dress cute and give their guy sex whenever they wanted it. We were frustrated that we had come all this way and didn't get any answers. So my mom and I got drunk together for the first time in a bar in Nashville, alone with the band and the bartender, just talking. Not as mother and daughter, but as people, as ladies drinking in a bar. I told her about stories from college that I was too embarrassed to tell her about at the time. And she just rolled her eyes and laughed. I learned that what I didn't know when my mom called me that day to tell me my brother was fine was that she had been woken up early in the morning by an alert on her phone and found out that there was an attack. And then she spent the next 15 hours sitting on her couch, looking out her front window, expecting to see an unmarked car and two officers pull up and tell her that her son had died. Our fear was not that different, but she was wearing hers like an exposed wound, and I was trying to bury it. All she wanted at the end of every day was to be able to say, he's fine, your brother is fine. That she was thinking about him and worried 100% of the time. I was so consumed with this guilt of not wanting to think about him and not wanting to worry about him, that it didn't occur to me that there was another person in the world, the only other person in the world who really understood what it was like to have him gone. And she was sitting right in front of me. She was my mother. And that, yes, maybe we were both still lonely, but at least we were lonely together. My brother came home after two tours in Afghanistan alive. He's different in good and sad ways. I hate that he was 19 and that he saw the things he saw and did the things he did. Is he fine? I don't know. Most of the time. I think that he is. I hope he is. And I will never understand what it was like for him over there. And I don't think that he will ever understand what it was like for us here. I worry about him in a different, more manageable, more normal way. Is he dating? Has he taken that midterm yet? And I may always be asking myself if he's okay. But today, at the end of the day, I think he's fine. We're all fine. Thank you.
- [38:55]
Meg Bowles
That was Frannie Civitano. Frannie lives in New York and works at the New York City Ferry Service. She's also growing her wedding business, where she officiates, as well as plans people's big day. Her brother is now a drill sergeant in the Army Reserve. Frannie worries less about his safety these days and more that, given the issues in the world, he might be called upon to deploy again. But for the most part, Frannie and her family are all fine. Even better than fine. Our last story comes from Jerry Neal. He shared his story live on stage in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri.
- [39:36]
Apple Product Announcer
My story starts on the east side of Kansas City. I was born in 1921. Okay, you guys, you figured out math too much. For me, the first decade of my life, the twenties, was a very, very fine, opulent period. I remembered as a small kid how great life was. Parties, laughing, dinners, and so forth. But that decade turned into the 30s, which, completely opposite, became horrible. My grandfather, who had been an entrepreneurial type of guy, had a lot of businesses, drugstores and so forth. In the 30s, was reduced to one drugstore at 18th and Jackson Avenue. That was a store that our whole family lived in, worked in, and lived out of. And I remember many, many times working there, watching my grandfather work. Papa, we called him. We'd be a man, come in, a lady come in and can I talk to Doc? And my grandfather was a physician trained pharmacist. And so he would come out and they would kind of lean over the counter and explain their problem. And Papa would get turn around, go back to the prescription counter and start compounding a liquid, a powder, a pill. And he'd bring it out and explain to the person what to do in order to help solve the malady that they had. And that person would say, doc, I don't have any money. I've been out of a job for a year. Can. And he just put that on a tit. So he'd write a little piece of paper, open the cash register and stick it in there, close the drawer Knowing right then you probably would never see any money for that. He did this time after time after time. And I learned an important lesson. It's important to help your friends and your neighbors. 1938, I graduated from East High School. I was looking for work and times were getting tough in Europe and Asia. Japan was moving down the island chains and Hitler was taking over one country after another. And the war clouds were obviously heavy and this country was becoming very, very concerned about being involved. And so fear was setting in, but also a lot of patriotism. So I was driving around and I heard an announcement on the phone about how I might possibly pass a test and get in the Air Force, which I did. The Air Force, the Army Air Force accepted me for pilot training. I can't imagine me, this young kid, wet behind ears, be a pilot training. I'd never seen it, being close to an airplane. Only plane I'd ever seen was in newsreels. But any event that I've got my orders to go to San Antonio, Texas to start my pilot training. And I remember that very, very cold January morning where I went down to this beautiful grand station that we have here and I walked across the lobby and as I approached the stairs going down to the loading platform, I looked around to these three ladies that were with behind me. My mother, my grandmother and my aunt who had raised me. Was my nurture and my love. And I turned around with my little bag and I looked at them. I walked down the stairs and climbed on the train. And just this deep sense of melancholy just sunk into me. The first time in my life I'm alone, totally alone. Went on, rode the train to San Antonio, started my year of training as a pilot, which culminated in not only a second lieutenant's commission, but an aeronautical rating as a pilot. And they gave me orders to go to Mountain Home, Idaho, to a place where I would now become a B24 pilot. And this was a huge airplane. And in that place I got all my crew, my other pilot, my navigator, my bombardier, my engineer, radio man and gunners, and we became a family. As we trained, we soon received our movement orders, as they called them, to move to England to a base in East Anglia, which is where we would be pursuing our missions, going over Europe. So as we traveled and started traveling out of Mountain Home and went to Lincoln, Nebraska, we picked up a brand new P24, just like going and picking up a new automobile, new smell and everything. It was wonderful as we started down across Florida and down Puerto Rico and so forth. Every once in a while we'd pick a little piece of paper out of a place on the airplane, a little note from somebody, worker on the line and said, good luck guys. And we read those things all the way across the ocean. Well, boy, did we have a beautiful navigator. Only thing he had to guide us across the ocean. South Atlantic was a sextant, an old type ship sextant, no gps, no electronic navigation instruments, just looking at the stars and taking us across. He got us there. East Anglia is a little bulge in England that faces Europe, the continent. And from that base, which all of our bases, 8th Air Force bases were there in that little area, we started flying bombing missions. The first two missions that B24 I picked up in Lincoln, we came back so shot up the plane could not be flown anymore. They put it in what they called the boneyard. They gave me another B24. And the second mission, same thing came back, brought us back, but the plane was gone. And I started thinking, because everybody was talking about it at that time. Our tour was called 25 missions. But our loss rate was 12, 15% per mission. So it didn't take a great mathematician to figure out there's no way we're going to make 25 missions. So what we did is we adopted an attitude of we're already dead, forget about it, just go ahead and do what you got to do. It kind of worked well. Remember that day, 6th of June, 1944. The orderly came in and woke us up at 2 o'clock in the morning, which was normal for us as we prepared for a mission for the day. We got up, dressed, went up to the mess hall to get some breakfast. I never ate breakfast, I just couldn't have food on my stomach. But I did sit over in a chair in the corner listening to the radio, big band music, 1940s music I loved. And here all of a sudden was this song, String of Pearls by Glenn Miller. And my tears just started rolling down my cheeks. Deep homesickness. I don't know if anybody's ever had homesickness, but it's there, it's bad, you feel it. Any event, they picked us up in the truck to take us to the briefing room. That tears dried up, forgot all about it. We got in this room about 250 guys just like me waiting to see what the mission of the day is going to be. These people were sitting around chatting, smoking cigarettes, telling jokes, story others down with their head down between their knees, morose, different emotions, different people. Then our commanding officer comes down through the back door, down the aisle toward the platform, which is a. To tell us what the mission was. And here he is walking down there with his aides, walking down. He's a full bird colonel that we call the old man. He's 25 years old. He gets up on the platform and they roll this big curtain back and there is a picture of Europe. And right there, right there, D day. We'd heard about it. We knew it was coming. We didn't know when or where, but there it is, and we're going to be a part of it. I'm going to be a part of it. We took off across south part of England, crossed the English channel at about 10,000ft to our target in France, which was Caen. And as I looked up that channel to my left, and I had to be real careful because I was flying formation, so I'd kind of glance up and look back where I was going, I saw from my seat in the airplane 7,000 ships in my eyesight in the channel, all moving toward the continent. I thought, my gosh, has Anybody ever seen 7,000 ships? It's a lot of ships. I thought, well, you know, I could just walk across the water and never get my feet wet. Anyway, we moved on, got to the target con where our target for the day. And the purpose of the mission was to destroy a major road junction because we. Intelligence had told us there were nine German panzer divisions sitting back there waiting to find out where to go. So our purpose was to make it as difficult for them to move as is possible. Well, we couldn't see the target. We had a solid cloud undercast because bad weather had been affecting that whole part of the country. And so we circled and we circled and we circled and we finally, the commanding officer said, back to base, boys. We got to get more fuel. So as we started back to base and got back over the English Channel, my engineer was, hey, hey, hey, we're just about out of gas. We're just getting forward. We're just about. Hey, we're getting low. So I prepared the crew to bail out. And as we got over about the middle of the English channel, about 10,000ft, all four engines of this huge airplane, about 7,000 horsepower, they stopped and the plane immediately started. And I had to push the wheel abruptly to the farwell to put the plane in a dive. Elsewise, we would spin out. So as we started diving, totally quiet, no noise, just a rushing wind. As we picked up speed faster and faster, I looked back over my shoulder to see if the crew had it all jumped they were clear, I think. Oh my gosh, I still got all these bombs on board sitting back at me. There's ten 500 pound bombs. Well, I had to. Fortunately, our training was very good. We had a lever down to base. I pulled that lever which pulled the pins out of the bomb bay doors. The doors dropped off. All 10 bombs dropped out of their racks. And because by this time I'm so close to the water, they didn't arm. They just went plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk into the water. But just as I was pulling that plane out to try to pull it out flat and level right in front of me, just like God placed it. There was a gravel bar, a rock bar right out in the middle of the channel, exactly where I needed to set the plane down. I had no control over it. That's where the plane was going to be. So I pulled it out and as I hit that rock, it started going across the rock. I'm going like this. And the bomb bay door is out and the bomb bay is open and it's like a giant shovel. It's picking up rock and gravel. The whole rear end of that B24 breaks off and I leave it. I see all four engines plink, plink, plink, plink out of the wings, the greenhouse. The nose is gone and I feel a fuselage underneath the seat. Oh, it's coming around. It's coming up closer and closer. And then we stop. The other pilot and the navigator, three of us crawled out on and sat down. We didn't say one word to each other or anything. We were in a stupor. We didn't even know for sure. We checked our arms today, a few hours. The English came and picked us up, took us back to the English coast and I called a base and they sent an ambulance down because I wanted to tour the MASH units on the south of England coast to find out where my crew was. I only found one man, six of my guys that I became close to, very close, like family. They're gone, they should be alive and I should be dead. So I thought about that. You know, it was a defining moment. We have defining moments and that was one of them. I thought I was raised in a fine family, a moral family, but not spiritual. But now I'm spiritual. Thank you.
- [53:26]
Meg Bowles
Jerry Neal served in World war as a B17 and B24 pilot in the 8th Air Force, 490th Bomb Group, 849th Squadron. And he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, Jerry remained in the Air Force Reserve serving in administrative positions. He retired after 20 years as a captain at the age of 97. He's still serving, volunteering as a mentor to entrepreneurs and business owners. Jerry also sent us some amazing photos. You can find those on our website. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [54:16]
Moth Radio Hour Producer
Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Timothy Lou Lee Moss. Stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Stellwagen, Symphonette, Moondog and Glenn Miller. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.