Bills Story Pt 02 11

Bill's Story Part II

We first found Big Bill here:

https://www.literotica.com/s/bills-story-pt-01

The B-24 was reviled by its pilots and, B-17 pilots. The United States Army Air Corps bought more B-24s than any other bomber and it dropped more tonnage in Europe and the Pacific than B-17s did. Sigh, Bill would talk about his time in Idaho and learning how to fly the beast with some pride in his efforts to master the beast.

Pilots were scared to death of the plane as it was unforgiving. If you lost an engine you had to get back and try to land it before you went down. If you lost an engine on takeoff, you were dead.

It was a high winged plane and the wing itself the so called Davis Airfoil was a complete crock of shit in Bill's mind, supposedly allowing for more lift than the wings that Boeing had on the B-17. Its planes didn't fall out of the sky with one engine gone or even two, they'd get home, the 17 would take off with two engines feathered.

Just before Bill went overseas, Bill got the beast in a completely wing perpendicular situation at twenty thousand feet. All the flight manuals said was don't do it or you're dead, he feathered power to the engines on the port wing and the plane went into a dive and he gradually came out of it at twelve thousand feet. He spent the next two days explaining what he did and they'd ask over and over again what were the readings on all the different gauges and he bullshitted them because he knew it was about him being calm and feeling the plane and making light touches on the controls until the dive started and then that was all about not yanking the big pig around.

At night Bill and Elaine would drink and eat hot dogs and there'd be parties. He couldn't believe his good fortune with Elaine they were so in love and guys would want to dance with her and everybody danced with everyone and one time he knocked a guy down who grabbed her ass. It seemed to bother him more than her, she saying he didn't mean anything baby, don't get in trouble and she really took care of him. They were in these so called officer's quarters for married personnel which were like fruit picker's shacks. Everybody heard each other at night. In the morning, the wives would smoke and have coffee and giggle and say stuff about the other's men.

Then he put Elaine on a bus to Seattle and they flew their planes to Elgin Army Air Corp base Florida, then to Parnmirim Army Air Corp base in Brazil and then Lajes Army Air Corp Base in the Azores and finally Bari, Italy, where the Fifteenth Air Force was located. Bari is located on the Southeastern coast of Italy in the Puglia region.

There were six different flight lines to take off and land. At first there were some old shot up B-17s. Bill thought they were fucking tough and was proud he was from Seattle. They were scrapped shortly after his group arrived.

One guy could fly the B-17 and tradeoff between the pilot and co-pilot, but the flight controls on the B-24 could only be moved with both men standing with both feet on the pedals. The Davis Airfoil was intended to achieve increased lift over the B-17 and its wing was thicker allowing for more av-gas and hence increased range in theory. The heavier the load on the plane due to bombs and av-gas caused the wing to actually fail in its intent and the higher the plane flew the thickness caused increased icing. The veteran pilots at Bari told Bill within days of his arrival it was a death trap.

From November 1, 1944, until February 17, 1945, Bill's crew was scheduled to fly forty missions. Because of bad weather and not enough flyable planes they flew twenty eight missions. The most notable were missions to Ploesti in Romania where there were oil fields and refineries that had been continually attacked for the most part ineffectually. Other notable missions were to Schweinfurt (ball bearings) and to Greece and Austria.

Bill hated life at the base. It was a mud pit and you had to walk on two by twelve planks or you'd get filthy. Usually somebody splashed your leggings and flight boots.

The food was barely edible. Mutton was a common main dish, which stunk and ruined the taste of anything else on the plate. He'd eat rubber eggs and reconstituted mashed potatoes and bread and coffee. They slept in canvas tents that would sleep fourteen men on cots. It was better than a fox hole but, it was really cold and wet. Everyone had near pneumonia and you could write letters which he did at first.

When they knew they didn't have to fly the next day there was a slop chute, which was an officer's club where they could drink. It was another canvas tent with planks on the floor and the bar was two by twelve boards strung between empty avgas barrels and there were lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was warm beer from Bari. Warm because there was no ice at all. There was as much Jim Beam bourbon as your ration card would allow you to drink.

Most of the people in his living tent were either pilots or navigators or bombardiers and they were all officers. There was an operations guy that planned mission's logistics, number of planes and available crew and mostly was a quiet man who did not talk with his tent mates.

Nights when they came back drunk and rowdy he'd scream at them to shut up as he needed to sleep as he'd have to get up for the morning's mission. Bill thought that was utter bullshit since by definition they were drinking which meant no missions were going to happen and they'd tell the guy to hump himself.

Bill during the first three months was awarded the purple heart several times (now referred to as oak leaf clusters) and one distinguished flying cross (Ploesti). His purple heart awards were due to being wounded by flack (bursting shells nearby that would send shards of steel into his body) mostly in his ass, and the back of his legs. He usually didn't know it until he changed uniforms and there was blood all over his pants which were underneath their flight suits. The flight surgeons would dig it out and send a note up through his command and the awards would come.

One night in the slop chute Bill was getting very drunk. Two of his gunners were killed and the bombardier was gravely wounded. He was leaning on the bar and smoking Pall Malls and drinking Beam, not rowdy. His quiet tent mate was standing next to him and said to Bill, "If you fucking wake me up later I'm going to kill you, you fucking piece of shit!"

Bill stubbed out his cigarette in an old Planter's peanuts can. He leaned back from the bar slowly and turned his head towards his tent mate and softly said, "What did you say?"

Tent mate was a tall man, lanky they used to say and he was from the Northeast and had the voice of someone from Boston nasal sounding and he said, "You heard me!"

Bill's home of Seattle was thought to be Alaska and barely settled in 1944, cedars, Douglas firs fifteen feet thick, sawmills, choke setters and rain all of which Bill had fermented in to get to this moment. Bill seemed to glide towards his tent mate and he turned his left shoulder and grabbed tent mate's shirt and slammed him onto the plank floor and had his Springfield Armory model 1911 pistol (45) out of the holster and under the chin of tent mate and said, "Kill me now, fucker. Kill me now."

Tent mate had evacuated his bowels and bladder. Nobody moved and it was incredibly quiet in the slop chute. Bill heard the tent flap open.

"Lieutenant what are you doing?"

"Sir, he said he was going to kill me when I came back to our tent after I was done drinking. I asked him to clarify what he said and he did. It seemed as if I should do this on a more even footing. People I can't see try to kill me all day long and I didn't want this headquarters fucker to shoot me in the back. Ask the bartender, he heard him."

He looked at the bartender who volunteered and said that was what had happened.

"Ok Lieutenant, I want you to holster your weapon and stand up, and then I want you to stand down and step outside and wait for me."

Bill went outside and waited. Ten or fifteen minutes later, his commanding officer, chaplain and the flight surgeon showed up. "What did you do now Benedict," asked his commanding officer.

"A man threatened to kill me," said Bill.

They went to the chaplain's tent who asked about the mission today and Bill said,

"We got shot up pretty good, lost some men and I wrote the letters for them sir."

Bill looked at his commanding officer, "It's a shitty plane we fly too low and if we were at thirty thousand feet we wouldn't get hit by that flack, but the damn wings ice up."

Bill was told to return to his tent and his tent mate was gone.

Thanksgiving was that week and they had cubed turkey and mashed potatoes, no gravy and it poured rain. His tail gunner Harvey McLaughlin was from Seattle and had gone to Queen Anne High School and he had played against Bill's Broadway Tigers that beat the Queen Anne Grizzlies as Bill ran for a touchdown and recovered a fumble.

Harvey was a corporal and as such they were not supposed to associate with officers but crews got close. Christmas was spam and Bob Hope and Joey Brown and Betty Grable and music. It was fun. They bombed in the Arden in support of the one hundred and first Airborne at Bastogne.

The mission that morning of February 28, 1945, was in Bremerhaven, a Fock Wulf fighter plane factory. It was fairly routine; they were escorted by Tuskegee Airmen flying P-47 Thunderbolts with drop tanks part of the way. There were few fighters that came up to battle us and they were decimated by the Negro fighter pilots. Bill loved it when they escorted them as they were fearless.

They were routed through Brenner Pass that separated Italy and Austria because they were low on fuel. There was a noise so loud an explosion and the shrieking of metal. The outboard engine on the starboard wing was on fire and Bill feathered the prop.

There was smoke in the cockpit, a voice in his earphones saying the bomb bay was on fire, he screamed, "Put it the fuck out, open the damn bomb bay," and the co-pilot did and the air sucked the fire out.

They were losing speed from two hundred seventy five then to two hundred ten miles per hour. They were at twelve thousand feet and the altimeter was winding the wrong way. Nearest base, four hundred miles said the navigator over the earphones.

Nearest city, Trieste was the answer.

"Prepare to bail out," then, "Bail out, bail out, bail out, bail out, bail out," Bill said. He climbed down a hatch into the nose wheel and plummeted just as the plane blew up.

Part III: He woke and he could hear gunfire, small arms and howitzers, he wasn't sure. He looked up and saw three urchins holding one of his flight boots while they pulled off the other one, he pulled his pistol and shot it in the air and they ran away.

He was laying on his back next to a fence of stones set in cement. His parachute was still attached to its pack. His legs would not move they were locked up.

He wasn't dead yet, but he didn't like his chances to make it to tomorrow night. Out of nowhere there was a man next to him pantomiming for him to get up fast. Bill pointed to his legs and gave a double thumbs down. The man pulled him up to a sitting position and used a long sharp knife to cut off the parachute harness.

He pulled Bill up until on dead legs as if he were hugging Bill like they were at the prom dancing and then all of a sudden he was over the man's shoulder with his head looking at the ground and the man was fast walking and occasionally trotting.

Then Bill threw up and the man kept on for well over an hour. When he finally stopped they were still along the same fence, but it was miles from where he started. The man pulled Bill into the opening and it was hollow inside and he sat against a wall. The man pushed brush and branches into the opening and then left and it was so quiet.

Bill fell asleep and woke to some voices speaking German. Bill spoke both Czech and German. A group of soldiers had Bill's bombardier, a Jewish man whose flight jacket had a patch with his name and the star of David. They shot him in the back and then five more times when he was face down. Bill quietly freed his 45 and pulled out a clip to insert should he need to do so. Bill peed his pants. The Germans left.

He was very thirsty and the sounds of birdsong crept into the air as morning came. He wound his watch and it was ten a.m. Greenwich Mean time. He put the new clip into his pistol and the loose rounds in his jacket pocket. He thought about the German patrol and decided he would shoot if they returned and then use the last bullet on himself. He fell asleep again and he woke to the man who carried him who was pulling him out again and then up and Bill surprised both of them by walking a few steps. The man did the RCA dog by cocking his head to the side and Bill shrugged his shoulders, Bill insisted on walking except he had no shoes and was walking in wet socks.

In several hours they made it to a forest camp where most of his crew were already there including Harvey, who ran up to Bill and hugged him and they both cried. They ate mushrooms cooked in butter with oats. Bill was very hungry as they all were and it was filling and there was tea and Slivovitz a plum brandy his dad made during prohibition. It burnt going down, but so did the black tea.

Bill had his silk maps and they found where they were which was thirty miles east of Trieste and their target to the journey was Bucharest in Romania. It was almost due east the journey according to the map was some nine hundred miles and there were mountains they would have to cross. They were in Croatia a Nazi puppet state.

They wore Nazi uniforms just like the Germans.

His new friend was Serbian and a communist and was part of Jozef Tito's group. His name was Jozef too. Bill walked up to him after the slivovitz and hugged him and said in Czech and pointing at his chest Bill and thanked Jozef. They hugged and drank some more. It was March 15th, 1945.

Mostly they slept during the days and walked at night. They stole eggs from farms and sheds held potatoes and apples, but they were at a caloric deficit. Bill knew he was losing weight. Josef had found house slippers with leather on the sole.

One night there was a spavined mule in a pasture and Bill's job was to throw a blanket over the mule's head and hold on to its neck. The other men would stab it to death. It went without incident, and they butchered it quickly and went deeper into the night.

Jozef built a makeshift smoker and he had salt and so the beast was cooked for two days.

Finally, the equivalent to a sirloin and a rump roast was pulled out and cut up. Bill got a chunk of the rump and it was tender to chew but it made mutton something Bill craved now. He crawled about ten feet away and got violently ill and he lay on his side. Harvey brought him some of the sirloin and it was a little better and he could keep it down with the Slivovitz and black tea.

The morning of March 25th by his reckoning and Jozeph's pantomime they were two to three days from an English airfield. Bill had started the flight weighing two hundred and twenty pounds and he thought he might weigh one hundred and seventy pounds now.

The days were starting to run into one another, he could walk more consistently now, but he thought the lack of food was affecting his ability to think and certainly his stamina. Everyone had dysentery and he thought that their collective smell was something people could use to track them.

One afternoon they were sleeping in a dense thicket and were woken by British troops who were complete and utter assholes and didn't believe they were Americans. Bill called their leader a dickless cocksucker who charged Bill as Bill held his hand up and recited his name and serial number and rank as a Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corp, 15th Air Force stationed in Bari, Italy and as per the Geneva Convention we need as prisoners of war medical attention and food.

The dickless cocksucker said you're not prisoners of war you're Americans. Then Bill said, why are your weapons trained on us then? Take us to your commanders.

Bill found that the British intensely disliked the Americans. He told the doctors that his back was broken. They accused him of malingering and Bill told them to take an x-ray.

They did and it was partly healed. They rebroke his back and put him in a body cast.

Part IV

He was transported via a Douglas C-47 cargo plane fitted with stretcher holders from Bucharest to Sicily and able to walk with a full body cast on a hospital ship bound for New York city. It took almost two weeks because they rendezvoused with a convoy of troop carrier liberty ships that had wounded men. It was November of 1945. Almost everyone in Europe that were American servicemen on VE (Victory Europe) day in May was already gone by August 15, 1945.

Bill was in this contraption that had him strung up above a cot. They put a damn catheter in his cock and the piss just flowed out of him. His arms were immobile so they spoon fed him stuff, like squash and mashed peas and spam chunks. Spam was ok. They bathed him with a sponge bath and held up this medal bowl against his butt. He refused to do that with a woman holding the bed pan.

That was a mistake as they gave him an enema and nothing happened and they would not be denied and did it again and it as if the dam broke and river of shit flowed and there was more than they anticipated and he was mortified.

He became non-responsive to their questions, keeping his eyes closed and Bill thought they would leave him alone and he was badly wrong. He heard several footfalls of people entering his room. He felt hands gripping his head and they pried his left eye open and shone a flashlight in his eye and he pulled his head back and smacked his forehead into a doctor's nose causing blood to spurt and obscenity after obscenity flowed forth from this mouth. He was given a shot and consciousness left him.

Finally, an Army Air Corp Lieutenant Colonel came into his room and stood next to him and looked at him. Bill had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He could not see outside the ward so he did not know night from day. "What seems to be the trouble Lieutenant Benedict," the Lieutenant Colonel asked.

"You've got a broken back and you're receiving the proscribed treatment; do you object to it?"

Finally, Bill spoke quietly, "I was pilot in command of a B-24 that was hit by antiaircraft fire on February 28th I broke my back when I landed from the parachute fall as I was knocked out. My crew and I with help of Serbian partisans as well as Tito's people helped us get to English lines in Bucharest in the early part of April. I walked nine hundred miles with a broken back Colonel."

"The English doctors re-broke my back and put me in a body cast in April. I walked on to this hospital ship on November 1st. Walked. I was immediately put in this device. They put a catheter in my cock and gave me two enemas and I shit for twenty minutes. I walked onto this ship. I can walk to the shitter and do my business."

"I was awarded two distinguished flying crosses, a silver star and a bunch of purple hearts. Is this how you treat a decorated hero?"

The Lieutenant Colonel didn't say anything and left his room. Bill was so thirsty.

Soon there was a Naval Captain with his medical record standing in front of him, he was a doctor and started talking to him,

"Lieutenant other than the abuse you've received how do you feel?"

"Sir, it's like wearing a straight jacket. I've had this body cast on for eight months and I walked on this ship. I have no pain, I can wiggle my toes and fingers, I have no numbness such as I had when I broke my back on February 28th from landing after parachuting out of my B-24. I walked from Trieste to Bucharest and sometimes my legs locked up, then the English doctors rebroke my back in put me in the body cast."