At I think 19, I enlisted in the Army in World War II. I went into the Air Force and outfit I was in was the Troop Carrier Command. Flew C47s as cargo planes, and I was a mechanic. We had a team that flew one day and then our team flew the next day; every other day.

I was stationed started out in Great Britain and then after they went into France we went to France and spent most of my time in France, but we flew every other day. It was pretty interesting and the main thing that our crew didn’t fly, but they flew for the invasions and taking the paratroopers and the gliders in.

I flew some when they had gliders on and paratroopers too but it was just when they were working out testing them. Then we flew up to haul gas up to Patton’s tanks there for about four months and (Laughs), we loaded the plane up with five gallon cans of gasoline and hauled them up there every day. We tried to find a place to land and let it off close to his tanks. We did that for about three or four months. It didn’t bother me one bit and it didn’t seem to bother any of the crew or the rest of us. We just did it.

One time we landed out there in a cow pasture some place and we are talking there deciding what they are going to do and I started throwing the cans out the door and some Major there, oh, he chewed me out something awful for throwing gasoline like that!

Each flight squadron had one guy that knew how to figure out where we were at.

I liked it when we were the lead plane because we didn’t get all the wind from the other planes. They would flop around you know.