Four of us young pilots left B-26 training at Vance AFB, Oklahoma in early September 1954 more or less together and all with orders to Laon AB, France. We kinda agreed to meet a MaGuire AFB on a certain date and we did. Harry Purcell, Jerry Laughren, Don Shirkey and I all traveled together to Frankfurt via MATS, they put up over night in Bad Homberg a few miles North of Frankfurt, it was a nice hotel and there was a casino across the street I peeked in and saw people all dressed up and quickly realized I could not afford to eat there we went on down the street and found a sidewalk cafe and of course I could not read the menu. Finally the waiter helped me out and recommended a Yeager Schnitzel for a meat and potatoes boy. That became one of my favorite German meals. The next morning we were taken to the train station and that is where I made my first oops, I looked at signs on the rest rooms trying to figure
out which was which, Herren sounded like Her to me so I headed to the other one, I was quickly ejected and went to the other one, there was an old woman in there too. I came out watched for a while and then followed two men to the correct one, meanwhile my buddies where nearly rolling on the floor in wild laughter, they never let me forget that one.

In a short while we were on our way to Paris. We got a cab from the Gare de Est to the Gare du Nord. We later found out that we could have walked, its only a couple of long blocks away. At the ticket window we
where initially given tickets to Lyon but one of us spotted the error and we got those exchanged. We had some time to kill so we found a place to have a beer and a sandwich the ham was so thin I could see through it but the bread was great and so was the mustard. Finally our train was called. Our duffle bags were to large to fit in the overhead compartments so the four of us sat in a six person cabin with our duffle bags between our legs. I fell asleep and don’t remember any of that first trip to Laon. At Loan we learned there was a shuttle service to the base, but we had just missed one, we went to the Cafe du Gare and had some coffee and sandwiches, wow that coffee was strong. We got to the base and we all got assigned to different tar paper tents as our quarters. I explored the base a bit and ended up at the O’ club had some supper and went back to the tent. I met all my tent mates but it was all happening so fast I don’t remember any names any more. In a day or two somebody came in and said there is a seat on the plane to Wheelus and you have a slot in the training schedule there, come on, I went baggage and all. That was the last time I was in my tar paper quarters.

We got a field check out and were soon flying practice bombing and gunnery missions. It was a blast. One night” Nails” Nelson led a flight of us out to the range for some night bombing practice, he found what he thought was the target. We took spacing getting ready and he made the first drop, the target disappeared, oops. We finally found the right target and completed the mission but explaining the mistake “Nails” said ” hey its darker than the inside of a foot ball out there” he was always coming up stuff like that. Hoot flew with me a few times as gunner. We would load a few barrels in the bomb bay and would drop one, circle back and let the gunner try to sink it. Hoot was so good that it rarely took him more than a few short bursts to sink the barrel. He made it look easy. He went on to be a B-52 gunner and had a good carrier.

That winter Europe was socked in, all the Fighter wings were grounded because there where no suitable alternates within their range, so the 38th was tasked to fly off as many flight hours as possible. Us young bucks went up day after day shooting GCA’s to a low approach and then do it again. I learned a lot and so did the GCA controllers, it really sharpened our instrument flying skills. Monroe Borsma called me in one winter day and told me to go test fly an airplane that was just coming out of periodic. I checked everything I could and wrote up a bunch of things I thought they had missed. After they had fixed all the things I had written up he said take Manty Janace and go, don’t come back till you have a 100 hours on it. We went south at first to Nice, France, Saragosa, Spain, a Navy base in Morocco that I don’t remember its name. Then up to Lisbon, Portugal, to Southern England, then on to Belfast, Ireland where I went to the court house to review my grand mothers records. Susan B. Kelly, there were so many Kellys in the phone book that I didn’t even try to find relatives.

We did hop over to southern Ireland to kiss the blarney stone. We went to Stavenger, Norway and then had to back track because central Europe was still socked in. Back to Scotland, England, Spain again and then Libya. Manty being Jewish finally said lets see if we can get to Israel. We went to Malta, on to Palermo, Sicily and finally to Athens Greece. Manty found out that there where numerous MATS flights from Athens to Israel. We rode down one day and came back the next, Manty got to do his thing, I went with him but seldom understood what was being said, I know it was not Greek but it might as well have been. Manty was a professor of language at NYU before he was recalled for Korea and he spoke many foreign languages. Maybe I could fly but I had to look up to him for his worldly ways. We made a pretty good team I could get him where he wanted to go and he could in the native language make all the arrangements. We had fun.

We made it back to Laon on Christmas eve and we had only logged 96 hours. We all had a nice Christmas and Monroe sent me out to fly off the last four hours on my birthday, 27 DEC. But still it had been an experience I will never forget. How could anyone be so lucky? Yeah, I know I’ve been blessed and I am humbled that life has packed so much fun into one life. I just pray that our off spring will have the opportunity to enjoy lives as enjoyable a mine has been. Bob