From the ETO in 1943: My Most Memorable Christmas

by Sgt. James Underwood, 359th Fighter Group

As an Air Force Sergeant, at a fighter base in England during World War II, Christmas 1943 promised only homesickness.

There was to be a party at the NCO club, but no one seemed to be very enthused about the thought of it. Most everyone on the base had thoughts of home, missed families, wives and sweethearts.

My buddy, Sgt. Brown, and I had recently been dating two English girls, sisters, who lived in the small village of Thetford, five miles from the base. We had met their parents and had tea with them on several occasions.

The English outlook that year was also pretty bleak. The war had dragged on for four years. Rationing and lack of man-power at home had taken its physical and mental toll. Our adopted family hadn't even planned to have a Christmas tree.

Brownie and I had been saving our candy ration stamps to buy Lifesavers (the girls favorite) as part of gifts we planned for our dates and their family.

Then on the day before Christmas we decided we'd take them a tree and use the Lifesavers strung on string as decorations. We had found a bale of German "anti-radar" aluminum strips that had been dropped during a raid and still intact. They were a close substitute for tinsel. More decorations.

We'd have to have some music, so off we went to Special Services where we borrowed a record player and a half dozen records. We next visited our mess sergeant, told him of our plans, and he came up with cans of roast beef, a tin of butter, jams, sugar, flour, tea - a small crateful.

We had only bicycles for transportation and that five miles was going to be a long ride.

We went about arranging for an overnight pass for we had been invited to visit the Newtons on Christmas Eve and spend Christmas Day with them.

Sgt. Brown was the projectionist at the base theater and could not get off until 11 p.m. Christmas Eve. My job was to load the bikes and be ready. A record player, a crate of food, a box of "tinsel," gifts, candy and records were all dutifully strapped to the two bikes. They looked like an accident searching for a place to happen!

Fog layered the road as we started out. Our small blackout flashlights did little to cut the damp and drippy darkness. A short way down the road stood some pine trees. We had blazed one the day before so that we could pick it out at night. Luckily we found it. We only wanted the top, and since I am short it was my assignment to climb the tree.

Up and up I went into the inky blackness. Stealthily now, for this was Her Majesty's forest and we had no rights at all being in there. Using a broken hacksaw blade, somehow I got the job done and down came the top of the pine.

Now came the real tricky part. Our bikes had been unwieldy and nearly unmanageable before. Now we had to tote a five-foot Christmas tree. We managed, somehow, to ride through the fog, the drizzle and the dark to our destination.

We knocked on the door, shouting Merry Christmas. As we began to un­load the bikes the looks on our friend's faces ran from amazement to glee. And when we brought in the tree, it was joyful bedlam!

In half an hour we had set up and decorated the tree, distributed the gifts and were dancing to Glenn Miller records. A bottle of wine came from somewhere and we toasted the arrival of Christmas, 1943 with happy hearts.

The following spring the English girl and I were married.

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Sgt. James R. Underwood wed Miss Freda Newton on April 8, 1944. The Underwoods had a daughter before the 359th Fighter Group sailed for the U.S. at war’s end. 

"My Most Memorable Christmas" by Sgt. James Underwood, a 1943 story from the 359th Fighter Group's archives, was selected for inclusion in the ebook Heart of Christmas published by Sparkle Press.  The story was archived by Char Baldridge, Historian, 359th Fighter Group Association, and submitted to Sparkle Press by Janet Fogg and Char Baldridge.  Janet and Char manage the 359th Fighter Group's Facebook page, posting archived stories and photos every day. We hope you'll stop by!

 

 

 

"We have paid the full price with lives, pre-aged youth, and great sorrow."

By Janet Fogg

In observance of Memorial Day, the day we honor Americans who have died while in military service to the United States, an excerpt from Fogg in the Cockpit, Howard Fogg – Master Railroad Artist, World War II Fighter Pilot, by Richard and Janet Fogg.

From the June 1944 Informal Report of Morale for the 359th Fighter Group, submitted by Wilbur C. “Chappie” Ziegler, to Captain Maurice F. X. Donahue, Headquarters.

“The month of June 1944 is one that will never be forgotten by any man in the group. The one big memory we will have of this month is D-Day. For weeks, rumors had been flying thick and fast as to when the invasion would start and what part we would play in it. These rumors kept morale high for a time, but then as the days dragged on a new and more persistent rumor crept into the picture. You heard it on the line, in the messes, in the Red Cross Club, wherever men gathered. So much good weather had been ignored that many were thinking that the invasion had been put off for another year. A man’s morale went pretty low as he thought of another year away from home without any substantial gain toward victory. Things went along in that vein until midnight of June 5th, when everybody seemed to sense that “this was it!” Something electric went through the air with the news that the invasion was about to start. As in America, there was no great hilarity or celebration. Everyone knew this was going to cost many lives, but it was as if a load had been lifted. As a group we were like a fighter who had trained for his big fight. He had fought his way up through the ranks and earned a shot at the championship. He is nervous and tense as he awaits the bell for the first round. Then suddenly it rings and the tenseness leaves him. He’s relaxed and confident. He knows he’ll take some pretty stiff punches, but more than that he knows he can win. Well, I think that’s the way we all felt. We didn’t relish, in fact we hated the thought of the losses we would suffer. However, we knew if we were to win this fight we had to take it some time and the sooner we got in there the sooner we’d win and get out again.

“Briefing for the first invasion mission was called at about 0200 hours on 6 June. Naturally it was a very secret briefing, so I cannot report on the reaction of our pilots when they heard the news. When they came out they were full of life, buoyed up with the nervous excitement of the realization that the greatest invasion in history was about to start and they were an integral part of it. I remember when they went into the briefing it was pitch dark outside and if I remember correctly it was even drizzling. In all, it looked like a poor send-off as far as weather was concerned. Then, just as the pilots came out to their trucks, the clouds parted and a bright cold moon lit up the whole field. The men stood gathered around the trucks for the regular post-briefing prayer. It was a moment that I for one will never forget. There wasn’t a sound anywhere on the field or in the air. It was one of the holiest moments I have ever felt as I led those men in prayer. I remember Howie Fogg remarked about the same thing later on in the day. That was group “A”. An hour later group “B” met for briefing and again we had that same experience of a holy moment. I’m a chaplain and yet I can’t explain it. Perhaps it was the knowledge of the invasion, or the sudden clearing of the sky, or the knowledge that some of these men wouldn’t live through the week, whatever it was in those two early morning briefings, we were at a holy moment in the history of our individual lives, our group, and our nation.

“Most of my time was spent with the pilots this month, but I can’t close this report without recording the effect of D-Day on our ground personnel. It was a “shot-in-the-arm” to us all. All gripes, beefs, ill feeling seemed to have been momentarily forgotten, and they worked together as a team more successfully than ever before. They couldn’t fly. They couldn’t share the danger and risk their lives, but what they could do they did, and did it well. Our ground crews went without sleep hours on end. They stayed up night after night, stayed on the job hour after hour, to keep those planes in the air. Working with eyes red from lack of sleep, stomachs upset from irregular eating periods, bodies fatigued from lack of rest, the number of planes they kept in the air and the small number of abortions due to mechanical failure is proof of the magnificent job they did.

“It has been an expensive month. It has been referred to as a magnificent gamble. This is no gamble. If it is we had better quit now. This must be a transaction. We have paid the full price with lives, pre-aged youth, and great sorrow. We who live on must now carry on and finish the task that they so magnificently have started. We must obtain full value for their sacrifice in peace, security, justice, and freedom.”

Winning a Three-Legged Non-Fiction Race!

Why collaborate on a manuscript?

Is the sum truly better than the parts?

In this case it was!


Last week I shared my experience co-authoring screenplays, and this week will look at lessons learned while collaborating with my husband Richard on Fogg in the Cockpit, a military history book that will be released world-wide by Casemate Publishing in May 2011.

First I might mention that the book is based on the diary Richard’s father kept while flying Mustangs and Thunderbolts out of England during World War II. When Richard and I disagreed on an issue, because it is his father's diary I felt Richard’s opinion should carry more weight. As I’d recently seen my first novel published, and since I also spent more time on this book than Richard, he often tried to defer to me. Most small issues were resolved in this manner, but we did have periodic debates where one of us had to persuade the other to his or her way of thinking. Unfortunately, there were two issues we discussed a number of times with no resolution. We just didn’t agree, and ultimately, one of us simply acquiesced.

We recommend you discuss how you'll resolve a major difference of opinion before you start writing. Describe that process in a memo or letter agreement, or better yet, include it in your collaboration contract. As a side note, our publisher recently complimented us for “putting together such a clean package of text and photos,” so they didn’t stumble over either of our two problem-children. Whew!

Non-fiction lends itself to collaboration. Tasks can be allocated. Research, writing, tracking down sources and supporting documents or photos, requesting releases, editing, all of it is easy to share, more so than when writing fiction.

I started Fogg in the Cockpit by transcribing Howard Fogg’s 1943/44 diary and immediately realized what a fascinating document we had. Once the transcription was complete, Richard and I decided to create a book around Howard’s words. Richard researched significant events during the War that were concurrent with Howard’s service while I worked with the Historian from the 359th Fighter Group Association, Dartmouth College, and other sources to track down photos, maps, and reports about the 359th. Richard also tended to research technical material, such as compressibility or P-51 engine specifications, while I developed a mission map and verified geographic references. We shared efforts researching other supplementary material, including pilot terminology, military abbreviations, descriptions of the aircraft used by Allied and Axis powers, and so on.

We both drafted text for the supplementary material and we both edited. We were extremely fortunate to have an enormous number of reports and photos available from the Group Historian, and Richard and I spent days studying everything and debating what to include. Since then we’ve discovered that the Historian had a few other reports we were unaware of. While we might not have used them, I do regret not being aware of those documents until very recently. Lesson learned? Keep asking your sources what else they might have!

The week before our submittal deadline Richard double-checked facts we presented in the supplementary text while I edited the entire document based on the extremely detailed Author Guidelines from Casemate – both nit-picky, time consuming tasks. I also coordinated the 116 image releases while formatting the images electronically, as Richard drafted and refined the accompanying 15 pages of captions.

I should now mention where collaboration saved us. We had a working draft before sending out queries, but Casemate wanted a bigger book, and they wanted that bigger book submitted two months after we signed the contract.

We brushed up our original draft, verified facts, finalized images, and added 121 pages in a combination of new text and excerpts from the 1944 Group Historian's Reports - all in 53 days.

It’s good to have a partner!

What if you’re the “writer” partner collaborating with an expert in some obscure field? Or you've been asked to ghost-write a story? You need a contract that describes how you'll work together, who's responsible for what, how decisions will be made, how you'll share royalties or be paid, and who gets credit for what. Be clear before you start.

Next week, when I look at collaborating on a novel, I’ll include a list of points for you to discuss with your collaborator, as well as an example of a simple collaboration letter agreement.

Janet Fogg

fogginthecockpit.blogspot.com