NOVEMBER 25, 1943 TO JANUARY 15, 1944

We left Alamogordo, New Mexico on the 26th of November, the day after Thanksgiving. It was a miserable day, perhaps the coldest we'd had in the four months we were in training there, and a fierce driving rain made it all the more unpleasant. For some inexplicable reason, we arrived at the railroad station four hours to early. The men, burdened with full packs, had to really grin and bear it, as we stood in the open air waiting and waiting - - the rain unceasing.

Fortunately, there was Pullman convenience for all on the trip East, so we had a chance to rest up and recuperate from the colds and chilblains.

Our immediate destination was the staging area at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, prior to moving on to our Port of Embarkation. We reached there on the 29th. A few days to receive additional supplies and equipment, and we were ready to board ship.

The night we left Patrick Henry, the men slept blanket-less, with their clothes on, using their packs for pillows. We were awakened at three in the morning and after eating a really early chow, moved off silently to a shuttle train, which in half and hour lumbered into the dock area.

We piled and crowded onto a ferry boat, while an army band 50 or 60 strong played "Over There", "Pistol Packin' Mama" and the "Air Corps Song". It was a long haul around the pier with our duffle bags to where the Liberty Ship was stationed. But once we were there to board, everything went with dispatch.

The ship was the "Benjamin S. Milam", a 10,000 tonner with a crew of 60 Merchant Mariners and Navy Gunners. For a day or son, we lay a few miles outside the harbor waiting for the rest of the convoy to gather. Finally, o the 4th of December, we set sail.

We shared the ship with the 716th Squadron of the 449th Bombardment Group - - totaling altogether perhaps 500 men.

The voyage across the North Atlantic was essentially uneventful. We never encountered a really rough day at sea. The weather for the most part was fair and cool. Most of us were very much in dread of sea sickness, but few of the men were taken down with it.

We did have one or two scares - - such as the foggy morning the third week out when someone shouted "submarine starboard" and the crew rushed to their battle stations. It turned out to be buoy released by one of the other ships as a guide through the heavy fog, and which had been, not unreasonably, mistaken for the tip of a periscope. The very next day we had another abortive "incident" – when we narrowly escaped ramming into a nest of mines.

The men spent most of their time reading - - anything they could get their hands on - - playing cards and shooting crap and sweating out chow lines. At night, the hold of the ship resembled a Monte Carlo - - the ling tables jammed with talkative gamblers.

Early Christmas Eve we pulled into the harbor of Bizerte, which had been announced as out Port of Debarkation, and dropped anchor. We all expected to limber our legs on land the next morning.

Christmas Eve celebration in the hold of the ship was highlighted by a strip crap game between the ship's Boson and Lt. W of the 715th Squadron - - a little out of taste, perhaps, but howling entertainment for the men who had been cramped up for three weeks in a tightly populated hold. We also had some fiddling and guitaring and communal singing and dirty story telling - - a very robust Christmas Eve.

We had gorged on our Christmas Dinner two days earlier, expecting to eat C rations on the 25th, but we never did get off at Bizerte. In the dark hours of Christmas Morning, the rest of our convoy had apparently left fro another destination. We clambered on deck Christmas Morning to find ourselves left behind.

We lay in Bizerte for several days - - beginning to wonder what was to happen to us, referring to ourselves as the "Lost Squadron", the rumors rife and imaginative. Finally, on the 28th we pulled out, and arrived in Palermo, Sicily on the following afternoon. We debarked on the 30th and were taken by truck to a staging area a few miles from the city in the mountain-valley region of Mondeleo. We ere set up in field tents and for the first time, the men had use of their shelter halfs. Living conditions were rather rough and provided good hardening for the squadron. In a way though, it was a few days of vacation, because most of the men were issued passes to visit Palermo, and there wasn't much of anything to do at camp.

On the morning of January 5, we packed, and once more boarded a Liberty Ship. A few days of waiting for a convoy to gather and we set sail for another destination. This time it proved to be Naples. As soon as we stepped off the ship on the 10th of January, we learned that our Air Echelon and the other squadron of the Group had been located. We were no longer the "Lost Squadron".

For two days we were stationed in another staging area, outside the town of Bagnoli, an suburb of Naples - - housed in one of a series of building that had formerly been used as a training center by the Germans - - sleeping on marble floors.

On the 13th of January, the bulk of the Squadron was loaded on trucks and headed across south central Italy. We bivouacked one night outside Foggia. The following afternoon we arrived at our ultimate destination and rejoined our Group as part of the 47th Wing, 15th Air Force.

Gale H. Gillan

2nd Lt. Air Corps,

Squadron Historian