A World War II Veteran Remembers: Wally
Maxwell
As interviewed by Elsie Saar
Mr. Wallace (Wally)
Maxwell, 78, of Hudson, New York, was interviewed on July 13, 2003, by Elsie
Saar, a volunteer at the Pittsfield branch of the National Archives and
Records Administration. This is his story of his experiences in World War
II.
I was born in Boston Corners, Columbia County,
New York. Boston Corners is at the corner of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
New York. I lived there until 1933. It was the heart of the depression.
My father worked for the Borden Milk Factory in Hillsdale, New York. I went
to Roeliff Jansen Central School, graduated in 1942. Went to work for the
government in Vorheesville, New York, in the supply depot that stored
material that was going overseas. We loaded the lend-lease supplies --
trucks, jeeps, tanks, etc., on railroad freight cars that were going down to
New York and New Jersey to resupply the convoys overseas.
There were four of us boys, three brothers and
I, all of us in the service. I was the youngest. My oldest brother Claude
went into service in the Army late in 1941 and served with the 6th armored
division in Europe on a tank crew. My next brother, Clarence, enlisted in
the Army Air Force early in 1941 and he served overseas in Africa, Sicily,
and Italy on a ground crew. My next brother, Gordon, went in early in 1944
and he served in a combat engineering unit in Germany. During the crossing
of the Rhine, he helped build the bridges. We were all lucky enough to get
home safely.
I tried to enlist in the Marines in summer of
1942 at age 17, but I wasn’t in good enough shape, my left foot was flat and
my toes curled. But the Army was glad to get me the following April. At
that time, if I remember right, they were taking us in and assigning people
and putting them in which ever service they needed people for.
I was drafted in April 1943 in Hudson, New
York, went to Camp Uptown, Long Island reception center, went to Miami Beach
for basic training (hot muggy air, nights couldn’t sleep, difficult to train
in). In June 1943, I was transferred to Scott Field, Illinois, for radio
school. I was there for 6 months, it was a rush program they had, then I
was sent to Yuma, Arizona, for aircraft gunnery school in January 1944. The
government had to rush that up, was there about six weeks ‘til the middle of
February. I was then sent to Lincoln, Nebraska, where air crews were
formed. And from there, I went to Pueblo, Colorado, for phase training and
was assigned to a B-24 aircraft, heavy bomber. Stayed there until around
April. We completed training around the end of April and were sent back to
Lincoln, Nebraska, and picked up a new aircraft, a B-24, and we started
overseas. We transferred to Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire, were
there two nights (had trouble with the plane), took off for England via
Goose Bay, Labrador, then to Reykjavik, Iceland, for overnight and
refueling, and from there to England. We landed at a reinforcement depot,
then were sent to Newcastle, Ireland, for combat operational training, for
about a week, just a short training to make sure I could do the type of
radio work I was supposed to do and be ready for combat. Then I went back
to England, and we were sent to the 491st Bombardment Group, at North
Pickenham, England.
I flew as a radio operator. Being in the lead
crew, I had to report all the check points so that the 2nd Air Division
headquarters in England knew where we were, and also I had to report on the
bomb strike. We had messages made up so that at every check point, we would
say we were at check point 1, etc., report the altitude, reference time, and
bomb strike, I would send a message back whether it was bad, good or
excellent. If we had something go wrong, I would encode the message and say
what was wrong.
Then we started flying combat all over Europe,
the first mission that I think I flew was on June 2, 1944, to bomb an
airfield in France, behind the lines, just before Normandy. Most of our
targets were throughout Germany but a few were in France, Holland and
Belgium. In September we became a lead Pathfinder crew, we got a radar
navigator and new bombardier, and started training as a lead crew. A lead
crew would be leading a formation, three squadrons in one group, and there
were three groups in our wing, which was the 14th combat wing, which was
part of the 2nd air division, all B-24s. Each wing might be going to a
different target. Sometimes there would be a 1000-plane raid on one
individual city. Then we might have the whole 8th Air Force going to one
town. In September 1944, during the airborne invasion of Holland, we
resupplied the 101st airborne division with food, guns, and ammunition.
This was a really low-level raid, about 50 to 100 feet off ground and when
we were flying in formation it was really rough.
France had built an underground fortification
between France and Germany, to keep the Germans out of France. The Germans
went around the fortification, through Belgium, into France. In November
1944, I think, we carried 2000 pound bombs to near Metz, France, dropped
these bombs on these fortifications to clean out the German army. Also
during this same period of time, we were bombing targets in Germany,
Hamburg, and Cologne. In the fall of 1944, after a 1000-plane raid in
Cologne, about the only building left standing was a cathedral.
Flying over Germany was something, seeing open
fields which were bombed, dropping bombs through clouds, no one knew where
they were landing. One day I remember in the fall of 1944 we went through a
large railroad marshaling yard, at
Hamm, Germany. We came in and bombed this large yard which was 30 to 40
tracks wide, we hit the target. I was down in the bomb bay seeing where the
bombs were hitting, and one of the groups behind us, dropped their bombs,
about a mile outside the target area. He missed the target by at least a
mile or more.
In the Ruhr industrial section of Germany, had
about maybe 20,000 anti-aircraft guns covering that area, and some days it
felt that they could hit us with every one of them. When we would reach our
IP (initial point), we would then turn and head for the target. From that
point on, we had to fly straight and level over our target so that the
bombardier could set-up his bomb site and hit his target. And the German
anti-aircraft flak, in many cities, was radar-controlled and they could get
that flak right in the area we were flying, and they would set up a wall of
flak that we had to fly through. It was just like someone throwing gravel
and rocks at the plane, because when those shells burst, it was all chunks
of metal. One day we came back with over 100 holes in the plane, from small
holes like one inch in diameter to some a foot in diameter.
Some of our missions were short, five to six
hours long; and if we went down to southern Germany, into Munich or into
Austria, we might have nine- to ten-hour missions. Once we got over Europe,
we were flying from 18,000 to 24,000 feet and the temperature would run
anywheres from 40 to 70 degrees below 0. And the inside of the plane was
just as cold as the outside. It was cold. We had electric heated suits on
underneath, but many times we would have parts of the suit that didn’t
work. When I would go down into the bomb bay to check the bomb strike, I
would come up a number of times, and oxygen masks and glasses and everything
would be ice, my face and everything. We had like a helmet on but the open
part of the face is where it would get to us. One time over the North Sea,
the thermometer was pegged at –70 F. A lot of times it would get close to
there. If our plane was hit, we could not bale out over the North Sea, too
cold; we had to go down with the plane and ditch into the North Sea and hope
that the plane didn’t break up, and have a few seconds to get out into life
rafts, because the sea was so cold we would freeze to death.
Ten people were on a plane. Every time we
lost a plane we would lose ten people. Sometimes if a plane got hit, they
would pull up out of the formation in order for the crew to bail out and a
lot of times a wing would break off or something and the plane would start
going down in a spin, and it was very seldom that we saw one or two
parachutes come out, sometimes none.
The ten airmen on Wally’s plane
Front
row, left to right:
Brenneman, waist gunner; Bottoms,
engineer; McGaughey, waist gunner; Greene, tail gunner; Maxwell, radio
operator.
Back row, left to right:
Plier, bombardier; Berglund, navigator; Short, pilot;
Aschinger, copilot; Brindle, navigator.
Personal photo, Wally
Maxwell, used with permission
In the fall of 1944 on a mission to Hamburg,
we had a new plane that only had six hours flying time. When we reached the
IP, we lost part of the power in #2 engine and we decided to keep going in
over the target. Before we reached the target, we lost #4 engine. We still
kept going over the target and then dropped out of formation because we
could not keep up with the formation. The planes would fly with 2 engines
once we got rid of the bomb load. We got rid of the bomb load over the
target and then flew home alone.
During the winter of 1944-1945, we bombed all
over Germany, Kassel (a tiger tank factory). We had three missions to
Hamburg, a mission to Essen, one to Frankfurt. Practically every
mission, we would get hit with some flak and there would be damage to our
plane. [Although
it was very difficult for Wally to discuss the following, he wanted to do
so.] In November of 1944, I was on a mission to Misburg in
northern Germany. Our group flew as a wing to hit one of the last remaining
oil refineries. Our fighter escort left our group to go back to help
another group, and then we were hit by about 300 German fighters. We lost
over half our group, 17 of our 30 planes, 10 men to a plane, but we did get
in and wipe out the target.
Everybody hated to go to Berlin because that
was a long mission and usually we would have a lot of flak and fighters
before we got there. In the early spring of 1945, the Russians were getting
near Berlin and leaders of the 8th Air Force felt that we had to help break
the morale of the German people so we had a number of raids to Berlin. When
they set these up, if the weather over Berlin was visual, we would go
there. If not, we would hit a secondary target. The main one of these was
Dresden. Over Berlin, each group was assigned a certain target area to hit
so the idea was to practically militarily wipe out the city. There were a
number of these raids in the early spring of 1945. I flew two raids during
that period of time, one to Berlin and one to Dresden, because of bad
weather. In the spring of 1945, they had an airborne invasion of Wetzel,
Germany, north of the Ruhr Valley. We also supplied the airborne divisions
at that time, too, as we did in Holland.
On one mission to Berlin, we ran into heavy
headwinds and this caused us to have a ground speed of 75 mph over the
target, real slow, normally the air speed would be 175 mph, we completed the
mission, it was a lot more scary.
Once a month we would get a chance to go to
London for 3 days. There was a lot of sights to see in London, the Windmill
Theater, Piccadilly Circus where all the action was. Westminster Abbey, the
Tower of London, and London Bridge. The city was devastated. The subway
system, every station we came to, there were mattresses from one end to the
other. That’s where the people lived, cause even at that time, the German
Air Force wasn’t flying over but they had the V1 buzz bomb and the V2
rockets that would be flying into England from Germany. Sometimes a lead
crew would fly weather flights; and we would take off at three o’clock in
the morning and would fly over the North Sea, report back the weather
conditions that would affect the flights into Germany that day. These
flights would be about six hours along.
I was at a reinforcement depot ready to come
home when the war ended in Europe in May 7, 1945 (V-E day), and I came back
to the United States on the Isle de France, with no ship escort, because the
ships like the Queen Mary didn’t have to sail with any escort because they
were fast enough to out run the submarines. From there, after 30 days at
home, I went to Victoria, Texas, where they were training Turkish fighter
pilots, taking care of the radio equipment on the planes. I stayed there
until October and then I went to Rome, New York where I was discharged. I
was discharged just after Clarence, he was with the American units that were
with the British in North Africa at the time the Americans got into the war,
with a ground crew setting up the air fields in North Africa.
Decorations I received during WWII were four
air medals, the Distinguished Unit Citation, the Victory Medal, the American
Theater of Operations medal, the European Theater of Operations Medal, Good
Conduct Medal, a Certificate of Valor from the commanding office of the
491st Bombardment Group, and the New York State Conspicuous Service Cross.
I joined the reserves in 1948 and I was
recalled to active duty in July 1950 and served in the States helping set up
the radar installations along the northeastern part of the United States. I
was relieved from active duty in October in 1951, discharged from the Air
Force reserve in 1954.
I like to watch the History channel, but when
I see some of these World War II programs, I relive what actually happened.
At the time of a mission, we were concentrating on doing our jobs, everyone
had his job to do, everyone had to keep watch for enemy aircraft and
antiaircraft fire so that things didn’t bother us then when something
happened. But when we got back to base and got out of the plane and had
time to think, then sometimes we started shaking, thinking of what could
have happened.
I heard on the History channel that the 8th
Air Force had one of the heaviest casualty rates of any unit in WWII.
__________
Note:
While in the Army Airforce, Wally held the following ranks: Private, Private
1st
Class, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, and Technical Sergeant. |
