Over There

As told to Keith by his father Edward Kenny

December 1944 to January 1945

I finished gunnery training and final pilot qualification for the P-47 Thunderbolt in Dover, Delaware. On December 16 the same week, the Nazi’s launched their counter attack in the Ardennes and were driving US forces back through Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge dominated the news, and I wasn’t surprised when orders came for Europe—the P-47 was our primary ground attack fighter. I was assigned to the 404^thFighter Group but, with the front constantly shifting, my final orders wouldn’t come until I got over there.

Phyllis had been with me since we were married in June, following me camp to camp after I completed Officer Candidate School. She was nineteen; I was twenty. My Dad drove down from Detroit to see me off and take Phyl home. Delaware was our first real goodbye.

Our last night together would have to last a long time.

I boarded the Queen Elizabeth outbound from Port Newark for the UK. The Royal Navy had requisitioned the Queen Elizabeth and reconfigured the luxury liner to be a troop transport. I got the standard upgrade for new officers: a stateroom with eighteen other officers stacked in bunks three high. Mine was the dockside low bunk. We piled our B4 bags in a corner with pints of Southern Comfort. B4s were standard Army Air Force garment bags; the Southern Comfort came courtesy of the distiller.

The Queen Elizabeth was one of the fastest ships afloat. We ran at thirty knots with running lights ablaze and no escort ships—they couldn’t keep up. Neither submarines nor torpedoes could catch her, and degaussing coils kept floating, proximity mines from activating.

The voyage took five days. We didn’t move around the ship much because of the crowding. The food was standard military chow, brown, greasy, and piled high. Despite stabilizers against wave action, some officers and men got sick—not the pilots, since motion sickness would have keep us from flight status. We passed the time playing bridge, penny a point. The game was continuous. When anyone needed a break, they cashed out and another officer sat in. By the time we docked in Clyde, Scotland, I’d made fifty-six dollars and nineteen cents—a good month’s pay before the war.

Stepping from the gangplank, I was directed to a line of idling buses and lorries. I threw my B4 bag into the first lorry and climbed up. The bus behind us moved forward and started to fill as soon as we drove off. The drive from Clyde to the USAAF depot at Newcastle was 160 miles and took us through the English countryside. As soon as we jumped out, the lorry took a ‘U’ turn into a long gas line then headed back to Clyde.

I was waved to the mess tent and fell in at the end of the chow line. After dinner, a sergeant pointed me to a cot in another tent. “Be back here at 0400 tomorrow.” Next morning, I saw the bus waiting. I rushed through the breakfast line, folded a burnt meat patty into a slice of hard toast, and hopped aboard as the bus pulled out.

The Newcastle aerodrome comprised two paved runways, a control tower and a terminal building. Three WWI-vintage wooden hangars were north of the terminal. In the shadow of the open bays, mechanics leaned over workbenches and engine components mounted on frames and dollies. Four planes awaited service out front: three twin-engine Lockheed Hudson bombers and a single-engine P-40 Warhawk. A blackened engine hung from a wheeled crane beside the Hudsons. Behind the hangars was the stripped fuselage of an obsolete Brewster Buffalo. Seeing all the shot-up and discarded planes, I wondered how the pilots had fared.

As I stepped off the bus, a twin-engine C-47 transport two-hopped a landing. It wheeled onto a connecting link, taxied toward us, and revved its sputtering engines before shutting down.

“That’s yours,” shouted the sergeant above the roar of another taxiing transport. He gestured his pencil toward the newly arrived C-47 and made a check on his clipboard.

“What?” I shouted back, cupping my ear.

“Lieutenant Edward Kenny?” He sheltered his eyes from the prop wash.

“Yes.”

“That’s your flight to Paris.”

Paris? He showed me the entry on his board. “Thank you, Sergeant.” I stepped toward the plane as the cargo doors slid open.

“Here, Lieutenant, take this.” The sergeant lifted a sheet from his clipboard, a manifest for a shipment to the quartermaster at the Rothschild mansion. “You’re senior cargo officer this trip, so you’re in charge of the delivery … particularly these.” He pointed his pencil to twelve wooden crates being wheeled up to the cargo bay. “Sign here.” I initialed and signed for the fifty supply crates and the twelve listed as “highest priority.”

The ground crew loaded the cargo, distributed it around the deck for weight balance, and strapped it down. The engines restarted. I climbed in, a corporal after me. He slid the door closed and latched it from the inside then went forward.

The plane wheeled and threw me off balance. I braced with the ceiling straps and brackets along the fuselage wall then stumbled to the tube-frame seat bolted on the deck. The pilot had remained strapped in; the corporal took a seat behind him. After a short run, we hopped into the air and turned south to follow the coast. We reached the mouth of the Thames then turned east to cross the channel.

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain was also called the Dakota, but its affectionate nickname was “Gooney Bird,” probably in recognition of its ungainly takeoffs and landings. It did the heavy lifting throughout the war and was our main supply line. The C-47 was painted like our fighter planes to keep nervous gunners from confusing it with similar German aircraft, five wide stripes alternating white and black on each wing and around the rear fuselage. Because the Gooney Bird had a reputation for reliability and endurance, supply personnel frequently loaded them beyond listed capacity.

I’d always wanted to go to Paris. All I knew came from newsreels of Nazi’s marching under the Arc de Triomphe, and earlier, when I was three years old, of Charles Lindbergh circling the Eiffel Tower after he crossed the Atlantic. I’d seen pictures of Lindy landing at Le Bourget and crowds surrounding his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. That’s where we were headed.

We arrived midday, almost four hours after takeoff. There were no banners or flag-waving crowds for us. Nazi symbols and flags had been whitewashed or painted over with the French tri-color.

Le Bourget was a bombed disaster of cratered concrete, blackened buildings, smashed vehicles, and smoldering mountains of trash. Aircraft, mostly German but a few American and British, were crushed like snuffed out cigarette butts and shoved off the runway. C-47’s waited on refueling aprons, props turning, hoses stretched to them from trucks holding fifty-gallon drums. We taxied past to an open tarmac beside a warehouse and cut the engines.

I unbuckled. The pilot came back, and he and the corporal shoved the cargo door open. Three men walked out from the warehouse. Two privates began removing and stacking our cargo.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” the Sergeant shouted over another C-47 cranking up, “can’t take these off your hands. You’ll have to wait for the Quartermaster.” He could see in my eyes that I didn’t understand. “Just wait here. Until he arrives, they’re still your responsibility.”

“Okay,” I shouted back. I set my B4 bag on the crates, sat beside it, and cinched my greatcoat tight against the winter wind blowing across the open field. A jeep drove up an hour later with a major and an enlisted driver followed by a deuce-and-a-half cargo truck. The sergeant waved them to me. The major walked over, and we exchanged salutes.

“You have the manifest, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir. And you are the Quartermaster for the Rothschild mansion?”

He showed me his orders. I showed him the manifest. He counted the crates and cases, checked for possible pilferage, signed his name beside shipment received, and handed it back to me.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Kenny, hop in the jeep.” He waved to his crew to load the regular supplies in the deuce-and-a-half. The dozen priorities were loaded behind us in the jeep.

Chateau Rothschild was five miles from Notre Dame in Paris, beyond the lush green lawn of Edmond de Rothschild Park. The Rothschild’s, one of the greatest banking dynasties in history, had amassed a huge private fortune. Early in the war, they had abandoned their neo-Louis XIV castle. The Nazi military elite took it over during their four-year occupation and plundered most of its art and sculptures. US soldiers followed and contributed to the damage. The graffitied estate would never be reoccupied.

“Check-in’s inside.” The major pointed up the wide stone staircase. “Until new orders are cut and you’re cleared to head out to the 404^th, you’ll be staying here at the chateau. Oh, and for your honesty,” he pried a board off one of the cases with a claw hammer, “take these.” He handed me two bottles of 12-year single-malt Scotch. “Cocktails at four, dinner at six, wine all day.” He smiled, saluted, and motioned for the jeep and truck to drive around back.

Snow had drifted into the corners of the cut-stone steps, and patch ice filled hollows on the veranda. I climbed then walked quickly to get out of the cold, passing through the alcove and entering through a wide doorway. The foyer reminded me of luxury hotels in the movies—except there was a large black eagle painted high on the wall. The eagle’s head had been whitewashed and given a distinctly American eagle hook to its beak. The eagle’s chest was also painted over with a red-white-and-blue American shield.

The desk clerk, a French army corporal, gave me a room key and directed a slightly built Algerian private to take my B4 and Scotch bottles to my room. “Lieutenant Kenny, you may wish to join the other officers for drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the salon,” the desk clerk said in his Maurice Chevalier accent.

“Thank you. I need to wash up first.”

“Yes, Sir.” He nodded to the Algerian private, who led me up the stairs.

My room was spacious and bare of furniture except for two cots on opposite walls. Green marble streaked white and yellow covered the lower third of the twelve-foot walls. Frescos of angels and demons adorned the upper walls and ceiling. The floor was stone mosaic with a raised corner platform and a bathtub of lavender and pink marble. Since there were no closets, I tossed my B4 on an empty cot.

The Algerian attendant drew my bath, laid out towels, refused a tip, and bowed on the way out, taking my soiled clothes and boots to be cleaned.

So far, the war was going well.

Next week see “My Night in Paris.”

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The Yanks Are Coming

As told to Keith by his father Edward Kenny

We were the Class of ’41, Lincoln High School, Van Dyke Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Graduation was in June, seven months before Pearl Harbor, and I was seventeen.

Jobs were scarce that summer—the country was climbing out of the depression—but all my buddies from school had found some sort of work. We called ourselves the “Cherokee Club.” When I wasn’t working or visiting with my high school sweetheart, Phyllis ‘Phyl’ Bender, I met with them to play basketball or have fun. The war changed everything.

We all decided to go down and enlist in the United States Army Air Corps and become flyers. Of the 28, eight managed to pass the physical and mental tests, and three eventually qualified for flight training. Bob Schronic died the year after he was called up in a flight school accident. Bob Brown made flight officer but shifted to bombardier training.

It was several months before I got into the Aviation Cadet Program for ground school. I was called to active duty in February 1943 and shipped to Miami Beach, Florida, for Army Basic. That May I was sent to Kent State University in Ohio for Officer’s Candidate School, meteorology, and geography. There I was appointed student officer of cadets.

Phyl had written to me every day and was my lifeline throughout training. We married on campus in the chapel of Kent State University on June 27, 1943. It was a quick wedding. Her family drove down from Detroit. We got a license at the county clerk’s office. Phyl changed to her wedding dress at the back of the office, and I wore my uniform. All my buddies attended. They’d taken up a collection for a present, twenty-one dollars, mostly in pennies.

That night, we had dinner at a hotel in Dayton. Next morning after breakfast, Phyl’s family left for home. When the sergeant told me that my two-day pass had not been approved, I went AWOL for the weekend. I was back for muster Monday morning. The sergeant gave me fifty guard tours for punishment—it was worth it. Phyl took a room off campus, and we got together whenever I could get a pass.

Graduation came later that summer. After the ceremony, the sergeant handed me rail and meal tickets for the entire class of 110 students. As Officer of Cadets, I was in charge of getting us from Kent State to the Aviation Cadet Center in San Antonio, Texas. We boarded three buses for Cleveland early the next morning, everyone in crisp tan uniforms, dark ties, and brown leather jackets. We caught the Nickel Plate train that ran from Cleveland to Chicago on the Kankakee line. We were to have lunch in Chicago and change trains to head South.

We pulled into Chicago a little late, but veteran services had our lunches ready on the platform; a row of picnic tables with bags of sandwiches, fried potatoes, soft drinks, and, of course, popcorn balls, all served by pretty girls and their mothers in bright print dresses. The popcorn balls had names and mailing addresses rolled up inside—in case a soldier wanted to write a girl back home. While the cadets ate, I looked for depot number three, where we were to catch the train to San Antonio.

The stationmaster checked our tickets and boarding time then scratched under the bill of his uniform cap. “Sir, these are for the CB&Q, the Burlington train leaving Union Station on Canal Street. This is Central Station, Michigan Avenue.”

“How do we get over there?” I asked, noting the boarding time.

“You could wait for a bus, but you can’t all get on one, and it’s not due for another twenty minutes. It’s not a long walk. A little over a mile and a half.” He pointed the way. “Cross Michigan Avenue Boulevard, take 12th Street West across the Chicago River, turn right on Canal Street North. Takes you right to the Canal Street station.”

I ran back down the platform to rouse the cadets from their lunches and conversations. “Gotta march, boys. Grab your bags. We’ll finish eating on the way.” I heard some grumbling, but no one lingered. We lined up smartly and headed out two-by-two. When we crossed Michigan Avenue, the walkway narrowed and our march slowed. A Chicago policeman rode up on a motorcycle.

“Officer,” I showed him the tickets, “we’re supposed to be on the Burlington train leaving the Canal Street station at 4:40.” He nodded, waved us from the walkway onto the road then led us up the street. At the next corner, he talked to two policemen directing traffic. They jumped in a patrol car and sped off, clearing our path to the Canal Street.

We lined up four-abreast and made good time marching in the center of the road. About a quarter mile out, one of the cadets took up singing and everyone joined in.

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word, over there

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

The drums rum-tumming everywhere …

Other songs followed. It was a beautiful sunny day. People left the shops and sang with us; some marched with us, too. Musicians pulled up chairs along the sidewalk, played, smiled and waved. We turned north on Canal, and the crowd followed. Policemen stopped traffic and waved us along.

As soon as the station came in sight, we broke into a run. By the time we reached the platform on our tickets, our train was nearly out of sight. We’d missed it.

“Whatcha got,” the stationmaster asked, waving me over. He was a short, heavy-set man in a tight, dark uniform and a billed, conical cap. I showed him our tickets, and he checked them against the passenger train schedule.

“Next train out to St. Louie ’ll be here Thursday, three days.” My face dropped and my arms fell to my sides. The stationmaster added, “Course that won’t get you to San Antone. These tickets call for switchin’ trains in St. Louie, I—” He looked at the tickets again then at a pocket watch he pulled from his vest. “Hmmm. There’s a three-hour lay over.”

He walked into the station house, cranked up the wall phone, held the speaker to his ear, and leaned into the mouthpiece. “Helen, Charlie, be a doll and connect me to the president CB&Q. Got a problem at Union Station, Canal Street.”

I looked back at my 110 pilot cadets. One played “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” on his harmonica. Most sat on their bags or leaned on platform posts, smoking or waiting silently.

The stationmaster hung up the phone then hurried to collar an engineer and conductor coming off shift. They had a quick exchange. Both men looked at me, nodded, and ran off across the yard. The stationmaster strolled back with a swagger in his step and a wide smile on his muffin face.

“Mister, we got you a train to St. Lou. A fast ‘n, too, so you should make your connection to San Antone.”

“How—?”

“Courtesy of my boss, the President of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.” His smile told me he held something back. “You said a hundred and ten cadets?” I nodded and he nodded back. “I told the engineer to hook up five Pullman sleepers and a diner car, so you’ll be ridin’ in style.” Hearing that, my cadets cheered, jumped up, and began talking loudly.

The locomotive was the Burlington Zephyr Rocket, top of the line, with seven cars attached. The conductor helped me get everyone settled in their bunks and cleared it with the diner to accept our meal tickets. We’d had a long day, so it wasn’t long before everyone turned in. I heard a long, sharp whistle, felt the train lurch, and saw the lights of the Canal Street station slip slowly past the windows.

I thanked the conductor, a tall, lean, black man who never lost his smile, then said, “Now I need to find some place to curl up.”

“No thanks necessary, sir. Come with me.” He led me to the back of the train to the last car, unlocked the door, and motioned inside. “The President of CB&Q Railroad said you was to have his personal coach.” He showed me around. It was a millionaire’s executive rail car, done up like a nineteenth-century luxury hotel room, polished brass, cut glass, imported furniture, and a full bath.

“You’ll want to say goodbye,” the conductor said, leading me outside onto the rear platform. I heard the wind rush by, the powerful chugging of the engine, and the clickety-clack of wheels running over the rails.

As the city lights receded in the distance, the conductor handed me a cold bottle of Old Milwaukee beer. “Sir,” he said, holding up one of his own.

We clicked bottles, and I offered a toast, “To your fine city, to Chicago, and to fine folks like yourself.” We drank down the beers and had a couple more.

As I looked out and listened to the clickety-clack, clickety-clack, I thought of Phyl taking another train to San Antonio. She followed me throughout my year of training, camp-to-camp, and took rooms off post.

The Bonham Air Cadet Marching Band

As told to Keith Kenny by his father, Edward Kenny

Primary Flying School, Bonham, Texas, July 1943

I stood at attention two paces in front of the Commandant’s desk, the sergeant’s bark still ringing in my ears. “The Commandant! … His office! … On-the-double!” A trickle from my interrupted morning shower and shave ran down the back of my neck. I was nineteen, younger than most of the air cadets, and trembling in my newly pressed uniform.

Still catching my breath from the sprint up from the barracks, I ran through my mental checklist. Had he found a tin can or cigarette butt in the yard? Had I combed my hair after the shower? Aligned my belt and tie? I couldn’t remember. With my eyes forward and level and hands at my side, I couldn’t check.

The Commandant of Cadets stood hunched, the knuckles of his balled fists pressed onto his metal desk. His tan uniform was as angular and crisp as the creased folds of a paper airplane. His neckless square head was fixed to his shoulders, and his jaw muscles worked relentlessly. What was the infraction?

Suddenly, he jerked his head up and bored his burning blue eyes into mine. “Mister, I want a band out there … this Saturday … for the review. Any questions?”

“No sir,” I saluted, toed an about face and shot through the door. “A band?” I mouthed. “In five days?” I shook my head.

Army Air Force 302^nd Training Squadron and the Fairchild PT-19, Bonham Training Base, Texas

As the appointed cadet group commander, I had six squadrons to keep in line, each with its own squadron commander. “Men,” I said to the gathered commanders, trying to capture the Commandant’s bearing, “this Saturday I want a band out there … on the parade ground … for the review. Any questions?” I thought it sounded weak.

Six lean hard expressions dropped in unison. Heads shook. Everyone grumbled. “What! Impossible! Not another … !” What with flying schedules, classwork, PT, daily inspections, course study, and letter writing, we had no extra time.

Still, the grumbling passed in minutes, and we began working on a plan. Where would we find instruments? Who could play? Where would we practice? Could one of the schools or the local men’s club help? How much would it all cost? We fanned out to collect answers.

Next evening, as the bugler played taps back at the post, the band had its first practice in the gymnasium of St. Theresa’s Catholic School for Girls. Sister Barbara Graham opened the doors and patiently helped orchestrate our first rehearsal. The next few days, between flight training and classes, we worked to synchronize our music with field maneuvers. In the evening we played, and Bonham’s Air Cadet Marching Band slowly came together.

Mid-morning, that Saturday, the entire air cadet class assembled on the parade ground in full dress. Six squadrons of pressed uniforms, sparkling brass buttons, and mirror-polished shoes marched onto the field under a cloudless, blue, Texas sky, and wheeled to face the reviewing stand. Officials and senior officers occupied the stand’s central seats, tactical officers and instructors beside them. Civilian guests sat in bleachers on either side of the stand. In the steady breeze, the American flag snapped high above them and its cord and pulley slapped on the pole.

After all the dignitaries arrived, the Commandant took the high platform at the center of the stand. He stood tall, his five feet six inches drawn taut like a bow string from his door-wide shoulders to his diminished waist then down the lines of his diamond-cut uniform. At parade rest, he watched unmoving as the last of the cadet squadrons formed. Then he addressed the seated assembly and turned to the cadets on the field.

Six rectangular formations were lined up abreast, each with a squadron commander out front. In the center, ahead of the formations, I stood with my three-man staff facing the reviewing stand.

No band was in sight.

The Commandant nodded for me to begin. I faced about and barked, “Ree-PORTS!”

In sequence, each squadron commander down the line saluted and shouted, “All present and accounted for, SIR!” The adjutant read the orders of the day. Then I stepped forward.

“Sir!” Holding my salute, I directed my comments to the Commandant. “Sir, the parade is formed.”

The Commandant snapped to attention, saluted, and directed, “Pass in review!” A hush swept over the crowd. Official regulations required that a band lead the formations. There were rumors, but no one had heard any details about the band.

Pivoting left I commanded, “Sound Off!” Then waited. Silence ticked by. Then came a loud drumbeat, “Boom-boom.” It echoed off the barracks walls behind the reviewing stand. Another, “Boom-boom,” sounded from a big bass drum, this time followed by the “rattling-tat-tat” of a snare drum.

The drum major emerged first, high kicking, back leaning, waving and thrusting his oversized high-school baton. In his tall, fur busby, Cadet Jameson Jones was genuine world class. He had led his school band in the Orange Bowl parade and competed nationally as a top collegiate drum major. Jones high strutted, jamming his baton skyward on each downbeat, as proud and aloof as if leading 101 pieces in the Florida State band.

Behind Jones’ panache the talent diminished. For brass, we had a tuba, trumpet, and French horn; one clarinet made up the reeds section; then two drums—one snare and one bass. Seven stouthearted cadets marched and played, snapping their heads and instruments, left then right, in flawless unison, each simulating the motion of an entire section with bursting exuberance. The music was ragged but high spirited, and usually on key.

Keeping precise step, they marched with erect distinction across the field. As the band passed, each cadet squadron wheeled in formation and filed in behind. They paraded one hundred and fifty feet to the end of the field then executed two ninety-degree turns to align with the review stand. Marching back, they passed directly in front of the Commandant and the officials in the stand.

Sniggers, quiet and respectful at first, rippled through the crowd. The sniggers gave way to smirks, then loud laughter, then full guffaws. Laughter rocked the stands spreading down to the cadets marching in formation. On the high platform, the Commandant himself smirked and gripped the rail with both hands, shaking with laughter.

Only the drum major stood firm, discipline unbroken. To the crowd’s heightened amusement, Jones’ expression remained unrelenting stone. Passing the Commandant of Cadets, he jerked his head sharply about and crossed his chest with his baton in a formal salute. Stride steady, he marched past the reviewing stand punching his baton upward in constant time for the cadets to follow.

On reaching the far end of the bleachers, the drum major’s baton crossed his chest once again to salute a dark-clad figure standing alone. The six band members, as they passed, followed his salute with a head twist and a bow of their instruments. Sister Barbara pulled stiffly erect to receive the salute. I think only I saw her wipe two fingers beneath her eye.

The cadet squadrons followed in regular fashion, each saluting while passing the stand then marching off the field to return to barracks. As cadet group commander, I held fast at attention until the end, when the Commandant would pass his judgment. He double-timed down from the stand, stopped in front of me, and turned to face me. Following a good review, he normally declared the post open for the weekend. Everyone looked forward to getting a few hours away from the base.

I saluted. The Commandant returned my salute over a non-regulation face-splitting grin. “Mister … that was an excellent parade. Excellent!” He stifled a laugh then blurted, “From now on, I want the band at every review and parade. You will have open post until twenty hundred hours Sunday, any question?” Anticipating my, “No, sir!” he saluted, turned, and walked off.

In later years, I learned that the band continued until war’s end. It never exceeded six musicians and remained a perpetual curiosity to the military and to the locals. But not, I suspect, to Sister Barbara or to the seven stouthearted men of Bonham’s first Air Cadet Marching Band.