THE LOCO BOYS GO WILD
BY ARCH WHITEHOUSE Correspondent for True in the European Theater of Operations
SEE A STEAM ENGINE THEIR HORMONES START TO BOIL
Here, for the first time, I have actually met characters so dear to the thrillers and movie reels that gave us "Dawn Patrol", "Lilac Time" and "Hell's Angels". Here are men and machines that could have come straight from the pages of any aviation adventure magazine, but paradoxically enough, they were playing a game of softball. Why were they playing a game of softball on such a beautiful day when they could have been in the air, driving the Hun back across the checkered fields of Normandy? I'll tell you -- but you won't believe it. They were all grounded because they had actually burned out every available ship on the field. They were unable to fly because there was nothing left to fly. This loco outfit had been so busy, so intent on smashing up locomotives that they had actually flown the guts out of every available ship on the field...and you can't ask for anything more. When I arrived here, I found the Headquarters crowd swatting it out with one of the squadrons. A major was umpiring, and I wouldn't have taken the verbal lashing he suffered for five hundred bucks. The colonel was stripped to the waist and wore a GI crew cap. His deputy leader played second base wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a very swank garrison cap. The operations officer had borrowed a pair of K.P. dungarees, and a sweat shirt and cavorted about in a pair of calf-high flying boots. First looeys (Lts.) argued vitriolically with lt. colonels. GIs took the major to task for certain decisions. A corporal, coaching at first, questioned the ancestry of a captain who in turn queried the corporal on his I.Q. The bars were down and the rank was off and it was every man for himself. You can get quite a hunk of outfit under these conditions and you certainly know where you stand. I call them the Loco Group for two reasons. First, because they have destroyed more enemy locomotives by low-level attack than any other outfit. They have specialized in that particular form of insanity. Their colonel, for example, bopped off eleven choo-choos in two missions! Between February and July 15th of this year they riddled and exploded no less than 197 engines and this does not include the eighty-one registered simply as "damaged." In their "destroyed" list they sheepishly mention ten barges, fifty oil cars, 157 flat cars, ten flak towers, 209 transport trucks, forty-three gasoline and ammunition dumps and innumerable personnel. The second reason for the loco tag needs no special explaination. They're just loco, brother; they're just loco. A guy would have to be to stay in this outfit. They toted me around and showed me the wrecks of aircraft that remained of their P-38 equipment. I sat and talked to dozens of kids who seemed puzzled that I should find anything extraordinary in their activity. They were interested in me as a war correspondent, but they were rather concerned in case I wouldn't find anything worthy of my particular talents. I mean to say.... Dexter Freeman, a young southern lieutenant who once contributed murder mysteries to these very same Fawcett publications, is the public relations officer here. That should have been the tip-off. Lieutenant Freeman was worried for fear my trip would be fruitless since the outfit was able to do very little in the way of operations. Then Col. Harold J. Rau who headed the Group and who was mainly responsible for their favorite form of aerial mayhem, was still away on a leave of absence in the United States. Rau had left Col. Cy Wilson of West Point, Texas (of all places), in charge which automatically erased any of Lieutenant Freeman's concern. Cy Wilson is the operator who destroyed eleven locomotives in two missions. He came to the Group late in March of 1944 and in two months' time had flown no less than fifty-four consecutive missions, leading the party each time. The Group medic finally caught up with Cy and ordered him to take it easy. Colonel Wilson is the gent who promotes the ball games. He has a motorcycle (pilfered from a military policeman) and he rides through the GI billet lines like an old time Highlander,clanking his kilt and booming challenges into the welkin. Instead of tossing the caber and heaving the haggis in the old Scottish manner, however, the boys engage in what they erroneously call softball. If this is softball, then Gaelic football is in the same catagory as tatting. Anyway, it's on the program regularly, with no rank showing and everyone swinging from the hip. But don't get the impression that this is a raunchy outfit. When the chips are down and blouses are being worn you can get a salute that sizzles your eyebrows. Routine is strict. Sitting in on a breifing produces full evidence of a strictly organized Group. They have a war room that is a model for all and their operations shack would make your hair stand on end. There's no slip-shod work here. Everything is definitely regulation and things click and you can get yourself a nice stiff penalty for any infringement of military discipline. You only have to look over their record to realize all that. Any outfit that has destroyed as many locomotives as has this mob, has really done its bit. Some go in for bridges, others rack up scores against enemy fighters, and some know the routes to Berlin and Sweinfurt by heart; but this outfit is -- well, simply, loco on locomotives. Don't take my word for it. Let's get it straight from the logbooks. As I have said this Group is under the command of Col. Harold J. Rau who was once a Pfc. in the same outfit. This gives you some idea of its history. Among those who have served with this particular group since Rau first joined it as a boiler-firing buck private are Lt. General Ira A. Eaker, once chief of the Eigth Air Force, who now directs Allied air power in the Mediterranean, and Lt. Colonel Mark E. Hubbard, who had one of the best fighting records in the AAF until he was lost last March. But let's pick on the present pilots. |
At last I have found one! Here on this oil-stained patch of Britain I have tied into the type of outfit pulp writers and adventure specialists have been glorifying ever since Capt. Frank Luke, the Arizona balloon-buster rocketed out of the West
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