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Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
a big talk with him, and of course I got pictures with him, too. He lives in
Okmulgee... He's probably maybe a year older than I am.
Can you describe your living conditions, the food you ate, and where you slept?
Our living conditions over in England were very good. We moved into a British
air base...and they had running water, and sometimes it was hot. We did have
good meals... We could get along real well with that.
Can you describe a typical day when you were over there?
Flying?
Just from the time you woke up until nighttime.
When they called us out on a mission, we knew about it ahead of time-the night
before, and they usually woke us up about two, three, or four o'clock in the
morning... Then we had breakfast... When we got up there, we went into a
briefing... Navigators were being... They told us the time we were going to take
off, where we were going, and what we were going to do at that time. The kind
of targets we were supposed to hit. They'd usually give us the time they expected
us to go over there and come back... We were usually very fortunate... Then we
would go to lunch, which was fair. Sometimes it was something like Spam... It
would sustain us. I was a country boy, and I was getting food I hadn't had
before. I weighed about 100 or 110 pounds when I went in the service, and I got
up to around 160 pounds. After I got out, I got back down, and when we married
fifty years ago, I weighed 126 pounds. But that was a typical day, and then we'd
go back to the barracks after we'd eat to take a shower or whatever else we had to
do. Then if we had to leave at night, we'd go out to a local club or if we had a
couple of days off, we'd catch a plane and go to London and spend some time
there and then come back. We could always look at the girls and drink whatever
we could find, those kind of things that wild boys would do.
Interviewer: What types of equipment were you trained with?
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