RECOUNTS OF WWII: LT. JOSEPH HALLOCK

Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress”

306th BG, 8th Air Force

"If you come across something awful happening, you always think, 'My God, it's just like a movie,' and that's what I thought. I had a feeling that the planes weren't really falling and burning, the men inside them weren't really dying, and everything would turn out happily in the end. Then, very quietly through the interphone, our tail gunner said, 'I'm sorry, sir, I've been hit.'

I crawled back to him and found that he'd been shot in the side of the head and blinded by bursting plexiglass. He was still able to use his hands, so I ordered him to fire his guns whenever he heard from me. I figured that a few bursts would keep Jerry off our tail, and give the kid something to think about besides the fact that he was dying.

Then, screaming in from someplace, a 20 mm cannon shell exploded in the nose of our plane, hitting me in the shoulder.

Two more shells had hit the waist of the plane, exploding the cartridge belts stored there, wounding the waist gunner in the forehead and jugular vein. We had no plasma aboard, so there wasn't much of anything else I could do besides plug his artery with my fingers and give him morphine.

When we reached England, I prayed and thanked God.

On the following mission, the waist gunner was now a new, young kid; like the kid I'd been with six months before. He wasn't a bit scared - just cocky and excited. Over Saarbriicken, he was wounded in the foot by a shell, and I had to give him first aid. He acted more surprised than hurt. He had a look on his face like a child who was cheated by grownups.

That was only the beginning for him, but it was the end for me." –1st Lt. Joseph Hallock, 22 years old, 306th BG, 8th Air Force, May 1944.