Somewhere in Cuba
Great Bend and Batista Field · November–December 1944
November brought frost, a new jacket, Link and celestial-navigation trainers, and a request that Cherry invent a name for the airplane they did not yet have. The radar man went to the hospital with appendicitis. On the 7th, election day, Austin hoped “the donkeys” would win. He passed another instrument check in the Link that morning.
Dear Mother & Sister, […] Tomorrow Armistice Day. We are having a big Parade & Ceremonies on the field here. […] Also a Formation B-17s Will fly over in Blank File Formation as Taps is sounded in honor of the ones lost in Battle. It will be a formation with a blank space for one plane left out. […] This morning I saw Army Air Force pictures of the War the World Over. Pictures of Saipan and all those islands & also France & Germany. Pictures of planes fighting in the skies & also Robot bombs & fighters planes shooting them down. Love, Austin
Historical note — November 1944Franklin Roosevelt won a fourth term on 7 November. “Robot bombs” in the weekly films were the German V-1 flying bombs then falling on England and the port of Antwerp. A missing-man formation — one slot left empty in the flight — was already the Air Forces’ gesture for the dead. Leaves before overseas movement were promised in mid-November. Austin told them he would try to be home at “that special time of the year,” not before the first of December, and maybe after.
Thanksgiving stacked three dinners: chicken with the squadron on Wednesday night, turkey in the enlisted mess at noon Thursday, turkey again at the officers’ club at seven. A sixteen-hour B-29 cross-country was set for the 25th; the navigator’s father died and the trip slipped. Snow arrived on 4 December. On the 7th the letterhead changed.
Dear Folks, Just A line or Two Before going to Bed tonite. […] Haven't had much time to look around as yet but looks like a mighty nice place down here. Do not write to me at this address. You can keep on sending mail to my old address so I'll have lots when I do get it. Love Austin
Historical note — overwater training in CubaB-29 groups from the Kansas fields used Cuban bases — among them Batista Field near Havana — for long overwater missions that the prairie could not give them: hours out of sight of land, celestial work, the Gulf and the Florida Straits as a stand-in for the Pacific. Censorship kept the field off the page. “Somewhere in Cuba” was as close as the envelope was allowed to come. Mail was to keep going to Great Bend.
He had a six-hour pass in Havana, a hired guide, Sloppy Joe’s, and souvenirs he forgot on the way out. The ship left Cuba at 10:00 on the 13th, ate dinner at Galveston at 7:00, and rolled onto the Great Bend ramp at midnight. Fifteen letters were waiting.
On 19 December they flew fifteen hours without landing, ten states and six hundred miles of ocean, and crossed Memphis a little before nine at night. He had bought a bond for baby John Winn and filled out leave papers for the 28th. A new radar operator joined the crew. In the same packet of papers the War Department’s pamphlet on writing from overseas appeared in the family file — cable addresses, the ten prohibited subjects, the warning that silence was a community obligation.
Dear Mother and All, […] I had bought a bond to give John Winn for Xmas just before going to Cuba […] So when you do get the bond its' for John Winn's Xmas. I'm going to try to get home the 28th but may not make it until the 29th. Hope everyone enjoys Christmas. We are going to have some kind of get together (Our crew). We have a new man on it now - A Radar Operator. Love to all Austin
Historical note — Christmas 1944While the crew planned a holiday gathering in Kansas, German armies attacked through the Ardennes on 16 December. The Battle of the Bulge would fill the papers Austin read when he reached Cherry. Leyte was still being fought. B-29s from the Marianas were beginning the campaign the 19th Group was training to join. He had been in the Army two years and two months. The next letters, if the leave came through, would be written from home.