History is the story of people. What better way to get to know about an historical event than to learn about it from someone who lived it. Conducting an interview with someone who lived through World War II affords students the opportunity to learn about the era in a personal manner. The best use of this exercise is for the students to interview someone who closely resembles the character whose biography they are completing.

Interview with Bob Harper, 1st Lieutenant--Army Air Corps
By: John Hinton

I met with Mr. Harper on Saturday, October 6, 1995. He came to town to visit his grand-daughter who is engaged to my brother. We had a chance to talk after lunch. I enjoyed speaking with him. He had many fine memories of his time in the military.

Mr. Harper had not spoken to anyone of his experiences in the war for several years. It brought a flush to his cheeks. He was happy to tell his stories. "I'm glad someone is still interested!" he said. I assured him that not only was I interested in his story, but other people were as well. There is more to World War II than what the history books tell us. World War II is a sum of the experiences of millions of people. Each person having a contribution worth remembering.

As he began to reminisce, I could see that he got lost in his thoughts.For a short moment he was back in his youth.

I was born May 16, 1921. Potwin, Kansas, that's where. As a matter of fact, I was delivered by the same man who delivered my mother-in-law, only the cost had gone up three dollars in the thirty years difference. He even weighed us on the same poultry scale.

I have three brothers. Curtis Raymond who is older now lives in Ozark, Arkansas, he was at Omaha. George M. died back when Grandma Carrie died, he had been in the Navy on a Destroyer during Korea, and Tom who never served in the military, now lives in Eldorado, Kansas. It's funny how each of us desired a military life, except for Tom.

Potwin is a very small town in Butler County. It used to be an oil town, now its just a few farmers and an IGA store. My father owned the only grocery/feed store around so we did better than a lot of folks.

The United States declared War in December, 1941, so I went to Ft. Reilly, Kansas to take the entrance exam for the Cadet program with the Army Air Corps in June of 1942. I passed it and they said they would call me up when they needed me. It wasn't until February of 1943 that they actually called me up.--I was 22.

I had some college before taking the test. I finished my first two years at Eldorado Jr. College and then went to Wichita University. I then transferred to Kansas University at Lawrence. I lost several credits because Wichita University was a municipal university and did things differently than the state school. I was only one semester short to my degree when I went in.

I had always wanted to fly. When I was six years old--that would be back in 1927, a man landed his plane in a pasture. It was an open cockpit, two seater. The man charged $5.00 for the flight. My father, my brother Curtis and I all stuffed ourselves in the seat and rode for the price of one.

Then when I was about 14, my friend Willard King and I went to the Hillard Fair. We shared a seat for $10. We had saved up forever for it.

Shortly after, my brother Curtis and I went through civilian training together and got our private licenses together. My primary flight training for my civilian license was done in a J3 Cub. Even if there had not been a war, I still would have flown. I always loved airplanes.

When I was finally called up, I was sent to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. It was winter time and very cold.

There is no way to describe it. It was bad, very bad at first. The military was out of uniforms at that time. We got there in February and didn't have the proper clothes for P.T. All we had were helmets, but they were out of liners too, so we all ended up with ear trouble. Three of us had to go to the local hospital to have our ear drums lanced. We were all miserable.

No. After basic training, I was sent to a college training school for pilots at East Lansing, Michigan State college. I was only there for a couple of months. Then I was transferred to Lackland in San Antonio for my specialty school. The physical training at Lackland was very rigorous. For a week at a time we would pull mock guard duty. We'd stand guard of our planes with wooden rifles. We'd be on duty 2 hours then off 2 hours every evening for a few weeks. We'd continue with flight basic during the day. I would have been graduating in May of '44, but I failed the blinker test. You had to be able to read Morse code by light blinks. I passed the sound version just fine, but the light blinker test I failed. I had been in the '44E class and was then held over to the '44F class. I thought it was terrible. I was ashamed of myself. The only major part of my training I had to continue was the studies of blinker code. This turned out to be a good time, and a lot of guys were jealous. While they were pulling 2 on and 2 off, I would go to the picture show every day. It was only a dime, and I'd play horseshoes and go out with my girl.

I had flight training in various places. My primary flight training took place at Brennan Field Texas. I flew a PT-17 Stearman single engine open cockpit bi-plane. Because it was cold, we all wore sheepskin jackets and caps with long scarfs like the Red Baron.

It had a Plexiglas canopy. They were the BT-13 or Vultee Valiant. We called it the Vultee Vibrator because it was such a rough ride. I remember one man from Brooklyn was coming in on the run way and clipped the landing gear on a fence. He took the whole fence out. He was lucky that he only buggered up his plane a little.

Then I was sent to Foster Field in Victoria, Texas. I flew an AT-6 North American Advanced Trainer. This was the first plane with retractable landing gear I had flown. They had a 650 HP engine. They were the most powerful thing I had flown to date.

This was about the time that the military decided to stop training new recruits to fly. There were more pilots than planes at that time. Several of the BT-13s that I had trained on were heading to the scrap yard. A few pilots were chosen, myself included, to take them to Wickenburg, Arizona. It was a nice good-bye. We traveled by bus through Oak Creek Canyon on our way to Phoenix to be flown back to Victoria.

All this time I had been waiting for my orders to go to fighter school, but they were filled up so I kept getting transferred to a new training station to learn another aircraft.

On June 27, 1944 I got my wings, earning my commission. After I graduated and got a 10 day leave. I went back home to Kansas. I was patiently awaiting my orders for fighter school, yet again they said it was too full. This time I was sent to Matagorda Island. Here I learned how to fly the P-40 Warhawk. It was a single seater. We had planes with Rolls Royce engines, and Allison engines. The American made Allison engines were not as good as the Rolls Royce. The plane could really move. It had a 1000HP water cooled engine which was really something for the time period. The engine was so powerful and hungry for the sky you had to take off with in 15 minutes of starting your engine, or it would overheat an spew coolant. I was there for some time, but I was still awaiting my acceptance to fighter school.

As part of the P-40, training target practice would take place in the bay. If anyone was caught goofing off or if anyone was to be disciplined in any way, they would be made to tow the target while a P-40 made a pass and fired on the target with live ammunition. This was a great deterrent for bad behavior. I never had to tow the target, but I took a few shots at the target while my friends were towing it. The target would come towards you, you would have to turn in, aligning your guns with the target and shoot.

To fill time, I was then sent to four-engine school at Gulf Port Mississippi for training in B-24 Liberators. These were 10-man crew bombers. They were supposed to be better than the B-17 Fortress but most of the men thought they wallowed in the air. They were hard to keep in formation. There wings were considerably thinner than most bombers and so they were harder to keep in formation.

Then, I got my orders to go overseas. I wasn't even assigned to any crew yet. My orders sent me to Planpark, Florida which is part of Tampa for crew assignment. This is where my crew was assembled. Finally the military had decided on a bird for me--the B-17. We all thought it was funny that our Tailgunner's last name was Hind. This is where I met my best friend through the duration of the war, Francis Hazeltine.

I had been trained in numerous aircraft, but not the B-17. I was then sent with my crew to Hunters Field, Savannah Georgia for B-17 Fortress training. Finally after intense training, my crew and I left for Goosebay, Labrador. It was March of 1945. It had taken almost three years from the time I took my cadet examination, two years from basic training to finally be sent overseas. There were a couple of places to stop to refuel on your way to England depending on the route by which you are deployed. You could go to Gander, Newfoundland of Goosebay, Labrador.

On our way to Goosebay, we had to cross the St. Lawrence River. It is to date, the largest river I've ever seen. For this trip we had a brand new airplane. For our code name during the trip we were assigned the name Carrot Top Peter. In Labrador, the snow drifts were as high as the plane. We'd have to go out every few minutes to an hour to pull propellers by hand to keep the oil loose. The weather was so bad we were delayed in continuing for a few days.

After a time in Labrador, we were deployed to England. The weather had been very bad. We started to leave for England several times. Finally at about 5:00 p.m. one day we got clearance to leave. They said we'd have to go quick because a series of storms was progressing over Labrador. We were not fueled up. We decided it would be better to go as far as Greenland to avoid the storms. So we went ahead, we powered up the high RPM. The airport in Greenland was surrounded by mountains and wasn't much more than a trail. The storm was raging. We radioed tower and was told we couldn't land. We radioed back saying that we didn't have the fuel to progress and all we got back was some cussing and "NO CLEARANCE". They told us to head to Iceland and to maintain a high altitude because there were high peaks there too. The storm was still raging. Our navigator couldn't get a fix on our location. We blindly headed east. There were too many clouds to get a fix on our position. Finally we picked up a radio beacon. The sky then cleared and the navigator could verify our spot.

At this point we were flying on fumes. It was about 9:00 p.m. and everyone was starving. We were carrying food rations and mail. I went so far as to open ration packs and pass them out to my men. I said if we're going to go down it might as well be with something in our stomachs. We finally landed at about 2:00 a.m. The fuel drums were dry. We barely made it.

Iceland was not as bad as I had anticipated. I expected it to be a giant block of snow and ice, but it wasn't very cold. We rested in Iceland for two or three days, waiting for England weather to clear so we'd be sure to be able to land. We took off in a storm. We were cruising at about 6,000 feet. cumulus clouds were everywhere. We were told to avoid clouds. We had grown very complacent. We weren't wearing seat belts. Cigarette ashes were everywhere. We kept having to alter our course and rearrange our plans to avoid all the clouds. Finally we got tired of dodging clouds. We decided to go through the edges of some clouds and finally we flew through the middle of one. Everything went very dark. We both pushed our wheels forward, into a dive, thinking we were stalling. We were all hitting our heads on the ceiling. It turns out our peto tube which measures air speed was filled with snow. I quickly turned on our peto heater and melted the snow which had accumulated within it. Once the air speed registered again, we were almost to the red. We were trying to pull her out of the dive without tearing the wings off. The ocean was coming towards us. We finally pulled her out. The rest of the trip we kept our seat belts fastened. We still had a long way to go. We were all too tense to sleep. I had suggested to a couple of men that they go sleep in the nose. They said it was to loud but I imagine they were just too anxious and wanted to stay alert.

We finally landed in Wales. We were then part of the 40th Bomb Wing of the 8th Air force. We were stationed in Padington, about 70 miles northeast of London.

I thought England was nice enough. But one thing I found when we reached the 40th Bomb Wing was that everyone was crazy. Fatigue and countless missions with men losing their friends on almost a daily basis was too much for them. they all were hollow eyed and crazy. I can't testify to how long the effects lasted for the men, but they were really suffering by the time I got there.

There was one man who on several missions experienced engine fire. He was petrified of fire. He would pull his bunk out to the middle of the floor so that the little amount of sunlight there was coming through the window would hit him so that he would be warmer. Everyone's sleep schedule was a wreck so it was common to sleep during the day. A typical day would involve getting up at 2:00 a.m., going to briefing, and preparing for your mission which began at dawn. Well, he was sleeping with his cot pulled into the light. A bunch of guys popped open some flares and surrounded his cot with the powder. Then they caught it all ablaze. The man woke up screaming. He couldn't figure why his bed was surrounded by fire. They would play such awful jokes on each other, it was like they weren't themselves anymore.

Well, you know that is a funny thing. I have always believed in fate. First off, if I had not failed that blinker test, I would have probably ended up in England sooner. I would have flown a lot more and could have easily been killed. I knew of more men who died flying B-17s than I did men who would make it home.

Our first mission involved a split crew. My crew was divvied up to ten planes. Each one would take their position with another crew for practical training. The plane I was scheduled to fly with ended up having a problem with the landing gear. I would not go up after take off. It was really funny how it happened. I was supposed to fly with one crew, but they were in dyer need of a gunner so I switched crews with one of my crewmates. Otherwise he would have ended up in the plane that was scratched from the mission. He and another one of my men, and they were on two separate planes mind you, were lost their first time out.

Morale was very low, especially since my crew never got to fly a mission together before we were assigned replacements. I think people were so fatigued and because of a continued maximum effort, they weren't able to recover from one mission before another one was scheduled.

One day there was a terrible accident on the run way. One plane suffered a mechanical problem and tower radioed them to return, crossing the runway. Tower in turn radioed all planes so that they could be on the look out. It is only an assumption, but it is believed that another plane either didn't get the message, or the crews didn't have their minds fully on their job. As the first, debilitated plane crossed the runway, the other plane went full thrust for take off and slammed into the lame plane. Both were fully fueled and carried full pay load of bombs. Twenty men were lost in that one accident.

I had joined originally, only seven months after the war started and within 1 month after arriving in England, VE Day occurs. I had only had the opportunity to fly one mission and experienced flack but no enemy planes. At the time I was very disappointed. I had wanted to fly fighters and be a part of the fight, but it wasn't meant to be.

I must have stayed on for over a year after VE Day. It was late '46 before I finally went home. The 40th Bomb Wing became a courier type service. We flew important people and paperwork to France and Africa. Finally we moved our base to southern France.

But, before moving to France, we wouldn't take a lot of GI's on tours of Germany, fly them up the Rhine so they could see what they had been fighting. Consider that a B-17 can hold 10 men and an enormous pay load of bombs. On the last tour flight we offered before finally moving on to France, we had 100 men on one plane. We were tightly packed to say the least. for many of the men it was the first time they had traveled in an airplane having reached Europe by boat. It was quite an experience.

I'm sure VE Day eased a lot of tension for the B-17 pilots. Did this make your duties flying between France and Africa more enjoyable?

Oh, we had a lot of fun. We flew all over and spent a lot of time in Rome too. One time I caught a flight on another man's plane. We called it a hop. We were flying to Paris, but the airway there was not usable, so we had to land at a small strip outside of town. The cloud cover was extreme though, so we were waiting for the cover to break up a little. We were cruising at about 400 feet. This was very low and the clouds were still below us. We were flying an erratic pattern, there was no other air traffic around at that time. Looking out of the plane we suddenly noticed that we were flying terribly close to an object. That object was the Eiffel Tower. We didn't even consider that it was about 600 feet tall and we were flying in a dark sky. We came real close to hitting it. At that moment I was real lonesome for my own plane. Finally we did get to land at that strip.

We decided to spend the full three days of our pass in Paris. We were all going to meet up at 11:00 or so to head back to our base. Well, 11:00 o'clock came around and our buddy had not made it back. We couldn't figure out what had happened to him. Finally, at about 1:00 o'clock he shows up wearing nothing but a sheet. He had met a "nice French girl" who invited him to stay the night. During the night she took all of his money and every stitch of clothing he had been wearing. He hadn't known what to do. He tried to take a train, but he wasn't allowed to board the train wearing his toga. Finally he met up with an MP who escorted him to us. I'd say that chances are his was the only B-17 flight in the nude during the whole war.

I spent a lot of time going back and forth between Europe and Africa. I primarily took goods, persons, and important paperwork back and forth between France and Africa. I spent a good deal of time going from Casablanca, Morocco to Marrakech, Morocco. Our wing commander was stationed in Marrakech.

On one outing traveling by truck between Casablanca and Marrakech my crewmen and myself encountered a particularly unsavory character in a bazaar. He was selling kindling, wood to start fires. He was vile. He would scream at all the airmen and soldiers, and spit on them. The market was very full one day with natives. They were all very hungry and would follow behind the truck hoping we would throw them food. When we would, they would fight amongst themselves for it. Well, the kindling man had been particularly crude. He carried a heavy staff and would shake it at us. A soldier we were traveling with took a hand full of peanuts, straight from their tin, and threw them into his carefully arranged pile of kindling. The natives took a running dive towards the kindling, throwing the pieces everywhere in search of a stray peanut. He began fending them off with his staff. We went back to France that same day, afraid that maybe we had started another world war right there with the kindling man.

It isn't a very good comparison. First of all, the atmosphere was totally different in France because of VE Day.

Also, I think the British were ungrateful and showed a lot of disrespect. Many of the men of the 40th Bomb Wing, mechanics and such, had been stationed in England for the bulk of the American involvement in the war. They had saved up there money and purchased bicycles. Many of the men were able to transport their bicycles by plane, but some had to take them on the trucks to the ferry to cross the channel. England had the gall to charge a duty on the bicycles of what was equivalent to more than a months salary, and amount which was considerably higher than the initial cost of the bicycles. The boys couldn't afford the duty, so they lined the bicycles up and ran over them repeatedly with the truck so that the Brits wouldn't get any use out of them either.

The French on the other hand always were nice and seemed to respect the Americans, except of course the "nice French girl" who stole Bragner's pants.

When we got to France, we had no permanent housing, so we all stayed in tents. We waited several weeks before shipment of plywood were received so that we could build make-shift barracks. We spent all day putting the barracks together. They were crude buildings. My men wanted to move into them that night, but I insisted that they spend one more night in the tent because we had a lot of work to do the next day and we were already exhausted from the manual labor.

There was a bombardier from another crew who would get roaring drunk every night. He would always complain of being cold. He would sit on his cot and light matches to keep warm. Well that first night in the barracks, he caught the whole thing on fire and it went up like a torch, and burned to the ground. Luckily no one died, but several of the men were injured. Again, I'd have to say fate is pretty strong.

Well, we all left out of France, except Bragner who ended up staying and marrying a truly nice French girl. I went home to Kansas. I started dating my high school sweetheart and married her right away.

I began a campaign in '47 for County Treasurer of Butler County and won. I took office in '48. Assimilation into civilian life was not hard. I had only lacked one semester to finish my degree and I got that out of the way right off the bat. I believe though that because so much of my service was stateside and then, in Europe after VE Day, assimilation was not that difficult.

I continued to fly. A gentleman I worked with, a Mr. Childs (by the way, he's the man who invented parking meters) owned a plane. After the war you could get a Cessna for about $1500 or less. We would go flying quite regularly.

You know, Haseltine, while we were flying back and forth to Africa said, (and he was from Boston so imagine a Boston accent) "Harper, these are the best years of our lives!" I definitely agree.

On and off over the years. For a long time we lost touch. Then on business I flew to Boston. I looked him up. This was 1984. We had written letters over the years, but we had not spoken since early '47. I gave him a call and he recognized my voice before I had a chance to identify myself. That really made me feel good. We've talked only a couple of times since then. He was a good friend.

Mr. Harper sighed. He had visited a place he had not ventured to in some time. "Those were my best days!" he said again. He said the world was different then. I could tell that I had started his memories flowing. He wondered about his friends. Mr. Harper then reached for the phone to put in a call to Mr. Haseltine. I am happy to say that Mr. Haseltine is doing well and is still living in Boston. Again, he recognized Mr. Harper's voice. I left them to their memories and quietly left the room.

--John Hinton

Author: Becky Driscoll
E-Mail: bdriscoll@dcccd.edu