Saturday, June 19, 1999
Air field evokes old memories
By Susan Kreifels
and new bonds
Star-Bulletin
A gray haze over the gray Nebraska flatlands made it even more difficult for the 75-year-old eyes, recovering so slowly from cataract operations, to find any trace of the air field that had been the last training stop for thousands of young men on their way to war a half-century ago.
"See anything that looks like a hangar?" my father asked, squinting anxiously along lonely miles of chipped farm houses. Past irrigation pivots, like huge, hairless centipedes waiting to crawl atop the endless fields.
Only recently had I learned about my father's occasional stops at the old Fairmont Army Air Field along the way to his winter retreat in Texas. How he would make his way to the end of the air strip, now cracked with weeds and piled with sand, corn and rolls of fence wire. How he would step on the gas and roar down the runway in his Chrysler Concord with its B 24 license plate, topping 110 mph and yelling "eeeeeah," remembering his days as a 19-year-old in the bubble atop a B-24 Liberator, his gun aimed for German fighters.I wanted to fly that Concord with him, feel what he felt in that tiny turret, ask all the questions I had asked scores of other World War II veterans as a reporter, but never my dad.
He had been reluctant to make the trip last April. Like other WWII veterans I had interviewed -- American, Filipino, Japanese -- he was modest about the war, avoiding unnecessary talk about it, especially about fear and death.
"Old guys and their war stories," he often said, tossing me off.
But as the miles ticked off along West Interstate 80 between Omaha and Lincoln, as we pulled off at the York interchange down Highway 81, passed McCool Junction, population 372, and Fairmont, about twice that size, he started to get excited. Then down a gravel road past Boons Auto Salvage & Sales at the end of a wide, abandoned runway. Four hangars, now filled with corn and soybeans, stood in the distance.
"I think this will be a valuable day," he pronounced, and I pulled out my notepad.Orville Andrew Kreifels was the oldest of six poor, German Catholic farm kids growing up outside Nebraska City. He enlisted at age 19 at Camp Dodge, Iowa, in 1943, and considered himself lucky to test high enough for the air crews of the Army Air Forces.
"God, this was a cold place," dad remembered about the January 1944 night missions he flew across the sand hills, and I shuddered as the cold Nebraska wind whipped us.
Fairmont was one of 11 Army air fields in Nebraska during World War II, according to a nearby state historical marker. The 1,980-acre field had enough barracks for nearly 6,000 airmen who trained on B-17s, B-24s and B-29s. The Bombardment Groups that trained there were the 16th, 98th, 451st, 467th, 489th 485th and 504th. A 350-bed hospital, where casualties of the European Theater were sent, was the state's largest hospital at the time.
In 1946 the field was declared surplus.
Dad remembered the barracks were used to raise chickens after the war. Today a Fillmore Co. Industrial Air Park sign hangs there. One ranch-style house stands near the four hangars, all in good condition, with red doors and white walls.
I insisted we look inside each one. "Wouldn't that be something if a B-24 was in there?" dad said wistfully. Which brought up a sore point with him. Of 18,479 Liberators built, only seven to nine remain today, said dad, who has researched the topic. Two of them still fly. A savvy entrepreneur sold them for scrap metal after the war "before we got smart enough to know it was the end of them." Dad's dream is to get a B-24 into the SAC (Strategic Air Command) museum outside Omaha.
But there was no B-24 awaiting us. Only the flap of birds' wings in the rafters, the musty smell of stored corn. Finally, we headed for the runway, drove to the end, sat quietly for a moment, hit the gas, took off, racing tumbleweeds and jackrabbits and topping about 80. "Eeeeeah!" he yelled.
Too quickly, we were back at Boons Auto Salvage. Disappointed that he didn't top 110 this time, dad said, "I'm not quite as gutsy as I used to be."
I wanted to do it again but decided not to push.
We headed back to Highway 81 and stopped at the historical marker. I was surprised to learn that Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets selected his crew here for the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. I had reported from Tinian, a tiny Western Pacific island where the Enola Gay took off, as well as from Hiroshima.In fact, years before, the worst argument my father and I ever had was over that bombing, and we ended in a stony stalemate. That was also years before I had seen the war through the lens of veterans, arguing only from youthful idealism. Dad has since visited the "City of Peace" twice and stayed with my Japanese friend, who bears scars from the bombing. But I never revisited the argument, figuring my dad had his own scars.
While we read, Sarah Reinsch and Rob Roper drove up in their orange state Department of Roads pickup to remind me why I am so thankful for growing up in the Midwest. They gave us a big "Howdy" and offered to take photos. Roper owned a house where World War II airmen used to live. He also explained that the old blue car parked by the small runway, still usable, was left by the Fairmont Lions Club for pilots who wanted to land there, as long as they "keep it in gas."
The two suggested we stop at the Fairmont Museum, which has a room dedicated to the war. It's usually locked, but no problem -- stop at the West Brothers Hardware, Lumber and Construction, they told us, and ask them to track down Ruth Black, the 87-year-old curator who would proudly show us around. I grew up in a small Nebraska town of one main street, where everybody knew the whereabouts of everybody.
Dan Kahler at West Brothers called around town until he tracked down Ruth's car. Dad yelled "Thanks a million" to the lumberyard folks, and within 15 minutes Ruth met us with key in hand and head wrapped tightly in a bright scarf against the prairie wind.
Ruth was born in Fairmont, home to Fairmont Foods, which turned out 7,000 pounds of butter a day in 1891 and ended up one of America's 500 largest corporations. Ruth, a former schoolteacher, lived alone in the house where she was born.
It was apparent that she loved to tell the story of how the war room came into being. One day on her way to the post office, she saw an Ohio car parked outside the museum. It belonged to a veteran of the 485th Bombardment Group who was on his way to a reunion. Ruth never thought she would see him again, but a few days later she received $1,000 from the 485th veterans and the man's uniform scarf, now on exhibit.
I asked for the man's name and address. "That's the problem," Ruth said. "I write to them, and the next time I know, they're deceased." It was a theme discussed by my father and Ruth several times that afternoon.
There were glorious photos of the B-24s in action: the "Old Tub," "Big Alice from Dallas," and "Fertile Myrtle," which was lost Aug. 23, 1944. "They weren't the safest planes in the world," dad told us. "They had a tendency to blow up. But they were the fastest."
When dad left Fairmont in early 1944, he caught a new B-24 at Lincoln, then flew to Miami, Puerto Rico, British Guiana, Brazil, Dakar, Casa-blanca, Marrakech, Tunisia, and finally Venosa, Italy, from where he would take off on 50 combat missions between April 1944 and August 1944.
The bombing raids included Austria, Romania, Italy and Germany, with the most important target the Ploesti oilfields in Romania. The 15th Air Force destroyed half of Germany's oil production, according to books in the museum. For his part, dad earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and four air medals.
Dad said his greatest concern was flak from the ground, and if you could see it explode, "you knew you were in trouble." The ball gunner had the worst job, hanging from the underbelly of the B-24. "It was horribly uncomfortable and you couldn't get out of the thing. If you were hit and landing, sooner or later you got scraped."
Ruth and I shuddered, and I was glad dad had sat atop the bomber.
I was hoping to see a photo of dad's B-24, and like an angel sent from the Red Cross, Ruth pulled out her last copy of "The History of the 485th Bomb Group (H)" by Sammy Schneider. And there among the many photos of B-24 crews stood Staff Sgt. Kreifels of the 831st Bomb Squadron with his buddies in front of the "Valiant Lady." I bought the last copy for my dad, figuring it was the best $35 investment I had ever made.
Also hanging in the museum was a Chinese calligraphy by Hung Peng Lee of Honolulu. A 485th veteran, the calligraphy was in memory of the 50th anniversary of V-J Day.
That reminded Ruth that her friend's husband flew on the Enola Gay. "They even questioned the wives to see how much they knew," she told us furtively. "Everything was so secret."
Then dad raised the issue I had avoided with him for many years. "I've been to Hiroshima twice," he told Ruth. "That was a horrible thing."
Like me, it seemed dad now looked at the day through an extra lens.
Too soon we had to leave, but dad and Ruth had made a lifelong bond. Ruth's parting advice: "If you want to get in touch with any of these fellows, visit them NOW."
We understood.
Before heading back to Omaha, we stopped at TJz diner for a quick bite among four choices -- roast beef fixed three ways plus taco salad -- and looked through dad's new book. I seized the moment to ask those questions that always peeved him: about death and fear.
Did he lose a lot of friends? "Let's put it this way," he said. "Of 13 crews, only three or four whole crews were left. If you didn't get holes in your plane, you didn't really fly."
But still savoring the day, I pushed him more. With some emotion, he told me he lost everyone in his first ground crew on their way to war aboard the liberty ship Paul Hamilton, which exploded and sank in 30 seconds in June 1944, according to Schneider.
Our loss: 154 troops. Dad's buddy, air crew chief Sgt. Michael DeMarco, had chosen to take the ship so he could stop in Rochester, N.Y., to get married. Dad grumbled that the Army never told them much, and when the crew didn't show up, he figured something had happened to his friend.
"We didn't even know they went down," dad said quietly.
And then I asked, were you scared? "That's a funny question to ask," he growled. "Back then, people didn't ask this stuff."
But being part of the have-to-know-everything generation, I wanted to know how close my father had been to death. Pretty close. A bullet that hit his helmet bounced into his lap. The enemy blew off a rudder and they almost crashed. After a night of repairs, they were back in the air the next day.
Yes, he got scared in the air, he admitted, even though "nobody thinks they're going to get killed." But when crews got down to their last four or five missions, they started thinking they had a chance to make it home.
Many didn't. According to Schneider's book, the final price for the Ploesti raids: 351 bombers, 3,510 crew. Those who survived, and the stories they tell, as Ruth knows all too well, are going fast. I feel so lucky my dad is still here to tell his -- and that I asked.
Dad says he doesn't want me spreading his story around. But old guys and their war stories, their kids know, are the best.