Interview of Boyce Barbee
Transcript Number 117

The interviewer is Tim Bostwick, of the G.V. Barbee Branch Library of the Brunswick County Library System and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, William Madison Randall University Library, and I have the pleasure today to be with Mr. Boyce Barbee of Oak Island, North Carolina and also Reedsville, North Carolina. Mr. Barbee is going to share with us his time in the service during World War II in the Air Force and I thank you very much for being here Mr. Barbee or allowing me to come into your home.

INTERVIEWER: If you would just share with us your date of birth, your home town and tell us a little bit about your hometown and what you did before the war.

BARBEE: Well before the war, I worked in textiles from October of 1939 until I believe it was the 1st of 1941, then I started driving a tractor trailer and drove that until I went into the service. I was drafted in July 24, 1942. I had to catch a bus from Statesville to Fort Bragg and we got down there and had all of tests and everything and then we had a formation and they informed us that they didn't have room for us, that we had to go home and come back the 7th of August. Well, there was a problem there. We got back to Statesville, well my people didn't have a phone. I had no way of getting in touch with them and it was 15 miles from Statesville to my home, so I had to walk. I walked the 15 miles and when I got home, my dad was a disabled World War I veteran and when I come in the door, he had a fit, said you didn't desert did you (laughter)? And I explained the whole thing, but then we went back the 7th and that's when my active duty started. 

INTERVIEWER: And that was at Fort Bragg?

BARBEE: Fort Bragg, right.

INTERVIEWER: How did you feel about, you were drafted, how old were you when you were drafted?

BARBEE: I was 20 and I turned 21, well I was born October 3, 1921 and I was drafted in July of '42 so I was 20, but right on the verge of 21.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, and into the, what branch of service were you drafted into and did you have any choice once you were drafted?

BARBEE: Didn't have any choice. You were told. I was assigned to the Air Force. I think they kind of took your IQ. That played a part in it. Of course, so did all of the code things and everything, are these two alike, I think that's what got me into radio.

INTERVIEWER: All the testing that they did?

BARBEE: The testing and so I was destined to be a radio operator, but I could have been a radar operator, but I don't know somebody else made that decision. I didn't have anything to do with it. 

INTERVIEWER: What were your military ranks all throughout, you know, your service?

BARBEE: Well I started out as a private, you know, so I was a private through basic and through radio school and actually through gunnery school, but when you graduated from gunnery school, you were automatically a three stripe sergeant, they made you a sergeant and I remained a sergeant until just before we shipped overseas and my pilot, I could be a tech sergeant because I was the first radio operator and he brought everybody up to tech, I mean just as high as they could go and so I was a tech sergeant from then as I went through the war.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. And being a radio operator, could you share with us, just tell us what it was like to get inducted. You said a little bit about the test and what were your different duty stations and what did you do in each one.

BARBEE: Well, at Scott Field, Illinois, they had three shifts in radio school. I mean it was really accelerated and I happened to be, after every month, they switched, but I never was on the third, it was either first or second shift and it was a good course. We had good instructors and I sit for about a month with a typewriter in front of me, but I never could associate that did-did-dah with a "t" on that typewriter, so my limit was 25 words a minute. I could print 25 words a minute and so that's the way that was. And then that lasted I believe 4 or 5 months and I know it was cold and ice all over Scott Field when we shipped out to Harlingen, Texas for aerial gunnery school. And there we learned all about the turrets and the machine guns on the planes and we had to fire the machine guns and also a little two place A-T 6's, you pull a sock through there and you was there with a machine gun and shooting at that sock and you better just hit the sock. You better not put a hole in that A-T 6 or they'd wash you out right in a minute and in fact a lot of people didn't make it. I mean they washed out quite a few, so when we finished, the last week was off line. That's all we did. We didn't do any paperwork or anything. We had had to learn to harmonize guns. That means to have converging fire___ set at 200 yards and all this thing so it would have some algebra and all this stuff in it and then when we finished that, gunnery school, we all went to Salt Lake City for reassignment and that's where they separated. Some went to B17 and some to B24s. Well I don't know why it was, but I was one of the few that went to Tucson, Arizona, to Davis _____ and B24 and I sat there. I checked the bulletin board every day to see if I'd been assigned to a crew. So finally I was assigned to Lieutenant Guy Cornine's crew and so I flew with him the 25 missions and I also flew a few missions with him from on this other project that we'll talk about later. So when we finished our tour of bombing missions, we had quite a few scares. We lost engines over the targets and one time we were shot up so bad that we were, everybody except the pilot and copilot went into Bombay ready to bail out, to ditch actually. We were over water. But we got to the coast line and the pilot said, well I believe we're going to make it About the time we all got back up, all four engines quit and it happened they were building a fighter strip right on the coast and they had some barricades across it and he put that airplane down and that was one of the few, very few, ditch stick landings ever made in a B24 cause it glides right like that, but he brought it down. When we stopped, everybody got out except me. I was trying to get the little auxiliary power unit started so I could call the base and tell them where we were. And about that time, a plane coming in right over top of us and landed, P47, and the pilot got out and came back and he said, well I was out of gas too and I saw that strip, but I didn't think I could land and then I saw that B24 land. He said if that thing can land, I know I can, so he landed too and his radio was working so he called in. His base sent a truck after us. I imagine I'm one of the few that ever had a major to get the butter for me at the table, but they treated us like royalty on that fighter base. That showed what kind of a pilot Guy Cornine was. He was great.

INTERVIEWER: You had shared a story with me the other day about Lieutenant Cornine and it sounds like he was quite a pilot. How you got your first plane when you got to Europe.

BARBEE: (Laughter) Oh we were replacement crew and they flew us across from Presque Isle, Maine to Gander, Newfoundland and to Scotland and we got there and we didn't know what was going on, but all the people from the 44th, 44th was the first one over there, the 93rd was the second and the 389th was the third. They were gone. So they sent us to North Africa all the way across to Bengazi and it was for the Ploesti oil field raid. We didn't get to go because we didn't have an airplane which didn't bother me at all after the way...they told us at the briefing there that if we bombed that oil field with good results, it would be worth it if not one of us come back and maximum altitude, bombing altitude was 50 feet in a B24. So Colonel Leon Johnson led his group in and he was promoted to Brigadier General shortly after. He was a guy who had the steeliest eyes that you've ever seen. Now he pinned a medal on me and he could look a hole through you. He could look at you and tell what you had for breakfast (laughter). So then we come back and the 93rd, I believe it went to the 93rd first, they didn't have anything for us. We went to the 389th, they didn't have anything. The 392nd was the fourth group to come over on B24s and it was a brand new group and so we went in there and we didn't have an airplane and so in the meantime, one of the crew took a B24 down in the pasture and they were going to cut it up. They said it wasn't possible to fly it out. The pilot went out there and looked at it and he come back and said boy, I believe we can fly that plane out. He said but we don't want anymore weight than we have to have, he said, so you and Shorty, who was our navigator, said you're the only ones going because they had to have a navigator and they had to have a radio operator to fly, so we went over to the pasture. He taxied the plane around and bucked that tail up, unscrewed the supercharger stops so he could get all the power of those four engines and he opened them up and it was actually, the wheels were sliding, it was actually sliding on the ground when he released the brakes and it went forward. Now there was a railroad that was a semi-circle, a high bank railroad and a three story apartment building. So when it come up, right over the apartments, it almost stalled out but it come down a little bit and it gained speed and we come around and the only time I ever saw or rode with this pilot when he did anything dangerous was when he buzzed that field. Now he come around and he come around and air speed was way past the red line and right down over that and then back up over that. Well we had us an airplane and we flew all of our missions in it, but after we finished the second mission, after we finished, it went down with all members of the crew, so Hard to Get. It was Hard to Get for us. I mean we loved that airplane. We brought it back one time and the crew chief said, why in the world didn't you jump out of that thing and leave it, he said it'll take us a week to get the holes patched up (laughter).

INTERVIEWER: So that was the name of your plane, Hard to Get.

BARBEE: Hard to Get.

INTERVIEWER: And who named that?

BARBEE: The pilot.

INTERVIEWER: The pilot?

BARBEE: Yeah, well I mean it was mutual, I mean they'd beat around a whole bunch of girlie things, but we didn't go for that. 

INTERVIEWER: Did he come about that name because it was hard for you to get that plane?

BARBEE: Right, it was hard to get all right.

INTERVIEWER: That's a story. Sounds like he was quite a pilot.

BARBEE: He was. He recently moved. He was a developer in Florida. He built on the beaches down there and he had a summer home in the mountains of North Carolina and then he moved up there permanent. I believe that's where he sent this from, was Franklin, North Carolina, and then I got a note the other day that he had moved to Tennessee. He moved around quite a bit. His wife, Jackie, she was a real nice woman and she followed him. In fact, in El Paso, she had an apartment down there and she would entertain the crew and she was really nice. But to get back to the training and everything, at Davis Monthan, then we had the first phase. That's when you get familiar with everything. You see I knew the code and everything, but I wasn't familiar with the transmitters and all of the equipment on the airplane. So we got familiar with that and the second phase, this was at Davis Monthan in Tucson, so we went to El Paso to Biggs Field for second and third phase training. Actually it was mostly night flying. We flew some in daytime, but most of that was formation and air to ground. They had wooden tanks set up and we'd come in and choose the tanks and things like that. But they cut our training short. They were needing people so they'd cut it short so I had eight days to get from El Paso to Lincoln, Nebraska and had I took the train, it would have taken most of that time, but I managed to get airline tickets home, but I had to ride the train from Charlotte, North Carolina to Lincoln, Nebraska. And we left Lincoln, Nebraska and went to Presque Isle, and I've already told you about from Presque Isle I went over to...

INTERVIEWER: Well they flew you over. You didn't have to go over on a ship or anything?

BARBEE: Oh no, we flew on one of these C54 that I'm going to talk about later (laughter). But the combat was bad. I've got a book here that tells how many in our group was killed and how many was taken prisoner and wounded and all this, but also we have a memorial at Wendling and I've been there. My wife took my picture there at this memorial and we also have a memorial at the museum in Savannah. I haven't been to that yet, but I'm going. But let me just read you what the chaplain about the memorial. The 392nd memorial at Wendling, "Oh mighty God who has blessed us with the will and the courage to do our duty, we praise you (crying) for our comrades whose deaths kept freedom living. We praise you also for giving us the years we have left since their departure. We pray that you will strengthen and sustain our devotion to truth and justice so that we may be faithful beneficiaries of their sacrifice. Continuing your mercy to our comrades, keep them in your care. Bring us all at last into your presence there to enjoy eternity. Amen." And this was composed by 578th pilot, very revered: Robert C. Martin, retired Dean of the Cathedral at Erie, Pennsylvania. So this and people, in other words, we donated money for the upkeep of this memorial and there's people there that welcome any of us that come over there. They welcome us to their house and there's some really nice people there and we have a memorial in the library at Norfolk, in Norwich, the 8th Air Force Memorial with all of the books and everything.

INTERVIEWER: Is that in England?

BARBEE: Yes, in Norwich, I mean Norfolk and Norwich is the main liberty town and all this that was close to us so we've been back to Norwich twice, well since 1987, I guess, we've been back twice.

INTERVIEWER: And able to visit the base where you served.

BARBEE: Well the base is now a turkey farm (laughter). The only building standing is the operations office and it's used for something else now, I don't remember, I've got it here somewhere, but I don't remember. It was a muddy base. I mean mud up to your ankles everywhere you went. I was only there, well, I left there shortly after March 5th. We finished our tour March 5, 1944, we finished our bombing tour. And we would, we were assigned a pilot, the navigator and the radio operator had to stay three months at that time and instruct new crews. Well the navigator and I were on the same base and the pilot wasn't far away. He was at another base and we'd meet in Norwich and have a few beers two or three or four times a week and so one night, I'd say how you guys like to fly together again, I said Good Lord yes, I said, they gonna kill me. I said these people that are coming over now, I said, when you fly formation with them, I said they either got their wing tip in your window or you need binoculars to find them and I said I'm ready to fly again so shortly after a few days, they'd call Lieutenant Master and me over the loud speaker to report and we had two hours to clear the base, report to the colonel in a class A uniform. So we got there and he said, I don't know what this is all about, he said, but you guys gotta go to London today so they had transportation and we went to London and they didn't tell the enlisted man a whole lot about it. They put us up in a hotel and give us per diem to eat on and all this and I know my mother, I wrote V-mail home and I got one back that said, what have you done, the FBI is investigating you. She said they're investigating you and I don't know what it's all about. Well actually, I didn't either at that time, but they took us to the legation and took pictures for the passport, took us to Harrod's, got us two complete outfits of civilian clothes. I mean that included overcoats and shoes and everything. Then we got the last briefing. They told us what we were going to do . We were going to start an airline from Lukers, Scotland to Stockholm and we would be in civilian clothes. We would be employees of the American Air Transport Service and we would be flying across Norway and if we went down, we better hit the ground running because they'd stand us up against the nearest wall and shoot us because we...as spies, so I had done 25 bombing missions so I did 25 of those and it wasn't too bad. I remember one night, this was in, must have been, I was in Stockholm on Christmas 1944 and on New Year's '44, it just seemed like I'd got over there and it was on New Year's that they had a big snow. I mean a big one and they scraped the runway and there were three aircraft over there, three of our aircraft and we were all going back that night so it happened that we were third in line, so the first one took off and had a crosswind and his landing gear hit deep snow and he spun, washed that one out. The second one, after we'd seen that everybody was all right and got them out, he started off and did the same thing, almost hit the other one, so we washed out two B24s that night and our pilot, he just released the brakes and turned around and went back, said no way. But then the only other time that really got concerned, the last time that German airplanes were over England, they, in the meantime we had moved from Lukers back down to Norfolk near Norwich on an air base because, well we were getting, while we were in Lukers, per diem $7.00 a day and also every day we were in Stockholm, we were getting $12 a day plus it didn't cost us anything, I mean in Stockholm, we had signed a check when we ate and, of course we stayed in hotels that they had paid for, but we got down to Metfield, that cut out our $7.00 per day per diem, but this time, like I said, the last time German planes were over England, we were coming in for a landing, had the wheels down, landing lights on and I was sitting at the window watching and all at once, the machine guns rattling, tracers flying and then right over behind us, boom, a big explosion so the pilot, he just raised the wheels and we went on to London. We didn't know what had happened. So we got our passengers taken care of. We had 13 by the way. The next day we come back to Metfield where we were met by the flight surgeon and all other top brass and what had happened, this ME110 had followed us in right behind us so that the radar didn't catch him, but somehow he got separated enough that the radar did catch him and he was fixing to shoot us down, but what he didn't know, there was a British night fighter on his tail and shot him down right under us.

INTERVIEWER: And that was the explosion?

BARBEE: That was the explosion, that ME110 hitting the ground and so when we come back, there were two Germans killed and one American, a radar operator at the end of the runway. They don't know who, what bullet killed him, whether it was German or British, but he was dead and the flight surgeon, he had to take us to the morgue which I didn't appreciate really and view the bodies and he come back and he gave each one of us a fifth of bourbon (laughter) so that was pretty good. And then, let's see, the war, oh let's see, I'm skipping something here now, well no the war was over and we, I was stationed at that time in Orly in Paris and just after the war, because when the war ended, that was when I started flying the C54s or DC4s was the civilian designation and we flew Navy crewman to Keough and all of the coast places. We flew Navy people to take over the German fleet and also about this time, they had the Potsdam Conference. I had a passport with a Russian visa in it. I could fly to Russia if I needed to so I was designated if they needed a radio operator to go over to Russia, why I'd go. But then they, in the meantime, I had gotten married. I married a girl in Scotland. That's another story (laughter). But they were trying to send me home and in fact, they had already issued orders, I believe twice, but I had a captain that was kinda looking after me and he was an operations officer so whenever they issued orders, he would send me off somewhere where they couldn't get to me. So this time, after the conference, they had papers and things that they wanted to send to Washington so they had orders on me to send me home permanent, I said no. I said I'll take the 30 days delay en route, but I'm not going permanent. You don't have much to say about it. I said, I'm sick, I'm going to the hospital. Well they didn't have any radio operators so I got my 30 days delay en route and so then when I was coming, well see this was before the war ended and I'd come into...they dropped the Atomic bomb while I was home and I knew the war was going to end so I told my parents, I said I'm going back so I went to Charlotte, went to the airport, caught a plane to LaGuardia, walked up to _______ and told them, I want to go to _______ and so he laughed at me and said, see all these people, he said they want to go too, so I opened my briefcase, slid a copy of my orders out, I said I believe that if they got a priority like that, I believe they'll get to go and they had given me a priority II which the only priority higher than that is the President and his Cabinet. So he looked at it and said I think they will too, he said I don't know what you're up to, but you get to go so I went. Then I went back to Orly and we flew, I remember one flight, by having a passport went to Lisbon, this group from, a freight outfit in New York wanted to get landing rights in the Azores to haul freight so I flew on that one and this old DC4, C54 that we'd been flying, it had a defect in it. It would develop an air lock and all four engines would start to quit. Well you had to switch tanks and it kicks back up. But we had had a pretty good time in Lisbon that night. You know the night clubs didn't open until about 11:00 at night. After I'd checked in, I put my headset on the navigator's head and the C54 has two bunks in it and I fell in one of those bunks. I said if you need me, holler. Well we were over the Andes and that thing developed this air lock and I rolled out of the bed, put the headset on, turned my transmitter on and I was sending a message before they even got them started and this guy told me, he said what are you going to do when you get out. I said, I don't know, haven't made any plans. He said, you come to my office in New York, and he said, you've got a job starting at $600 a month which in 1944-45, that was money. So I told Ann about it, she said, no --she said if you're going to do that, I'll just stay over here. So I didn't take it.

INTERVIEWER: To compare, what was your military pay at that time?

BARBEE: $208 a month. I had, of course, you had your overseas pay and everything and tech sergeant amounted to $208 a month and then the only thing that come out of that was your insurance which didn't amount to much.

INTERVIEWER: Did you get extra pay for being on flight...

BARBEE: Yes and you get extra pay for flying and you got overseas pay, so it was good. While I was flying back and forth to Sweden, all of us made a lot of money on watches and things like that. I had a briefcase as a radio operator with codes in it and Customs couldn't touch it on either side. I mean that was off limits. So I could just lift a flap on that thing and drop those watches in there and you could get them for about $5-$10 a piece and sell them for $100 back in England or you could bring them back so I did all right. I remember one time I wanted to buy an engagement ring. It was in Stockholm and jewelry over there was cheap and I was going to pay $1000 for that thing, it was a big one, but she said she didn't want it. I don't know. The only thing I bought her was silk hose and chocolates (laughter). That Swedish chocolate, I kept her and well all of our friends well supplied in chocolate. But it was a great experience. I wouldn't want to do it again, but I don't regret a thing. I don't regret it at all. I think our age did a lot to bring the war to a close. In fact, I'm sure you read about the Gotha raid. That was one of the best, about half of the formation turned off and went the wrong way, but our navigator said no way, I'm going the way I'm supposed to so actually it was aircraft manufacturing plants and they said we destroyed 90% of it so that was a good thing. We got a Presidential Unit Citation for that one which is this little blue ribbon.

INTERVIEWER: If you'll hold that up and tell us a little about it, I'll zoom in on it and get it shown here.

BARBEE: Okay, well this is a Distinguished Flying Cross, the top one there, the red, white and blue and the one under it is an Air Medal which I got, the Air Medal and 7 oak leaf clusters and this is our wings, gunner's wings and this is the Presidential Unit Citation ribbon. If you were on the raid, you could wear that the rest of your life, if you were in the group though and wasn't on this raid, you could only wear it while you were in the group and this is my passport. It was issued to me I believe in April 1944 and it has quite a few entries in it. This is a medal, getting that Air Medal from Colonel Randall who was a base commander and also have his picture and the little article about finishing our tour. And I guess that's about it. 

INTERVIEWER: There was something about, you claimed you were one of the first to finish your 25 missions.

BARBEE: We were the first crew in the 392nd bomb group to finish. There were very few crews that had finished, had got 25 trips in. I mean you'd get 20, 21, 22 and then blow up. It was a real celebration when they finally got one, a crew to finish and we had been there, I was on the first 500 plane raid, I was in the first 1000 plane raid over Europe. Of course, shortly after that, they really jacked it up. I mean there was 2-3000 over there.

INTERVIEWER: That's the number of planes on one mission?

BARBEE: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Wow.

BARBEE: They really saturated it. I remember one instance on this Navy crew that we took to Griman?____. The streets, they had just bulldozed enough room for a vehicle to get through. I mean it was totally wiped out. I think I went to Griman?____ twice and the RAF boy, those blockbusters, those 2000 pound bombs, oh man, they'd clear a city block. We had bombed in the daytime and they bombed at night and it was just round the clock. I don't know, they put up with it longer than I could even imagine. Of course, now they're the ones that started it. I mean they bombed London. I'd been in London and they were really tearing it up and Coventry...my wife has a niece in Coventry and they really tore that place up.

INTERVIEWER: So you were in London during bomb raids?

BARBEE: Oh yeah. We'd have liberty and go to London. I've been there several times and of course I've been there in civilian life too. It was something, I mean you'd hear the bombs dropping and see the fires where they'd started. It was scary and I know there's been some people in the States that said we shouldn't have done that, but they did it to the British. 

INTERVIEWER: They cleared the way for the ground troops to be able to go in and do their job.

BARBEE: That's right and I know I wasn't involved in it, but they told us before D-Day that we shouldn't, if we'd seen anything, we were flying out over the North Sea going to Sweden. They said if you see anything, you didn't see it. You just ignore it and actually I never did see anything because we were flying way north of where the action was. We flew up across the Arctic Circle and then come back down over Norway to get as far away from fighters as we could. Of course, we flew right between two JU88 bases and they could have shot us down anytime they wanted to. We didn't have, the only thing we had was a signal, we didn't have a gun. 

INTERVIEWER: This was at the time that you were flying the missions to Stockholm and it was in a B24 Liberator, but it was stripped?

BARBEE: Stripped and all the markings, the only markings it had on it was the civilian markings, just the N.C. number and it had all the guns were taken out and it just had a bench down each side and a plywood over the bomb door and it was just for a, what shall I say, primitive airline. I mean a B24, there's not room enough in it for many people for starters, but it was a good airplane. I know that they called them flying box cars and flying coffins and all this thing, but it always brought me back and I know after the pilot went back to the States...now he went back, oh I would say before in the latter part of '44, 1944 because they lifted up moratorium on the pilot and the navigator and radio operator not too long after we got into it and he got permission to go home and I believe he was stationed in Iowa somewhere. I got a letter from him and he said he really had to fight to get four hours line time and I still hadn't been able to fly a big beautiful B24 (laughter) so I think the old combat crews when they started coming back, there was a lot of resentment, the people that hadn't gone over there and so I think he had to battle some of that, but I know the last trip that I flew across the Atlantic coming home, I was radio operator on that trip. We brought a plane from Orly in Paris to Charleston, South Carolina and from there I went to Goldsboro for my discharge and I was discharged two days after my birthday in 1945, October 5, 1945, and I went back to work in textiles and I worked in textiles the rest of my career. I retired from Fieldcrest March 31, 1986 and we started traveling in a motor home. We've been in all 50 states, all the Canadian provinces except Newfoundland and New Mexico. Then we bought this house down in Oak Island (laughter). I guess I'll be back and forth between Oak Island and Reedsville, North Carolina in the foreseeable future. If there is anything else I can bring up that you know of.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. I have a couple of questions here. I asked you about different things in the service. You talked about your training. Do you think your training was adequate and sufficient and once you got on the job, so to speak, do you look back on it and say, boy they did a good job.

BARBEE: Well it was really accelerated and I think it turned out good, but there were, they did as good a job as they could because everything was rush, rush, rush. I mean those training planes, they were in there all the time, I mean when one crew would get out, another crew would get in. We were trained real well and my pilot, he helped us. There was one instance there might oughtta bring up, my job on the bombing run was I had a camera, a big camera and I'd be in the bomb bay taking pictures of the bombs going down and then I had to check to be sure there were no bombs left and then check the bomb bay door. All right well on this trip, it was cold. I mean the hydraulics were almost frozen and I finished my camera, taking my pictures and set the camera down and I looked back through there, the bomb bay, and I didn't see a bomb. And had a lever to pull to shut the doors, well I could pull the lever and it shut maybe two or three inches and then you had to let it build up and pull it again. Well I was on an oxygen bottle and I finally got the doors closed and got back up on the flight deck and about that time, bam, and I looked out there and that bomb bay door was flapping and a 1000 pound bomb going, I had missed that one. Another instance that I didn't bring up, my job also was to give each crew member a bar of candy and a package of gum and on this trip, we were lead crew and I had an extra bar of candy and a pack of gum and I couldn't find out who I missed so a B24H which is a (ford?)_____, the nose wheel door opened out, now the J, they opened in, but this one was an H. So the navigators, there were two of them in the front and the bombadier, so I was crawling around this nose wheel and we hit a bump like that and it threw me over into those doors and they popped open and I was hanging out of that airplane by my elbow (laughter) and I lost an escape kit and one of my GI shoes. I always had them tied to me because if you jumped out and pulled your rip cord, those flying boots was gone. They left and so I always had a pair of GI shoes tied to my harness so if I jumped out, I could have some shoes to wear. But I got back in, got my feet and rolled back over and got in and they both had their gum and their candy so I went back and called the pilot on the intercom and said, the nose wheel doors are open, you better drop the gear and pull them back up. So after the bombing mission and we got back and got off oxygen, the copilot turned around and said, what in the world is wrong with you. He said why were those nose wheel doors open and I told him and boy I had a whole lot of explaining to do about losing that escape kit because those things, they didn't want anybody to know what was in them.

INTERVIEWER: Could you share what was in there.

BARBEE: There was money for whatever area you were going to go to, there were maps and telling how to escape if you went down and a lot of guys used it. I mean there's a lot of them come back. We had one guy, Hubert D. Fletcher, I never will forget him, he showed me a letter and it was addressed to the Commanding Officer of Hubert D. Fletcher, but the mail clerk give it to him, didn't give it to the Commanding Officer, give it to Fletcher and it said if this Fletcher is so and so and gave his serial number and everything, return him to the zone of interior immediately. His family had already lost two boys and they were going to send him back to keep from losing him, but he tore it up and threw it in the trash can. He said, he had already done two tours and he said I'm going to stay here as long as there is a German left he said and he went down. Now I don't know whether he was killed or not, but he was shot down.

INTERVIEWER: His plane, the Liberator...

BARBEE: Oh yes, his plane went down. There were a lot of people that just had that kind of feeling. They were patriotic and they were going to stay there until it was over. Well I stayed until it was over too. When I come home, the war, well this was October, well actually September when I got back to the States because I remember walking down the street in Charleston and I needed a signature on my flight record to show that I had flown so I could get my flying papers and who should I meet but Captain Shriner which had been with us on the Sweden deal and I got him to sign my papers and I got my flying papers which was close to $100.

INTERVIEWER: A lot of money at that time. Let me look through here. Was there a lot of rivalry between flyers and non-flyers or between different branches of the service like the Marines, Army or ground type troops.

BARBEE: I only had one incidence of this and that was during our bombing mission. We come back from North Africa and we hadn't had any mail for three months and our engineer was leaning back against the building reading a letter from his wife and this captain walked by and he turned around and he come back by and boy he chewed him out for not saluting. Well it turns out this captain maybe we'd be woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning or 2 o'clock to go to a briefing and then they'd screw up the mission. Well we'd all go back and go to bed. Well he had a habit of going in turning the lights on, TENS-HUT, get everybody out of bed. The line officers kept telling him, now you better quit that. Those people deserve to have their rest, but he didn't so the MPs and the drivers made it up. Next time he was officer of the day, you pass my post, you_______ . Well he did, but he didn't get the man, shot the windshield. But not too long later, they had told him, you stay away from the airplanes, said you go down there, you're going to be in trouble, but he went down there one time when a tail gunner was working on his guns and he saw him and he turned twin 50s loose at him, but he fell in a ditch and got away so they transferred him out and that's the only, the only thing that I ever heard of how this guy, I don't know, we called him paddle-feet. Even the officers didn't have any use for him. 

INTERVIEWER: Are you able to talk about what your missions were when you were flying in Stockholm. 

BARBEE: Oh yeah, it was mostly like, it was bringing internees home and a lot of Norwegians come across the line wanting to get back to England to fight. They were wanting to fight the Germans so we brought a lot of Norwegians back and this Count that was killed in Palestine, that Count _________, he was working trying to get the Jewish people and the Palestinians too, you know, flew him across a few times and one time I remember, we brought Russians too. They could get into Sweden and we'd bring some of the higher ranking Russians over. And this one time, there was a woman, I don't know who she was, but she was very pregnant and actually she got on the plane and they took her off to go back. She went into labor. So about, I don't know, three or four weeks later, she come back and I fed that baby oxygen all the way across (laughter). It was in kind of a basket thing and I held the oxygen on the way back, that was quite a thing. I never did find out what or who she was, but I'm sure she was probably the wife of some high ranking guy, but that was interesting. One time the radio operator in Stockholm got sick and they had to send him back to the States and I was over there at the time and they drafted me to take the news from Moscow every night at midnight and I did that for...

INTERVIEWER: Do you speak Russian?

BARBEE: No, this was all in code.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.

BARBEE: The legation deciphered it. I just took it.

INTERVIEWER: Then they would transfer it to you and that would be your job to decode it.

BARBEE: No I didn't decode it, I just copied it. I copied it and they decoded it.

INTERVIEWER: I think, when you went through basic training, did you have to do, did you have to fire like a rifle or anything like that or is just like PT?

BARBEE: PT, the only gun I ever fired was a 50 caliber machine gun. No wait a minute, I told a story. They did make a skeet, trap, things like that, to learn to lead planes and everything.

INTERVIEWER: I interviewed another veteran who said that they spent, that was like a month or so learning how to lead and shoot.

BARBEE: Right, right, and that was quite a thing. We had a week in gunnery training where they had a jeep set up with 2x4s holding a big sheet like thing on a track. It go around, I believe it was 200 yards and 500 yards and you had to shoot at that thing.

INTERVIEWER: You keep practicing until you were proficient at it?

BARBEE: Well, it was kinda funny. What we'd do, we wouldn't shoot at the sheet, we'd shoot at the 2x4s cause every time you'd shoot the 2x4s, they had to stop and put another one on so you would get to rest a while (laughter). We'd shoot the 2x4s.

INTERVIEWER: That was a good idea. Could you maybe talk a little bit about the camaraderie between you and your crew and you know, how you guys eased the tension and the stress and deal with the situations you were in and just the memories you have of your fellow men.

BARBEE: Well if you did something to one of us, you did it to all of us. I mean it was, the only thing, our bombardier was a little bit overbearing. Our copilot was a great big guy. He was 6'6" and I don't know, he was from Missouri and he was a redneck and this bombardier kept digging at him and digging at him so one time Slim just reached and got him and told him what he'd do to him if he didn't shut up so he shut up (laughter). I know old Slim used to come by the barracks and make me go to church with him. He's quite a guy. He stayed in the service. He's out in New Mexico now. I believe he's a Brigadier General. But he kept flying and he flew big _____ all around the world, but I haven't seen him since we finished. He didn't come to the only reunion I ever went to and he didn't, let's see what year was it, I don't remember, the 50th anniversary of the B24, they had a big to-do in Fort Worth, Texas, and we went out there. He was supposed to come, but he never did come. But he was quite a character. I heard that he had a back operation about a year ago, but we don't stay in touch anymore. I don't know, we just drifted apart.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have reunions every year?

BARBEE: No. The first reunion they had, I was working at Fieldcrest and they sent me to Switzerland. We were buying some equipment from Switzerland and so I missed that one, but I went to the next one and as far as I can remember, they may have had one more, but I didn't go to it. I went to the one they had in Atlanta, but it wasn't a great big thing and let's see now...the navigators did, the bombardiers did, the tail gunners did, the ball gunners did, the turret-gunners did. In other words, half of the crew is gone and so one of the waist-gunners has never been to anything. In fact, I was in Newark one time on business with a company and I called the tail gunner, he lived in Newark, and invited him out to dinner and he said, well how bout George, he said he's a bartender in Yonkers. I said call him, he wouldn't come, I don't know. But tail gunner and we had a good time, he was quite a character. He changed his name. While he was in crew, he was Quasnicia and after he got back, after the war, he changed it to Kender. I got a letter when he died. He's been dead several years. They're getting away.

INTERVIEWER: That's pretty much the interview and I really appreciate your time and I'm honored to be able to speak with you and for our young people that will see the video in the future and be able to learn more about the B24 Liberator and the missions that I'm going to share with them and get in the library, I think they're going to learn a lot about the freedoms they have. But if you want to share anything about, you know, if you had to do it over again, would you do it?

BARBEE: Absolutely.

INTERVIEWER: Just what you feel about the service and what young people can learn from your generation.

BARBEE: Well I think they are making a big mistake of women in combat. I do not, I do not believe they should do that because when they're captured, there's going to be trouble and they will be captured. I think that the, well, I don't know, they're not dedicated like they once were, I don't think they are. I know the guys in Kosovo and the ones that went to Somalia and all that, it's rough, but it doesn't compare with the problems that the ground soldiers had. Now in the Air Force, if you got back, you had good food, you had good beer. The guys on the ground didn't have that. Now if you didn't get back, that was the name of the game. I believe there were 700 and some out of our little group killed. I just wish that people could be more patriotic than they are now. I saw a guy in Greensboro with a flag on the seat of his pants and it was all I could do to keep my hands off him. I don't go for that. A lot of people died for that flag and I don't want to see anybody desecrate it. I had two brothers that were in the war. One of my brothers was an armed guard on a merchant ship and he went to Russia and that's where they lost about half of the ships that went there and he made it back, but he's dead now. Two of my other brothers, one of them was with the occupation forces and well both of them were I guess. So I wish people as a whole, it's not just the service, but everybody, I wish they had loved this country like I have. I don't regret one minute and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

INTERVIEWER: I'm glad that we have Americans like you sir and I just thank you again, Mr. Barbee, for participating in this project and I think it's really going to be a wonderful addition to it.

BARBEE: If it'll help one person, it's worth it. I know this is disjointed, it's jumping back and forth, but that's the way my mind goes now.

INTERVIEWER: I thank you a lot and I'm going to really make sure that they have a lot of good information to go along with this so they can look at, learn more about your plane and your crews and I'm going to make sure that these books are referenced so that they can go to the library and be able to check them out and read more about it.

BARBEE: Well there's a lot of news here, this skywriting thing. My pilot wrote this about the Swedish deal and they, it was a great thing I think. We tried to get him to Finland and Russia, but when the Russians shot the plane down, that stopped. We said if we can't trust them, to not shoot our planes down, we don't want to go over there and we didn't. We didn't lose but two airplanes and this went on for over a year. We lost one that we never knew exactly what happened to it. We lost one crew and a plane. Of course the one the Russians shot down, the pilot stayed with the plane until everybody else got out and then it was too late for him and so he got killed.

INTERVIEWER: Well that's all the questions I have and I thank you once again, sir.

BARBEE: Well I hope it helps somebody.