More on “ NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK”

SQUARE J BULLETIN (Fall Edition)

I am Howard L. Johnson, I was the radio operator on Square J 225.

It was one of those seldom sunny days in Framlingham. All of the enlisted men in our Crew #75, Sgt.Tommy Walsh (TG) ,Jimmy Whitling (WG), S\Sgt.Donald (“Stompie”) Detwiler (BTG), T\Sgt.Charlie Turner (TT) and myself ate noon chow early.

It was such a great day, we decided we should do something special to relax. Someone suggested that we go shoot skeet for a while. Sounded good, so off we went to the supply sergeant to pick up two skeet guns, clay pigeons and several boxes of shells. As I recall, it was quite a hike to the skeet range but we arrived with all our gear, ready to go!

We always had some pretty fierce competition. The rules were set and we started to shoot. We became more involved with shells in the boxes than the hands on the clock. When we finally realized the time, we had missed ground school (aircraft recognition). We felt we couldn’t walk into class without causing a problem so we hoped that by some strange quirk of fate, we might not be missed. Needless to say, this did not happen.

The next day someone from our hut was in headquarters. He overheard a sergeant tell Col. Moller that the enlisted men on the Kotta crew had missed ground school. As you can well imagine, the Colonel was not happy. He “mentioned” that he could and would remove several stripes.

When our buddy returned to our hut with the news he had overheard, we were all sitting on our bunks in a rather dejected mood. In order to clear the air, I said, ”Ah, don’t worry guys, we’ll probably get shot down before he gets them.”

A few days later, April 7th, we were a happy crew. We were chosen to fly an extra mission carrying the propaganda bundles riding high atop the group. Not much chance of blowing up or getting hit by flak. We did, however, forget about the fighters!

A lone ME262 made one pass. We “recognized” him but our guns were far too slow to get a shot at him. He got our #4 engine and #3 fuel tank.

After a few days on the ground, we had walked over 20 miles this particular day. The Germans enclosed about 23 men from several countries with a single barbed wire and a manned machine gun on each corner. “Touch the wire and you are dead”.

S/Sgt. Detwiler and I huddled together on the ground. We covered ourselves with our two blankets hoping to keep somewhat warm. Just as I was about to doze off the Sgt. turned and said, “Howie, you smart…, you were right, the Colonel isn’t going to get our stripes down here!”

Howard L. Johnson