I was in the army, and in those days, everything was under the army. It wasn’t like it is today, separate. I went in and I went down to California to take basic; and then I went to Wichita Falls, TX for more basic training and then I located to Yuma, Arizona. It was a brand new base and I was shipped there, and I was in Arizona for two years. And I hated it. My commanding officer was out of Pendleton, Oregon, and he asked me one time, he said to me, “You don’t like it here.”
And I said, “No, I don’t.”
And he said, “Would you like to get out of here?” And I said,
“Absolutely would,” I said “Anything - I don’t care what it is.”
The first thing that came up was gunnery school in Las Vegas and he said “Do you want to go there?” and I said absolutely. And I went to gunnery school, but I had been in Arizona two years. I went to several schools in the service. I went up to New York to go to school for inline engine school.
Most people had maybe, say, four qualifications. I had seven; I went to every school they had because I wanted to get out of Arizona. So that’s why I went. But that’s about it and when I went from gunnery school, I was in charge of thirteen guys, and when we left Las Vegas, the first place train stopped was Green River, Wyoming, and I don’t know why, but some (men) left; they just left, and when I got to North Carolina, I didn’t have anybody. I had started out with thirteen men, and when I handed this packet to this major (in North Carolina), he looked at it, turned it over and he says, “Thirteen men, where are the others?” and I said “I don’t know, they all left me.” And he said, “They went AWL?” And I said, “that’s right, and it’s just me and a kid from Philadelphia.” We were the only two. And the last kid that came in [brought in later], when I left to go to Miami, he was from Texas, a great big tall kid. They had him in chains, and he said ‘Swede, I made it’ and we all laughed. But he was in the guardhouse; he wasn’t going to go anywhere.
Lloyd Larson
(Back, Center)
Arizona
I went to training there in Greensborough, North Carolina, to go overseas and I didn’t know at the time where I was going or what I was going to be. But anyway then I went to Miami, Florida. And we hit there just on the end of a hurricane, so we set there for about three or four days before we flew out of there to North Africa; we went to Casablanca, and then to Cairo, Egypt. We decided to stay there about three or four days, but the only way we could do it was to redline our airplane. In other words, we couldn’t fly if the thing was redlined. So they had to fix it, but we were there for about a week in Cairo, Egypt.
And we saw everything; we went everyplace. There was a museum there where they had these relics from the crusades, and they had a big museum there in Cairo, and they had everything in there, and it was wonderful. And we went out to the pyramids and had a camel race - it was real nice.
My rank, (when I got out of gunnery school), was a corporal. They made you one grade above what you had; I had been a private first class. They raised me to a corporal, and then they put me in charge of those thirteen guys that left me.
So we stopped at Casablanca and then went over to Egypt and up through the Holy Land, and we stopped there in Aiden and then flew on over to India, and that’s when I knew I was in the First Air Commandos, because they had chosen me because I had many qualifications; I had gone to too many schools, I was well qualified, and that’s what they wanted; they wanted somebody that had gone to at least three or four AM schools, and I had gone to six or seven. But anyway, (I didn’t know that I was gonna fly, I really didn’t) when I got there, they said, “Well, we’re going to bring in some B-25’s. Do you want to fly?” and I said yes, I sure did. They said “Well, you went to gunnery school,” and I said “Yep.” They said “Do you know anything about the airplane?” and I said absolutely; I had worked a long time on the B-25.
So like I said, they asked me “Do you want to fly?” And I said, “You bet.” And Captain Merchant [the pilot] asked me, he said, “Do you want to go home?” and I said, “Sure.” And he said, well, he said, “I’m not one of these guys that like to show off,” he said, “I fly, because I want to go home.” But I flew one mission with a captain Wagner, and he had seen Doolittle’s planes down there in Florida flying so low they would cut the grass, and he saw that, so that only time he flew on my airplane, we had a great big hump in our field, and we were coming in, and he was below that hump, and when he pulled up, I saw that he had lost air, and so he was kicking the rudders and the ailerons trying to get control, and finally he got control, and we circled around and lived. And so when we got down on the field, I said to him, I said “Major, I don’t want to fly with you again.” I said, “I don’t want you on my airplane, because,” I said, “We came pretty close to auguring in, and there was no need in it. You wanted to show somebody that you could fly low enough so that you could cut some grass, but when you pulled up, you lost air.”
You see, when you pull up real steep, you lose your airflow over the wings, and the ailerons and the elevators, that control the plane, and you lose all that, so you’re lucky if you get them back. And we did, but I told him I didn’t want to fly with him again, ever. And I flew with that Major Sineski and he was real nice. I flew with him a couple, three times.
I think altogether there were probably two distinct sections in Burma that we flew to. We always flew at night, when there was a full moon, and we flew into Burma; we were helping the British; they had gone clear up the full length of Burma, they [had] chased the Japanese up there, and one of our missions was to bring supplies to Wingate, who got caught with the Japanese, and we had to fly some supplies into him, anyway there was probably three or four, I think three distinct battle divisions in Burma at that time, and we took place in all three. Our airplane, the one I flew on, we knocked out four railroad engines - you could see ‘em – they were old engines with the firebox, you know – they tried to hide them among the trees, so we couldn’t see them. But we headed down the railroad tracks, so we could see them.
What Captain Merchant would do; we would fly one mission down the river, or down the road or down the railroad and we flew down the railroad three or four times. But anyway we got these railroad engines, because they tried to hide in among the trees along the railroad track, but we headed down the railroad tracks. And what the Captain would do, (Captain Merchant was our pilot), he’d swing completely around and go right straight down the railroad and you could see the engine sitting there and he’d say to me, “Load me one.” And I’d load up; we had a seventy-five millimeter cannon in the nose of that thing, and whenever he wanted it, he’d say ‘load me one’ and when I loaded it up, I’d touch him on the shoulder and he’d know it was loaded, and he’d fire that thing, and it would just blow that engine completely up.
One time, there was a troop train in the station, and we caught that one, and strafed that station for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The airplane had two fifty millimeter machine guns along the side of the ship [airplane] and along the front of the ship, there was a seventy-five millimeter cannon. This British Major-General that we were going to fly down to Rangoon to look at the terrain looked at that cannon field piece and when we were coming back, he said to Captain Merchant, “Can I see you fire that cannon?” and he [Captain Merchant] said “Sure.” And he said to me, “Load me one.” And so I did, and I tapped him on the shoulder. And he leveled that plane off; he had a sight on the windshield, and there was a bull’s eye, and he was looking, and I knew damn well what he was gonna do. And there was a bigota, a big one, and he hit the top of it, and it just lifted up and bang. And the general, Slim was his name, said, “Oh my, that was something, wasn’t it?” Well, the shell was about that long (1 ½ feet). I had to load it; we had a rack of ‘em above [the gun]. I had to stand to one side because it had a twenty-six inch recoil; bang, bang, and it’d eject that shell, and I’d throw another one in there, and tap him [Captain Merchant] on the shoulder. The most we could fire was four rounds in 2,000 yards. One night we’d shot six or seven, and when we got home, I noticed that there was hydraulic fluid all over the front of the airplane. Firing that gun had loosened all of the fittings in the nose. I liked it [being in the nose], because I could see it too, just as well as they [the pilots] could. I kind of enjoyed it, when we were strafing a train or something because he’d [Captain Merchant] put that airplane up on one side so Smitty [the waist-gunner] and I could shoot at ‘em. He did that for us.
So anyway when you fired that thing, it would blow up everything. When we’d go down the tracks - of course, they were shooting back at us too; that’s another thing – you know – every time we went someplace, unbeknownst to us, there would be somebody shooting at us. One night we were going down the river, and we looked over on our right and going north on us was an airplane. We didn’t know who it was, ‘cause it wasn’t ours, and we wondered who it was that was out there in the middle of the night going north; we were going south, and everybody saw it, and everybody on the ship said, “did you see that?” and everybody said, “yeah who was that?” and well - we didn’t know. It was somebody; it wasn’t ours, cause we only put out three airplanes at a time. (One would go down the road, one would go down the river, and one would go down the railroad tracks). Three ‘25’s would go out at one time. I flew thirty-six missions, and I think I flew the most of any of ‘em.
The only time we flew in the daytime, our commanding officer, Gaty, Colonel Gaty, had been flying a P-51 down further south, and somebody said that he headed east, and they didn’t know why he headed east; we went out to look for him [in the daytime], but we couldn’t find him. We didn’t know where he was, and he probably didn’t know either. He might have gotten hit. We got hit too. They always ask you – were you scared? Well, you don’t have time to be scared, really. You think about it - things are happening so quick, you don’t have time. When we got hit, and [the shell] knocked out one engine, we couldn’t get home, because we had to get over a range of mountains to Chittagong, where our base was. India comes around the Bay of Bengal, and Chittagong sits right out of the far side, and that’s where we flew out of; Chittagong. Our base was out of India, Asansol, India, but we had a base in Chittagong.
Anyway we couldn’t make it over the hill, that’s all there was to it. We couldn’t climb; we only had one engine. So he [Captain Merchant] went north as far as he could, and when he finally said, ‘well, we got to bail out,’ he talked to the tail gunner first, Baker, and he said, ‘you’re first’ so Baker bailed out, and then Smitty, the waist-gunner and radio-operator, and then I was the third to go out. I had a chest pack on me, I didn’t have a backpack, I had a chest pack, and when those shrouds lines go up, you have to protect yourself, else they’d play havoc with you.
We bailed out and it just so happened that I come pretty close to a road, and I walked at night and then I hid during the day. I hid in the brush; I didn’t know how far [I was]; there was Japanese all around us, or I thought they were. So anyway, I walked at night, and hid in the daytime. One day, [after] about three or four days, I heard people talking, and I listened, and I knew it wasn’t Japanese and it sounded kinda familiar. It was British, coming down the road, so I stepped out into the road and I said “American.” And when they got up to me close enough, I said, “Call my base at Asansol and tell them to send an L-5 for me,” which they did, and I flew home.
What I was scared of, after five days, they classify you as being lost, and I didn’t want my mother to find out, so anyway, it wasn’t five days that I was gone, it was about four days. So they came and got me, and flew back to the base, and we got another B-25 and started flying again. Every one of the guys on my plane got back. I never met up with any of them; they were strung out all over. As a matter of fact, Captain Merchant, he fell in the river and got picked up by a san-pan, a Burmese guy, so consequently, he wouldn’t’ let us shoot at those san-pans, even though they were hauling supplies up to the Japanese, he still wouldn’t let us shoot at them; he’d say “nope.”
But anyway, we all got back, then we all got another airplane. They had seven; and we started flying again. Like I said, I went thirty-six missions. I got an air medal; I think it was for flying 30 missions. And if I’d a flown fifty, I’d have gotten another air medal and a distinguished flying cross. But I didn’t get that. But when we got all through flying missions into Burma, when the Japanese got pushed clear down south as far as they could go (to Rangoon), we quit flying missions. Then I flew on what they called a Norseman, it was a high wing monoplane, and its job was hauling casualties. That’s what I did then for about three or four months. We could put three stretchers, and maybe two or three sitters in the airplane. And we flew all day long hauling casualties.
One time, they had a bunch of West Africans the British did, in their outfit. Anyway, this one was sitting by this tree, and he had his hand like this [tucked against his side]. And I went over to him, and I could see that he had been wounded. But they had a loincloth on, so they didn’t bleed very much, but it was bleeding. And I said to the British officer that was putting these casualties on our ship, “There’s this West African sitting right over there, and he’s got a hole in his stomach.” And he said “Oh really?” and I said “Yeah, get him over here and put him on.” So he did, and we hauled him to the base, to the hospital, and that’s what we did all day long. There was a big British base, a big army base that the British had, it was close to Mandalay, so that’s where we flew. I don’t know how many times I flew on that ship, and of course, that didn’t count as far as my flying [missions] and so forth; it just gave me more experience.
Like I said, we flew several day missions, but [that was when] we were looking for our commanding officer [Colonel Gaty]; the rest of the time we all flew by moonlight, by the full moon, so we flew every month. That moon was full enough for maybe two weeks, and we’d fly every night. We’d go down the river, or we’d down the road; one of us would go down the river; we’d rotate. There weren’t too many guys who wanted to fly. See like I said, we had seven B-25’s, but only three ever flew at one time. They always had pilots and co-pilots, but not engineers, so I flew all the time. I was an engineer; well I was a top gunner. What they did was they would get different pilots and co-pilots; Smitty, the waist-gunner and Baker, the tail-gunner, maybe they wouldn’t fly with me every mission. So, like I said, I flew probably more than [most]; well, actually, this kid from California, Wilke, he and I were together, and he and I were the ones that went every time, because he was an engineer too, and he and I flew just about all the time.
A lot of guys just didn’t want to fly; they maybe wanted to sit out on a mission or two, but the pilot or co-pilot, they’d always sit out. But if somebody was on my airplane, we would fly all the time, but some of those airplanes never flew hardly any, cause they didn’t have hardly enough crew, so I would always have a pilot and co-pilot that wanted to go with me on my ship; I don’t know whether it was me, or the ship that I was on. So I didn’t have Captain Merchant and Mackay (the co-pilot) all of the time; I had them most of the time, but not all of the time. (So I flew with Sineski and Wagner and others).
We had a fighter pilot; it’s funny. You take a fighter pilot, and he wants to be a bomber pilot. And a bomber pilot, he wants to be a fighter pilot. So consequently, we let a fighter pilot take our ship up one time, and Captain Merchant told him, “When you come in for the landing, don’t touch the brakes, leave the brakes alone. Just go right straight down the runway.” Well, he didn’t do it. When he hit and was going along, he touched the brakes, and we went wooosh, right off of the runway and over the top of a big pile of rocks; tore the underside of that airplane all to hell. And well, that was the end of that airplane, and then we got another one, but when we got down and done and everything, Captain Merchant said to him, “I told you,” he said, “Don’t touch the brakes.” Because what they did, they [the brakes] could be a little uneven, and if you touched one harder, it [the plane] would go off that way, and so that’s exactly what it did – went right off over the pile of rocks.
So anyway, like I said, over there, I flew thirty-six missions and two, maybe three were daylight, and the rest were night. I flew all the time if I could. They liked it cause I would fly all the time. They didn’t have to ask me, they would just say, “We’re gonna go.”
It was alright (over there). Once in a while you’d run into someplace where somebody was shooting at you. Well - it’s pretty hard to hit anything going, say, about 200 miles an hour. But that one time they did, they hit an engine and knocked it out, and when that happened, we could maintain our altitude, but we couldn’t go home to our base (we had to go over 15,000 feet to get there). We couldn’t get over those mountains just off of the coast of India. We couldn’t get over there to go home, so we had to bail out. Like I said, it was eerie as far as I was concerned, because I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do or anything. I hid in the daytime and walked at night. It was moonlight, so I could see everything. Walking up the road, I could see everything. When I heard those voices, I thought Oh, Boy. But when they were closer, I knew they weren’t Japanese. I had bailed behind enemy lines, although I don’t know how far [away] the Japanese were at that time, because the British were coming down and fighting everywhere.
At one time, the Japanese had pushed everybody clear out of Burma, in fact, they were just about to go into India. And that’s when we [the U.S.] came in, that’s why the 1st Air Commando Group was formed. So anyway, then the British and the Chinese and the Indians and the Gurkhas from the Himalayas, they pushed the Japanese down, clear down into Rangoon, which was right at the end of the way in Burma, and the Japanese left and went through Thailand and home. I say British -everything was British, but they had West Africans, they had Gurkhas, they had Indians from India, but the British were their officers. Their [the British] army was a bunch of people from all over the world, and that’s what they did. Those West Africans were mean. They scared the stuffin’ out of me one time; they come crawling through some grass; I was on top of the airplane, and I looked over, and they came through there; I don’t know how many there were, there was quite a few of them. They were barefooted; they had two pair of paratrooper boots slung over their shoulder, but they never wore shoes, they had leggings, but bare feet, and they were huge, they were big. And their teeth were filed, like sharks’ teeth, and they had tattoos all over them. But they were big, I mean they were all over 6’6, 6’5, somewhere in there, but they were huge, big men. And they loved to fight, and the Japanese were scared of ‘em; they had to be, because if they [the West Africans] ever caught them, they showed no mercy whatsoever; they killed them, and loved to kill them. That’s what they said, you know.
They [the British] told those West Africans that they would be the first ones into Rangoon. ‘You’re going to be the first ones into Rangoon, you’ll get everything, you know, you can have it, it’ll be yours.’ And so that’s why they fought. And, oh, they were mean. Like I said, they were nice, but they were mean looking, and mean fighters, they were.
So anyway, that’s about what took place. We flew just about every full moon, and we flew two or three missions looking for our commanding officer. We flew on Christmas; it didn’t make any difference when. When somebody says, ‘did you have turkey on Christmas?’ Well, yeah, we had turkey; it was canned. So it was all right; it was better than nothin’. But an interesting thing; I used to go into the mess tent, you know, and get my food. I’d get two pieces of bread and I’d put marmalade on it (what they called butter was just like axle grease, it was no good, so I never put that on my bread, I put marmalade on it). One time, I didn’t put anything on my bread, and I was sitting there, and this great big kid from Iowa, Snider was his name, I’ll never forget him. I was sitting there picking stuff out of the bread, and he said, “What’s the matter, Swede?” and I said, “Well, did you see this?” I said, “There’s bugs, all over in the bread.” And he said, “Yeah, did you ever watch them make it?” and I said, “No.” and he says, “Well, the British make it; they’re down the road about twenty miles. You wanna go down there and watch ‘em?” and I said, “Sure.” We went down there and watched them. They had a great big squadron tent; it was huge, but up in the middle of it was a big lantern and you can imagine, how over there, there’s something flying or crawling all over the place. Now the bakers, there was this great big gas lantern up there and they were kneading the bread, you know, and those bugs were falling down in it, and they just kneaded it and made the loaves out of it. It was full of little bugs, and it took me about a week till I went back eating bread again. And that Snider, he said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t you ever see that?” And I said, “No. I always put marmalade on it, so I didn’t pay much attention.”
But anyway, it wasn’t that bad. Everybody says, was it really that bad? But no, it wasn’t that bad. Sure, once in a while, something would happen, but to be real frank, it wasn’t really that bad over there. In fact, I liked it better overseas than I did in the States. Well, it was just too tough; they had too many regulations and stuff. It isn’t like it wasn’t overseas; you’d do as you damn well pleased. You could dress how you wanted to, or you know, do anything, but you couldn’t in the States; you had to be a soldier, and over there, why they didn’t care. Like I said, I wore a pair of shorts, and shoes, and maybe a shirt and a cap but that’s about all, you know. When I was in the States, I wasn’t a very good soldier, I really wasn’t. You can say, you know “Maybe you’re thinking that, but maybe you were,” but I say, no I wasn’t, I wasn’t a very good soldier. I told that major, Hertz, was his name; (he was out of Pendleton) I told him, “Don’t turn me loose; I won’t come back.” And he said, “You really mean it.” And I said, “Yes I do.” And he said “You wanna get out of here, don’t you.” And I said, “Absolutely. I’ll go anyplace, and do anything, but I don’t like Arizona.” I was there when they formed the base, and I was there two years, and that was more than I could bear; so anyway, I didn’t like it.
When we were done flying missions into Burma, Major Sineski was our operations officer, and I said to him, “I want to fly; there’s an A-20 airplane outfit in China; I want to go there.” He said, “Okay, when an opening comes, I’ll send you over there.” So when the war was over, why he come up to me and says, “Oh by the way, Swede,” he said, “your transfer came through.” And I said, “What transfer?” and he said, “To go to China with that A-20 outfit.” And I said, “No, no, major, I’m going home.” Well, he said, “Well, I was just foolin’ with you, nothing came through on it, but you could if you wanted to.” And I said, “No, I’m going to go home.”
I had flown with our colonel, Colonel Hall was his name, he was a West-Pointer, so after the war, why, we fixed up a B-25 after I got through with flying casualties, I was his engineer, and I flew with him, and so when the war was over, he said, “Do you want to stay with me?” He said, “We’ll fly all over, we’ll go over to Japan,” and so forth, and I said “Well, I don’t know Colonel; I think I’ll go home.” And he said, “Well, I don’t blame you. Do you want to fly home?” And I said, “No, I flew over – I think I’ll take a boat home,” I don’t know why I did – but I did, and it was a big tub that had 5,000 guys on it. Henry J’s made these freighters, or whatever you want to call them; they were just tubs. It took 22 days to get home, and we went through the Mediterranean, and when we hit the Atlantic, we hit the tail end of a hurricane. There was a Swedish freighter breaking up; we could see him out there, but we didn’t go to him; the Coast Guard went out of Spain and went after him, to help him. But anyway, we hit the tail end of that hurricane, and all they were doing was just barely enough speed; those waves were higher than the boat, and everybody was sick. I stood fire watch about the third hall down, and one time I was sitting there, they had a little-bitty bulb, and I was sitting there reading a book, and I was reading and I was going like this (chin tucked), and I thought, I’d better go upstairs. I went upstairs to get some air, then I had to go back down, but I felt like I was getting seasick. But [otherwise] it never bothered me to have that ship rock like that. And I stood up there on the deck, and the bow would go down, and all you’d see was ocean, and it’d go back up again, and boom! So anyway, in all of the heads – the bathrooms – they were on the forward end of the ship, so you couldn’t go to the head, ‘cause everybody was there; they were sick; they were laying in them. And they’d say “What’d you have for breakfast, Swede?” and I’d say, “Oh, nothing but greasy pork,” (There weren’t too many guys going to breakfast down there, you know). But it didn’t bother me at all to go on that ship on the rough seas; I thought it was all right. Nothing really bothered me.
When I started out, I had what they called a B-4 bag; it was just a big bag, and all I had in there was shirts and pants and stuff, and as it [a piece of clothing] got dirty, I threw it overboard coming to the United States; I wouldn’t wash it or do anything. When I got to Camp Kelmer, New Jersey this guy said, “Well, where’s your gear?” And I said, “Over there someplace, I don’t know where it is; it’s over in India someplace.” And he said, “Do you want us to issue you some new gear?” and I said “No, no. I don’t want anymore. I’m going home. I’m through.” (And the same thing [happened] when I got to Fort Lewis). And I said to the guy, “Which is the fastest? To get a discharge, or to go on a 30 or 60 day leave?” and he said, “A leave. It’s just a matter of getting it.” And I said, “Give it to me. I’m gonna go home.” And he said okay.
When I got home, I was there for about a month when I got a letter that said I had to go to Santa Ana California to get discharged. And there was a brigadier general, and he said to me, (I didn’t have any insignias or anything on me), and he said, “You’re a sergeant?” and I said, “Yessir.” And he said, “How do you like it here?” and I said, “If you’d a started this four years ago,” I said, “I’d probably still be in because the food is good and the place is wonderful.” And he said, “You don’t want to re-up?” and I said, “No I sure don’t. I’m all through.” And he said, “Do you want some gear?” They’d give me two barracks bags full of stuff. And I said, “No. I don’t want any of it.” And so what I had on, that’s all I took with me. So anyway, they thought it was funny I didn’t want my army gear, but I wasn’t going to wear it. I had a lot of clothes at home, you know, and I wasn’t going to wear no army stuff. When I got my air medal while I was down there at Oregon State, these guys that I knew, they came out of the service, Bob Barney, and a few other guys, they said, “Why don’t you have the guys from ROTC fall out ‘n go in review when they give you this air medal?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t want that. I’ve got the medal; that’s it.” I didn’t want any of that stuff; I just wanted to be left alone. If the war hadn’t been over, I know I wouldn’t have gone home. I would have gone to China or something.
Lloyd Larson
(Far Left)
Lloyd Larson enlisted at the age of twenty in December of 1945 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He took basic training in Yuma, Arizona before being shipped out to Burma, where he was a bombardier in the 1st Air Commandos Group, an all-American group under British command in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War Two. Larson was a top gunner and an engineer in a B-25 bomber. This is his story.
Lloyd Larson was born in Iowan, Washington, and lived in Prineville, Oregon when he was enlisted. After the war, Larson continued his education at Oregon State and was a sales manager for Blue Lumber Mills at John Day. Other than one year spent working for Boeing on B-52’s, Larson remained in lumber sales. He married in 1949 and had ten children; five boys and five girls. Today he lives in Burns, Oregon.
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