Personal Stories Of WWII… An Unusual Blood Drive

Issue 43.12

My crew number was 5383 and I was in Robert Parnell’s crew, and we were part of the 351^st Bomb Group. During World War 2 the Eighth Air Force was the thrust of the air war against Hitler’s Germany and was made up of about 36 bomber groups plus fighter groups. Each group was made up of four squadrons each with twelve bombers and twelve crews plus spares or sometimes less than twelve. These were four engined B-l7’s and B-24’s.Each put up three squadrons for a mission with the fourth standing down. This gave the standing down crews time to do personal things The main reason for flying only three squadrons at a time was that very occasionally every plane sent out by a group had been shot down. While I was flying my missions, the Bloody Hundredth group lost all thirty six bombers that were sent out on one mission. The one surviving squadron was the nucleus on which to rebuild the group. On very occasional times, all four squadrons flew on what was called maximum efforts. When a mission was completed, returning bombers with wounded crewmen fired red flares so they had priority to land first. After each mission there at the end of the runway are lined up the inevitable meat wagons. After that, bombers without battle damage landed next. Last to land were battle damaged bombers so as not to mess up the runway for the rest. It takes time for all 36 bombers to get safely on the ground in the English weather and the short daylight time of winter. More often than not, we landed after dark because of the short days of winter. Landing after dark doubles the difficulties and danger. Other bomber groups in the area are also getting their planes down. Once when my crew was standing down and not flying that day, a collision and explosion happened in the fog nearly above me where I was standing. Not many identifiable parts fell to the ground but an engine hit the ground about fifty feet from me. One evening when we of the 508^th squadron stood down for that day’s mission, some of us decided to go to the metal hut which was the base theatre to watch a movie. Half way through the movie, it was stopped. A medic Sergeant jumped up on the stage and said the following. “The mission came in and with eight wounded and we need eight pints of blood. As you know we get blood plasma from the states but not whole blood”. He then gave out a list of what type and how many he needed. He called out “Corporal, you haven’t given blood for some time so how about you?” This went on for some time and then he said that the movie wouldn’t resume until he had enough donors. All service people always know what blood type they have because it is printed on their dog tags.

He got the rest of the donors and the movie resumed. Combat flyers were not permitted to give blood because they may need that blood the next day. That medic knew just about every one of the ground pounder’s (combat flyer’s term for non flying personnel) blood type and their rate of donation. When a day’s mission returns, then the ground pounder’s work begins. They work all through the night to fix battle damage, fill planes with gasoline, bombs, ammunition oxygen patch holes and what ever needs to be done and they are the base blood supply, All this has to be done before the next mission takes off when the flare from the control tower signals start engines at about six hundred hours in the morning.

Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.