I was sweating like a bull. I was just shaking,
but I was the happiest guy in the world. I'm a fighter pilot!
But you come along and you're strafing a train,
and sometimes that thing blows up in your face, and you go through the flame. Whoa!
Hey everyone, I'm Josh from Memoirs of World War II, and real quick before we get into our
veteran's story, I wanted to tell you about who we are and how you can help with this project.
Memoirs of World War II is an organization run by myself and my family. We travel all over,
interviewing the last living Veterans of the Second World War and sharing their
stories in this series to ensure that their service and this important history
is never forgotten. We are funded by donations from people like you,
both through Patreon where you can choose what dollar amount you'd like to give,
and through our website. So follow the links in the description below and you can be part
of preserving this history. Thank you for your support, and now on to our veteran's story.
By
1941, the second world war had engulfed much of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
and though the United States had vowed to refrain from involvement in the conflict,
young Jack Hallett had a sinking feeling that the war would soon come to him.
When I was in high school we knew the war was going to come and we said we
weren't going to serve. We're going to run like hell. I don't know where we thought
we were going to go. But then when Pearl Harbor happened, all of my friends and I
enlisted. And I went in the day after Pearl Harbor and enlisted as an aviation cadet.
There was a friend of my dad's, we called him Uncle Jake - Percival Dexter Jacobs - and he
flew in World War One. And he always said to me, "If there's ever a war,
fly." And that's all I ever dreamed about. I dreamed of it. I dreamed of being a fighter pilot.
We got down to Maxwell Field, and there at Maxwell they decided at that point whether you're going to
be a pilot, navigator, or bombardier. Because of my inability to be completely, really steady, that
took me out of the bombardier. And because I was pretty good at math, but I'm not really excellent
at math, that took me out of the navigator class. So now I'm a pilot, which is what I wanted.
I went to Lafayette, Louisiana, and we went in PT-17 Stearmans, which is a biplane.
I was really lousy in that airplane. But my instructor saved me from being washed
out. And then we went from there to Craig Field, Selma, Alabama in AT-6's. I had no
problem with that airplane. Graduation day came, which is January the 14th,
1943, when we all raised our right hand, said "I do", and now we're suddenly second lieutenants.
So we go down to the flight line and my instructor, Lieutenant Guerrero, says,
"Hallett, you're going to fly the P-40 today." And I said. "I'm going to do what?" And he said,
"You're going to fly the P-40." And I figured, "Okay, but this is the day I die."
Here I just got my wings and commissioned and I'm gonna die in the P-40. So anyway, I flew the thing
and I had my right leg straight out because of the torque in the thing. Full right rudder. Taxiing it
was like taxiing the Empire State Building with that nose sticking way out there. I was supposed
to make my first turn at 500 feet. I think I probably was closer to 5,000 feet before
I dared let go of the thing. And I went up and did some air work, finally got time to come back
and I overshot the runway. And I was smart enough not to pull it in, but I made a go-around. Finally
got the thing on the ground. It was December the 14th... it's cold... I was sweating like a bull.
I was just shaking, but I was the happiest guy in the world. I've flown a P-40. I'm a fighter pilot!
Finally, orders came through for P-38's. They needed
four or five guys, and that's exactly what I wanted.
In May of 1944, Jack was deployed to the United Kingdom and began flying missions across the
English Channel to prepare the way for an upcoming Allied invasion of Western Europe,
an event that would become one of the greatest turning points in the War.
I was assigned to the 9th Air Force. I flew a few missions before the invasion - armed
reconnaissance, stuff like that. Shooting up trains and convoys.
Then flew the invasion.
You know, at the time you don't think about it as being historical.
You're busy with what you're supposed to do.
I remember looking down, figuring, "My gosh! There's so damn many ships!" And
you look down and watch these guys landing and say, "Would I have the guts to do what they're
doing?" Darn, those guys have courage! And you're thankful that you're in an airplane.
But, my gosh! Where do they find the guts to do that? I don't know. Look at the number of
people... the courage they have to do that sort of thing. It just amazes me. And they did it!
After the invasion, we moved across to the continent,
and then we moved with the troops. As they moved, so did we.
Some of the missions stood out. Getting shot at was no fun. One of the times I was leading - I
finally got to lead. I looked down and I saw a convoy in the woods, and I said, "Oh boy a perfect
curve of pursuit! We're gonna go down and knock every damn one of them out. I was in the P-38.
And I strafed, and like an idiot I pulled up because nobody is shooting me until I pulled up.
And that's what they were waiting for, a dumbbell like me. And they shot my right engine out.
Something came through the canopy and it hit my goggles and tore the goggles off,
and I saw red. And I guess I grabbed the mic button at the time and said "Judas Priest!",
or whatever I said. "I've been wounded!" I said, "Jesus Christ!" and it went over the air.
So, my wingman came over, "You okay?" And like a hero, "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm okay." And ground
control picked me up, "Can you make it back behind the lines?" "Yeah, I can make it."
So I get back home. But they were waiting for me, thinking I was a wounded hero.
So they pulled me out of it, the doc came over and said, "Where are you wounded?"
And I said, "My forehead." And he said, "I cut myself worse than that shaving this morning." I
had a little hairline scratch across my forehead. What I had, was I busted some blood vessels in my
eyeball is what I saw that was red. So at the future flights every once in a while somebody
would say, "Jesus Christ, I've been wounded!" They never let you forget stuff like that.
Another time we were escorting British Lancasters,
and I saw these ME-109's coming across up the front. I said, "Oh boy, I'm finally going to
get in a dog fight, so maybe I can shoot down something!" Because this is where the glory is!
And all of a sudden I see -- and I look at my rear view mirror and I've got two ME-109's on my tail.
So I remember my instructor said, "If you ever get in trouble, throttle back on one engine, jam the
other one full forward, hit the opposite rudder, and yank the yoke all the way back." So I did.
I don't know what happened, but when I came out of it there were no aircraft in the air. So I looked
down and I saw these four ME's just on top of the under cast. And I figured, "Well, I'll go down and
shoot down all four of them." I dove and they went into the clouds. I'd like to think they saw me and
ran, but I think they were going into it anyway. So I saw this one guy and I went after him. And he
spotted me and we started in a lufbery and neither one of us could get a shot at the other guy.
So he rolled over on his back and he went through the under cast, and I stayed right side up on his
tail. And as we broke out I said, "Uh oh!" There was no altitude left. And he crashed,
but I did get a picture of him when he crashed, so I got a victory. But that was my only dog fight.
But I didn't shoot the guy down, but hell, he crashed. So I drove him into the ground.
In the months following the D-Day invasion, the Allied Forces made steady progress,
pushing their German foes back, across Europe. It was widely projected that
the war against Hitler would be won by Christmas.
But the harsh winter of 1944 and the last ditch,
all-out German offensive in the Ardennes put an abrupt stop to the Allies' campaign.
The Battle of the Bulge waged on for over a month
and the drive to victory was pushed well into 1945.
You know what was interesting? I noticed, I think it was Verdun,
when the first snows came you could look down and you could see No Man's Land of the battle
of Verdun by the shadows in the snow. You could actually see the zigzag trenches.
You can see where the shell holes were. And I looked down and said, "Holy crow! This is
World War one!" Because it was so barren, and it was just... my gosh! It was just unbelievable.
I think the most frightened I ever was... We were to go and dive bomb this marshaling yard.
And I watch these guys go down, and when they went down to bomb the hills lit up with crossfire.
And I figured, holy mackerel! There's so much lead in the air, it just was unbelievable.
But the other guys went down, so it's your turn. And you go down and came out unscathed,
and everybody made it. And I just looked at it and said, "There's no way to make this thing!"
It was just unbelievable. The hills just lit up! But everybody made it. And other times,
you don't see what hit you. And there's just no rhyme or reason to it at all
But Jack's Squadron did not always return without a casualty. Before
each mission was the possibility that you were seeing a friend for the last time.
Four of us roomed together. There was Stan Morud from Minneapolis,
Bill Mason from Brockton, Massachusetts, and John Lund from Ensign, Kansas. We
used to kid him about being from Ensign, Kansas. "There's no such place as Ensign, Kansas, John."
"Yes, there is!" "No, no." So he finally gets the Ensign newspaper. It's one piece of paper. "See?
See, there is such a place! It's a crossroad with a silo and a general store, but by gosh,
it's got a newspaper!" "Okay, well you win. There is such a place." But he just is a great guy!
So we're in P-47's, and I think we were
just coming home. A burst of 88's came up and shot down John Lund.
There was snow on the ground. We didn't see any chute or anything,
saw the airplane explode, and figured, "Damn, John's dead."
So I got his stuff together, and I gave the booze to John's crew
and made sure nothing was in his outfit that would embarrass him. But with John that wasn't going to
happen, he was a hell of a nice guy. I took his A2 jacket. What do I want with his A2 jacket? it's
painted on with his name, like all of us did. So I don't know why I took the darn thing, but I did.
So the war ended, and so I came home, then got on a victory ship - 10 days across the
Atlantic. Ended up in Boston. So then they take us down to Taunton, Mass to Fort Miles
Standish. And finally get to a telephone, call the house, say I'll be home in a couple of days.
So I finally got home, I knock on the door, the door opens, and there's John Lund at my house.
And I said, "Son of a gun!" or whatever the words you want to say are.
"You're dead! What are you doing at my house?"
I almost fainted. Here this clown is, he's dead, and he's at my house in Newton, Massachusetts.
And what had happened was, when he bailed out he hit a horizontal stabilizer somewhere in here.
And he landed in this pasture and we didn't see the chute because it's white. And he saw these
German soldiers coming towards him and they turned him over to the Luftwaffe, which is a German Air
Force. And they thought he had a broken leg. So they did the best they could with paper bandages
and wood. And as the Americans came along, and they liberated that particular hospital,
they realized that it was more than just a broken leg. So they sent him to the States,
and where they did the operation was in Framingham, Mass. So it took four operations,
but one at a time. So while he was waiting, he went into Boston and he found my dad's name,
so he called the house. Dad answers, and my dad was very emotional. And he said, "My name is John
Lund. Do you have a son flying with us 367th?" "Yeah." "I'm John Lund and I was a roommate." "I
know the name. Where are you and why?" So he said where he was and why. "Well, what are you doing?"
"Well, I have this much time between..." "Come stay with us!" He was living in my sister's room
because my sister's away at college. He's having the time his life. Dad's feeding him his liquor,
mother's doing his clothes. He's a son to the house at my house in Newton, Massachusetts!
And I said to him, "You know what? I've got your A2 jacket." The tears
came to his eyes. He said that was the one thing he wanted was that A2 jacket. And I
had it. Why did I have the damn thing? I didn't want it, but I had his A2 jacket.
That's my favorite story.
In the Years following the war, Jack continued to pursue his passion for
flying. On his 99th birthday he was given the opportunity to co-pilot a P-51 Mustang.
For the rest of his life, Jack remained elated that the Army Air Corps had
given him the opportunity to make his dream a reality all those years ago.
I dreamed of it. I dreamed of being a fighter pilot. It just was something that came true.
I was thrilled. But you come along and you're strafing a train, and sometimes you go after
one of the freight cars and that thing blows up in your face. And you go through the flame.
And it's hot! Whoa! I mean, it's awful to say, but son of a gun there's just
something about it. The adrenaline goes through you like crazy, and you're a kid.
I was the happiest guy in the world when I took that thing off. They could
have killed me. I'm flying a P-38! I was so happy, and it was such a joy.