We have landed in Tunisia

(Continuation of Captain Charles Estes's War Memoirs)

"Anyway, the next day we were briefed on our little trip
to Tunisia. Now when we took off we were flying over
the north tip of the north part of Africa, and we went
over these deserts that the 98th Bomb Group had flown
its missions, the low level missions or high level missions
to Ploesti; it was a very historic flight for me.

We landed in Tunisia and they had a bay out from Tunisia,
and it was full of ships that had been sunk. I mean, it
just looked like cardboard: all kinds of boats, all sizes and
everything else. The German's had sunk 'em, they were
probably American ships. Well anyway, we saw our
first camels there and there was a sergeant that had a
jeep, and he asked some of us if we wanted to ride around
and look at Tunisia; and that was a great opportunity
for us except that we didn't, any of us, have a camera.
He carried us by one house and he said there was a
sheik that lives in that house and he married an
American girl. She was with the Red Cross, a nurse
with the Red Cross. Well, I couldn't imagine an
American girl wanting to marry an Arabic sheik, but
I'm sure it must have had some advantage to it or she
wouldn't have married him.

Well, we -- after our little trip of sightseeing and seeing
camels and everything else, we were taken to a place
where we would spend the night, and the next morning
we were briefed on a trip that would take us to
Gioia, Italy; that's where we were to leave our plane,
so we knew we were very close to the end of our trip.
And the next day we got on the plane and took off and
ol' Swain told us how to get there, and we made our
way to Gioia, Italy."
(To be Continued)

Map of Tunisia

1943 - Off Duty Soldiers Enjoy Ride on Camels in Tunisia

Map of French Morocco WWII

French Morocco

(Continuation of Captain Charles Estes's War Memoirs)

"Well, on our way back we were walking along this road
and we got behind an old Portuguese I would think, and
he was driving a little cart and it was pulled by a mule
or a donkey, and he pulled up to this rock fence and stopped
and jumped down off of the cart; went over to the fence and
started taking rocks out of the fence and laying 'em on the
ground until he had made an opening big enough for the
cart to go through. When he had done this, he jumped
back on the cart, went back through the hole in the fence
and jumped off the cart and came back and put the fence
back up again rock by rock.

I think we all decided that that was the first gate that
we had ever seen without any hinges. Well, we didn't
have anything to say to this old man because he couldn't
speak English, and we couldn't speak Portuguese so we
walked on back to the base, and they gave us our quarters
and we stayed around for a little while, ate supper and
went to bed and they briefed us the next morning on our
trip to French Morocco. After we'd gotten all our instructions
we all got in the airplane and took off for Africa.

Well, this was a shorter run, I don't think it was but
six or seven hours, and then we had landed in Morocco.
We turned the plane over to the crew chief and he saw
that it got filled up with gasoline and checked everything
out to be sure that everything was all right, and we were
assigned our quarters.

We were assigned our quarters at French Morocco, and
I met this young Moroccan who was more or less what you
would call a cabin boy. He was to make up the beds and see
that everything was clean and kept in good shape for the
crews that would come after us.

Like all Moroccans he had something in his pocket to
sell, so he pulled out this wallet; it was made out of Moroccan
leather, and he presented it to me and said he wanted so
much for it. I've forgotten now, it wasn't much, but in any
case, I bought it and I said that would be a good thing for
me to keep my short snorter in it. I also got a bill from him,
a bill of money, so that I could put it with my short snorter,
and he signed it and signed my leather wallet."

(To be Continued)

We are on our way to French Morocco

(Continuation of Captain Charles Estes's War Memoirs)

"So we were on our way, our dear navigator was
gonna direct this lil' airplane all the way across
the ocean to the Azores, and the people on the crew,
they didn't know anything about Bob Swain,
but I'm sure that they had a question in their
mind, 'Is this guy good enough to fly his way
over there in the dark?' Well, of course they
navigate by the stars at night, and they had
been trained in this, and so Bob did a wonderful
job; and we saw the lights of other airplanes
around us, but we never did see them really.

We finally, when dawn came, could see the
ocean down below us and we could see boats
down there; they were making these white
ribbons in the water as they went through
it. They were carrying arms and ammunition
and stuff of that nature across the ocean to
Europe. And then we began to see other
airplanes around us and we passed a few of
them; they were B17s and we realized then
that the B24 was not the slowest airplane
with four engines on it, and it was a
consolation to us to know at least we
were flying something that had a little
speed to it. I guess our cruising speed
then was 250 miles an hour. Anyway, it
was light and we could look down and see
all these ships in the ocean.

We were about ten hours into our flight
and we were wondering where the Azores
were, and so I called Bob, and I said, 'Bob,
how we doing?' And he said, 'Charlie, we
doing fine.' He said, 'We're not going to get
there in time for breakfast, but if we're not
there in time for lunch, we're in trouble.'
Well, it just happened that we got there just
about lunchtime, and as we flew over the
Azores preparing to land, I noticed these
sheer cliffs that went down to the Ocean
several hundred feet high. And after
we got on the ground and had eaten our
lunch we were gonna spend the night
there and take off the next day for French
Morocco; so we decided to take a little
walk and go over and see those cliffs and
see how high they really were. So we went
over and found the cliffs and looked down
and saw the height of them, and it was just
marvelous the sight. I'll never forget it."

(To be continued.)

The Beginning of a Rather Long Short Snorter

(The Continuation of Excerpts of Captain Charles Estes's Memoirs)

"I recall we took off from Gander Field at twelve o'clock
at night, and just after we had taken off we noticed that a plane
that was flying in the same group that we were flying to the
Azores had crashed. And I can only assume that in the
black of night he forgot to turn off his landing lights,
and they were piercing out through the darkness,
and it made him feel like he was maintaining a straight
and level position where really he had gone into a turn
and lost altitude and his wing tip hit the ground and crashed.


Now we never did find out exactly what happened but
we do know that all of the men and all the people on the
crew died.


I'm just thankful that my instructor had warned me
about night flying and told me that I should never
leave my landing lights on once I had left the ground."

(To be Continued.)