If this isn’t the best site on the Internet, I can’t think of a better. Wretchard, you and your commentators are truly a joy to read. My thanks to all of you!

Location: Armano Romani Refinery, Ploesti

Air Speed: 300 Knots

Altitude: 1,200 feet

Attitude: Nose down

Problem: 1000 lb pound refuses to release.

Now THAT was a plumb interesting day.

Later on, Charley was shot down, crash landed in a cornfield so the rows of dirt would extinguish the flames. Crawled away from the plane and was taken into custody by Romanian militia. Was treated at Romanian Air Force hospital where he was visited by the two who shot him down.

In POW camp he met Princess Catherine Caradja. Later on she picked him to command a “breakout squad” of armed POWs who were stationed in and around Bucharest spotting for the Romanian Armed Forces that made their last stand holding off local Nazis, Communists and advance elements of the Red Army while B17s landed, picked up POWs and flew them home. Charley just made the last B17 out. He knew the Princess during her years in the USA and was one of the guys who
finally paid her way home (with a new VW bus)
in 1991 so she could spend her last two years
at her old home. (Died 1993 slightly past age 100.)

Now do you think I could make all this up if I tried? No way> Truth be stranger than fiction.

Don Vial wrote the report: “We were at 8000 feet ten minutes off the Yugoslavian Coast when we suddenly encountered a thick haze and had to go on instruments. I got my instruments set and found I was hanging on my props. As I straightened up, I saw Lt Creech’s plane go over in a loop and disappear.”

That was 17 Aug 44. On 19 Aug they dropped chaff over Ploesti. Bill Stakhem lost one engine and was lagging behind on way home. Vial was assigned to accompany him. Vial said he was losing oil pressure and wanted more altitude in case he had to feather.
Since then, his whereabouts have been known but to God.

However, his report eventually led to Cotton Creech’s remains being recovered and interred at Ft Sam Houston in 1949. I was taken to that ceremony. I remember uniforms, Chaplain, Air Medal, Purple Heart, Flag, Firing Squad (that latter was NEAT!). Then the bugler started. And that is when it hit me. I understood in a flash of what kind of price had been paid and would continue to have to be paid. I have not forgotten.

He competed to be a General’s aide, lost out and was sent to Mindanao to be an adviser to a Filipino Division that was just forming. It got scattered.

He was fortunate enough to escape and join the resistance under the overall command of Wendell Fertig. Therein he came to know Waldo Neveling, also of Tucscon, died 1978,
a German national who rendered valuable service to our side.

The late Judge William Browning, also of Tucson, was as a young boy an “internee” in Santo Tomas. His wife, Sinclair Browning, wrote a fictional book about those years. Damned hard to find unfortunately. Called “America’s Best”. It will make your blood run cold.

My wife lost her father to the Kempetai and some Filipino collaborators. My natural father bought the farm in a P38 a month before I was born. My adoptive father died at age 61 in part due to conditions encountered in pershing’s AEF.

My God! Every one of us is here by the skin of our teeth and the gallantry of those who came before us. And if that does not teach you humility, nothing will.

At the funeral for Ninoy the truck carrying his casket had a banner “Project of the First Lady.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Prairie-Fire Anger. “The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling higher in generic surveys than are Democrats. Why the sudden uproar?”

Posted at 2:51 pm by Glenn Reynolds