Well, see, we were at this place where I flew the Thunderbolt Road. It was Kitzingen, Germany. And the war had ended there, but they moved us one more time to Regensburg.
It was further down, deeper into Germany, close to, hell, I don’t know what it was close to. But I wasn’t there. We didn’t fly no missions in there, so that’s where I left the outfit from there.
It was either in Belgium or in Saint-Étienne, France, where the Americans had crossed the Rural River. And that was a… And they had pontoon bridges across. And… I don’t know how some of the guys out there… They got over there and they started… Oh, a loop was a very big thing, just to see what you could find.
Try to find cameras or whatever you could. And this old guy, Bortz, was his name. He was kind of… They didn’t like him all that much.
But, you know, he and a couple of… They got in there, over there. We called it Scrounge. And he got into a German hunting club.
And they had the most wonderfully engraved shotguns you ever saw. And he brought, I guess, half a dozen of them along with him. And all beautifully engraved stuff.
And he put them in a box, I believe he put them in a box and mailed them home. But they had another… They had liberated a car over there, too. But it was a three-wheel vehicle.
They didn’t think about it. They had it loaded with loot. When they got to the Rohwer River, they had them planked through.
There wasn’t a plank down the middle. There wasn’t no place for the third wheel. So they had to abandon the loot over there.
I imagine that made them sad. I don’t know. They probably went out the next day.
I know one of the guys, he found in a… I guess it was in a German officer’s home. He found a brand-new Schmeisser machine pistol. The thing that… I don’t know what rate of fire.
It was just terrific. I don’t know if it had ever been shot. He didn’t mail it home.
That’s probably hanging on the mantelpiece. Probably. I remember you brought home a blue Luftwaffe helmet.
Yeah, and that thing would be worth much money right now. And when I was down in Bishop, I let something happen to it down there. It never made it back.
I remember seeing it, that light blue. Yeah, it was an Luftwaffe helmet. Beautiful one.
Real beautiful. And I had it out there on the farm in Bishop and kind of got lost in it. All of that stuff I let go to pieces.
I shouldn’t have kept it. And then I played with it for a long time. You had it off of the spotting scope, remember that? Yeah, it’s still up in the old house.
That’s up there, I believe. I tell you, you’re going to burn that down. That’s going to be gone.
I don’t think you can find it, but it’s in there somewhere. Yeah. That was from an anti-aircraft gun.
You could put lenses in the different shades of gray. I probably ruined my eyes looking at the sun. I used to look at the sun with that thing.
You did? Yeah, looking at sunspots. It’s up there, but it got to where it clouded on the inside. Yeah, I’m not surprised after these.
But it’s up there somewhere. Then you had a bottle of French champagne. Yeah.
It was not the best when you opened it. I think it wasn’t the best image of it. Loss of flavor.
I took the strangest things home where I should have been. Well, I had that one German Leica camera, which came out of a German fighter. Yeah, I remember that.
It didn’t have no mirror on it. Right. But it was a robot.
It had a Zeiss lens in it. Like I said, I don’t know what I did with it. I’m not sure if it was lost in the rubble.
Well, then you have two pistols and a Mauser. Yeah. You got the Loretta.
No, that was a P-38. Oh, a P-38. Then you had the .25 caliber.
That was a Browning. A Browning. No, Sidney got it.
He wanted it. I still got the little Indian crossbow. And I got the rifle.
Got the bayonet with it. Yeah. That was really a Czech gun.
It’s a Mauser that was… I think it was a… See, Walt Cunich sent me all that stuff. That Leica, that Leica, the rifle, bayonet, and a saber, a German… Oh, yeah, I wore the saber. Sidney got that, too.
Yeah, I wore the saber. It had a tassel and a braid. I remember it not being in good shape anymore.
The saber wasn’t in good shape. Well, the tassel was disturbed. Yeah, that was kind of… It was kind of cut off of the uniform.
That’s all that Cunich sent me at the time. Yeah, I got lots of memories. You know, it’s strange.
I remember a whole lot of that. Oh, this comes back to me. I have lots of sleepless nights, and all these old memories come running through me.
That’s amazing that you can store that much information. Yeah, it is, actually. You think about what all you’ve got, because you can remember other things, maybe not as good as you’d want.
Oh, well, this was a little bit more… Well, it was real intense. It was a heavier impression on you. Yeah, it was very intense.
Oh, well. But I think I’m doing pretty good on that stuff, on memory, except recent memory ain’t worth nothing. No, that’s typical.
I just can’t remember. I can’t recall a dang number you give me. But, you know, I had trouble with that all my life.
That’s not a recent acquirement, because I had trouble when I’d fly in combat with a problem with me. You know, if I was leading out the squadron or something like that, and we’d go for targets of opportunity, is what they called it, and you had a map with you, and they’d call you the coordinates, and so on, so they gave me a whole string of numbers, you know, coordinates. Try to remember the number.
I couldn’t remember the damn number long enough to look it up on the map. I had to carry me a damn page right to a number, because I didn’t want to vomit the wrong place. Well, no, that’s… I think it’s wise not relying on your memory for that.
So, I mean, but other people could do that. I couldn’t do that. And I have that problem right now.
I can’t remember. I can’t. I’ll look up a telephone number.
I’ll have to write it down and look at it while I’m dialing it. I can’t remember it long enough. This morning I tried to call Mary Ellen.
I couldn’t. I had to look and see what her number was. It just goes away.
Recent stuff just goes away right away.