The Comet Connection

Escape from Hitler's Europe

George Watt

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813188195
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

In November 1943, George Watt, Flying Fortress gunner, parachuted out of his burning bomber and landed in a village in Nazi-occupied Belgium. The villagers risked their lives to hide him in the field, sneaking him past the German patrols, and bringing him safely to Brussels, where he connected with the Comet Line, the rescue arm of the Belgian resistance.

While hiding in "sale houses" in Brussels, Watt had a ringside view of bold acts of defiance by Belgian patriots against the German occupation. From Brussels he traveled by rail past Gestapo control to Bordeaux, rode a bicycle through southern France, and was led by Basque guides along ancient smugglers' trails over the Pyrenees into Spain.

Six years earlier. Watt had climbed those same Pyrenees to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against General Franco. Watt's experience in that prelude to World War II adds insight and drama to the story of his escape from Fortress Luropa, his fears of capture heightened by his having been a Lincoln Brigader as well as a Jew.

Forty years after the war Watt returned to Belgium to find that the "story of George Watt" had become a legend in the villages of Zele and Flamme, passed on to second and third generations. And in Brussels he heard with grief of the tragic fates of several of the underground comrades who had helped.

Whether writing about the war in the skies or the "war within the war" (the resistance movement) or recalling the earlier fighting in Spain, Watt's style is uncompromising and direct. The writing is tilled with suspense and humor, illumined by love and appreciation for its participants. This gripping story of compassion and commitment can be enjoyed for its high adventure alone. For the young, and for students of history, it is also a valuable contribution to understanding the two great antifascist struggles of our century.

PART I. Walking Out

1 ________________________________

Happy Birthday at Happy Valley

November 5, 1943, Knettishall, England.

“Bramwell’s Crew! Grab your socks!”

I was startled out of a deep sleep. My watch said six o’clock—but there’d been no alert the night before, and they usually woke us between one and two-thirty when we were scheduled to fly.

Suddenly, I remembered that it was my thirtieth birthday—one day I did not want to fly.

The night before, some of us had been sitting around the stove in our Quonset hut chewing the fat. “Tomorrow is my birthday,” I said. “I’ve always said if I live to thirty, I’ll live to a ripe old age. I have to confess,” I added, “five years ago in Spain I was saying, ‘If I live to twenty-five, I’ll live to a ripe old age.’ ”

“What were you doing in Spain?” Grundlach, a replacement gunner, piped up.

“I fought in the Spanish Civil War.”

“Come on! You’re old, but not that old.”

“The Spanish Civil War, not the Spanish American War.” I knew that was coming. I’d heard it before.

“What the hell were you doing there? Were you a soldier of fortune or somethin’?”

“You kidding? At 100 pesetas a month? You couldn’t buy Mexican chickpeas with that. No, I was a soldier of freedom.” It sounded pat, and I was immediately sorry I’d said it. “Actually it was the beginning of this war. We were fighting the same enemies, Hitler and Mussolini. They helped Franco overthrow the Spanish Republican government. I thought that if we stopped them there we might prevent this one.”

“But why you? Why did you have to go?”

“I felt strongly about that son of a bitch Hitler and his concentration camps. I hated his master race crap. I felt I had to go. About 3,000 Americans felt the same way.”

The guys had gone on to kid me about my flexible superstition but—in deference to my advanced age, I suppose—assured me that I had made it. There would be no mission the next day; the fog was too thick. And it certainly looked that way from the weather reports we’d been getting all night. You never saw a bunch more sensitive to weather than these guys in my squadron. As each new airman came in from the movies or Aero club, we got a full report on clouds, stars, and moon. We asked if an alert was on. Did they load bombs? How many? How much gas in the tanks?

Their answers constituted our “barracks briefing.” Thousand-pounders meant docks or submarine pens. Five-hundredpounders and incendiaries meant factories or rail centers. Full “Tokyo” (auxiliary belly) tanks threatened DPs (deep penetrations) into western or central Germany. Clear weather meant France or Belgium; 10/10th overcast (maximum cloud cover) spelled Germany.

Now, as I was getting dressed, I still didn’t think we’d fly that morning. The fog had closed in thicker than ever, and I was sure the mission would be scrubbed. “Well, fellas,” I said cheerfully, “I’ve reached my thirtieth, all right.”

“Wait,” Oscar Land said. “The day ain’t over yet.” Reluctantly, I had to admit he was right.

“Okay. We’ll celebrate at the club tonight.”

The atmosphere was tense as we got to the briefing room. To tell the truth, it was always tense. But that particular morning, perhaps because it was my birthday, I was more uptight than usual. The enlisted men, wearing flight jackets with brightly painted names—“Joho’s Jokers,” “Screamin’ Red Ass,” “Cock o’ the Walk,” “Princess Pat,” “Little Boy Blue”—were already seated and chattering noisily. We noncoms were always briefed before the officers.

Hidden behind a large screen, waiting for the “unveiling,” was the dreaded map that would show us the flight route to and from the target, with the concentrations of enemy flak marked by red cellophane overlay. Everyone was speculating about where we were going. When we were all seated, the bright young A2 (Air Intelligence) officer raised the screen.

We sat there in stunned silence, our eyes following the black ribbon to the solid red mass surrounding the target. There was a soft whistle. Someone said, “Uh, uh!” That broke the spell. Now everyone was talking at once.

We were going to “Happy Valley” ! We’d been expecting a mission to the Ruhr Valley for some time. But dammit, why did it have to be on my birthday?

It took some quieting down by the A2 officer before he was able to start the briefing. “Men, your target today is Gelsenkirchen, one of the most important rail centers in the Ruhr. You will leave the coast of England at this point.” He spoke in a cold, emotionless tone as he used a long pointer to trace our route. “One group of P-47s will meet you here and take you to the IP (Initial Point, the last turn before the bomb run). Another group of P-47s will join you at the IP and take you past the target. You will have escort all the way to the target area and all the way back to the coast of Belgium.”

Escort all the way in! At least that was a consolation, and the first time we’d had it for a DP. I still shudder when I think of the Schweinfurt raid. Our fighters took us a little way past the English Channel and left us. As we approached the IP, we saw scores of parachutes floating in the air. These were our men whose planes had already gone down. It looked more like a parachute jump than an air raid. Then swarms of German fighters attacked us in force. Without any fighter escort, we caught hell. Sixty planes and six hundred men were lost that day. President Roosevelt said our country could not afford such losses.

Now, for the first time, our fighters were equipped with auxiliary belly tanks that could be jettisoned when they were emptied. This gave the fighters enough fuel to escort us all the way to the target and back.

“As you see by the route,” the briefing officer continued in the same tone, “you will encounter very little flak, except when you come to the Ruhr Valley. Here, of course, men, you will meet heavy antiaircraft fire from their 88s and 105s. You can also expect to be attacked by heavy concentrations of Focke-Wulf 190s and Messerschmidt 109s. There will be the usual diversionary attacks by medium bombers in order to draw off the enemy fighters.

“You will now see a photo of the target. Lights out, please. Here you see the target, the railroad marshaling yards. You will approach the target at a heading of 180 degrees. That is all. Any questions? Good luck.”

We filed out, our faces grim. Waiting outside for the second briefing shift, the officers—pilots, navigators, and bombardiers—anxiously scanned our faces for clues to the nature of the mission. We were not permitted to talk to them. Breaking the rule, someone said, “This is no milk run!”

We had about two hours till takeoff. That gave us plenty of time to collect our flying togs, place our guns in the ship, check them out, and bullshit with the ground crew.

I went down to the drying room to draw my electric-heated suit, then to the parachute shop for my chute pack. I picked up stuff from my locker, packed the whole load on my bicycle, and lumbered like a fully loaded bomber to the dispersal area where our B-17 Flying Fortress was waiting. She was battle scarred with hundreds of flak holes, but she’d always brought us back. After each mission we counted the holes and counted our blessings as we went to debriefing.

I feel sorry to this day that we never got to paint her name on the fuselage. Long after the crew or ship is gone the name lives on. After a lot of haggling, we had finally chosen the name Butcher Boy. I didn’t particularly like it but was willing to settle for it. The idea was Sage’s. We had planned to have it painted on that very day, if we didn’t fly. The Butcher Boy was to be Porky, of Walt Disney fame, carrying a paper bag filled with sausages. The bag would be torn at one end, and as each sausage dropped out of the bag, it would turn into a bomb. Each bomb would then become the symbol for a mission completed.

Gun positions also had names. Some I still remember: “Pete and Repete,” “Big Dick,” “Shoot, You’re Faded.” Sage, the other homesick New Yorker in our crew, named his ball turret guns “42nd Street” and “Times Square.” I had wanted to call my waist gun “Doran’s Revenge” for Dave Doran, a friend who was killed in Spain, but I decided it was too somber. So it became—what else?—“Watt’s Cookin’.”

I was all set, with my gun and equipment in place, when I suddenly remembered I had a $50 money order in my wallet that should be sent home to my wife, Margie. I hopped on my bike, pedaled frantically back to the barracks, penned a short note, then rushed back to our pilot, Lieutenant Bramwell, to have it censored, and I still had twenty minutes to spare. What a relief that I’d remembered in time!

We exchanged the ritual ribbing with the ground crew—our way of covering up how much we depended on those guys and how much they worried about our coming back—then boarded our ship and got ready for takeoff.

Meader, Sage, and I always got into our flying togs while the ship taxied down the apron to takeoff position. It was quite a procedure. First, we took off our boots and stripped down to our long johns. Next, we donned electric-heated suits and electric-heated boots. Over the heated suit went a summer flying suit, and over the heated boots a pair of heavy fleece-lined flying boots. Then we put on a winter flying helmet with built-in earphones, snap-on oxygen mask, and connecting hose, and over the helmet we wore flying goggles. We had three pairs of gloves—silk next to the skin, electrically heated gloves over the silk, and, aloft, a pair of heavy RAF fleece-lined mittens over the other two. Temperatures got to 55 below zero with the winds rushing up to 200 miles an hour through our open waist gun positions.

Then came a “Mae West” inflatable life vest, and over that a parachute harness (the chute itself would be snapped on only if we had to use it). Later, over enemy territory, we would add an armored flak suit that weighed a ton, plus a steel infantry helmet. We were plugged into our gun positions by electric wire, interphone lines, and oxygen tubes. We would begin breathing oxygen at 10,000 feet in order to minimize the effects of the bends.

One important item that I forgot to take from my locker that day was an army issue .45 pistol with holster, belt, and two extra clips of ammunition.

We barely managed to complete all these preparations by the time Bramwell turned our Fort into takeoff position. The lead plane was just airborne as the second was lumbering down the middle and our own ship began rolling. Three fully loaded bombers on that one runway, just thirty seconds apart. How we sweated those takeoffs!

Soon we were aloft. What we did not know, as our giant Fortress flew blind through a heavy overcast, was that this was to be our longest misson.

2 ________________________________

Here Comes the Flak

It was one of those drab autumn days you find so often in England. The sky was gray. The 10/10ths layer of clouds above us had to be scaled before we could rendezvous with our group.

When we finally came through the clouds, we saw hundreds of B-17s rattailing all over the sky. Gradually the formations began to take shape, but our own twenty-one-plane group was nowhere in sight. We were still chasing after the big “H” on the tail and looking for the signal flares identifying our 388th Bomb Group when we made a disturbing discovery. Our ball turret was out of commission!

It had checked out okay on the ground. But now Sage, the ball turret gunner, could not disengage the electric clutch that allowed the turret to swing around from the stowed position.

We were frantic. We tried everything. We coaxed it gently. We pleaded with it. We kicked it, shook it, cursed it. Still it wouldn’t give. While one man worked on the turret, the others kept providing refilled walk-around oxygen bottles. We were above 25,000 feet, where you cannot live more than a few minutes without oxygen. Every ounce of energy expended saps all your strength. We worked over that turret for at least an hour—to no avail.

We finally caught up with our group at 29,000 feet, just as it was beginning to head out across the Channel. Bramwell consulted the crew on whether to abort or go on. This was our seventh mission. The magic number was twenty-five; after that we could go home. Bramwell decided not to abort.

Sage sat down to sweat out the mission without his guns. We all sweated with him. The ball turret with its twin 50-caliber machine guns was not just another position. It commanded the entire hemisphere below.

I used to watch Joe Sage squeeze his stocky 5′11″ frame into tha...