I had to wash my hands

March 6, 2024 3:09 AM

Bert Stiles (1920-1944) was a writer of short stories who began flying B17 Flying Fortress missions into Europe with the USAAF in April 1944. He was killed in November the same year. His memoirs were published by his mother as Serenade for the Big Bird (1947UK/1952US). Here's a 5 minute excerpt read at the Cambridge American Cemetery by a British WWII history buff. Google Books:Text starts "There are all kinds of people, senators and whores and barristers, and bankers and dishwashers . . ." [cw: next sentence contains a MeFi-banned slur]

. . . If the wise men of the United Nations could sleep in soft sacks and wake up late
and eat scrambled eggs and pineapple juice and realise that if they choose,
and if they take it easy and if they don't get salty and want too much at
the beginning, they could work out a setup where the people of the world can
feed and clothe everyone in the world, and have plenty of time for play.

Why today? It's the 80th anniversary of Black Monday [History Guy 13m] the first huge daylight raid over Berlin when 69 / 814 USAAF bombers didn't make it back to base. 25 page PDF with pics and maps.

posted by BobTheScientist (21 comments total)

Whats the slur?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 3:39 AM on March 6

He uses several words for different ethnic groups that would get filtered here, and maybe some descriptions that wouldn’t fly, either, but it’s in service of a rather progressive message (“until we… know they are people, all of them, we are going to have a sick world on our hands”) it’s just a 1940s guy’s idea of a pithy description of the range of humanity.
posted by atoxyl at 4:14 AM on March 6 [5 favorites]

it’s just a 1940s guy’s idea of a pithy description of the range of humanity.

Ah. One of them.
posted by hal9k at 4:50 AM on March 6 [2 favorites]

My father flew in B-17's while photographing bombs runs over France (?). He never talked about it nor did he ever fly in a plane again after the war. I am sure that he suffered some trauma. At a return rate of 25%, I can see why he never flew again.
posted by DJZouke at 5:02 AM on March 6 [8 favorites]

Well, it was how people talked at the time. I am old enough to have known a a 90 year old veteran of the Spanish-American as a child and believe me, white people of his and the allegedly greatest generation who followed his thereafter (and preceded the postwar baby boom) that followed his who called black people negroes out of respect were in extremely short supply. Ditto those who referred to Chinese and Japanese Americans as such rather than C-words and J-words. But then when I was in grade school, both the Korean War and World War II had happened less than a decade ago. Saving Private Ryan would have seemed a much different movie had its dialogues been historically accurate. The past is past and most unwoke. You have no idea how awful it was back then.
posted by y2karl at 5:07 AM on March 6 [12 favorites]

At a return rate of 25%, I can see why he never flew again.

Randall Jarrell's The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner comes to mind.
posted by y2karl at 5:11 AM on March 6 [4 favorites]

Relatable: "I seem to be a hundred different people these days. The days take turns using the face and the body. No mood lasts more than a couple of hours. My continuity is shot. ... The world is fine ... the world is okay, maybe ... the world is a weary hole ... the world is a hopeless sickening mess ... the world is blue shadows and full of sun ... that in a day, all that in an hour sometimes."

(And some lovely writing throughout, despite everything)
posted by chavenet at 5:59 AM on March 6 [7 favorites]

I've been following Hardthrasher for a while now. All his stuff is worth the listen.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:07 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

The past is past and most unwoke. You have no idea how awful it was back then.

I remember. It all seemed normal, even civilized, but in retrospect, white supremacy was coded into our daily existence.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:19 AM on March 6 [4 favorites]

My father flew in B-17's while photographing bombs runs over France (?). He never talked about it nor did he ever fly in a plane again after the war. I am sure that he suffered some trauma. At a return rate of 25%, I can see why he never flew again.

I once spent some time talking to a WWII vet who was on a bomber crew. He talked about the goings-on, about the ones who didn’t come back, but he didn’t talk about the missions themselves (my grandfather was a WWII Navy vet with PTSD and I knew better than to press for more info.) The US produced almost 13,000 B-17s and over a third of them were lost in combat. You can figure units that were flying missions over Germany suffered horrific loss rates. Masters Of The Air on Apple TV is getting mixed reviews, some love it and some hate it, but the depictions of how terrifying the missions were for the crews leaves quite an impression. Especially when you consider that for the first few years these guys were flying these missions with no fighter cover.
posted by azpenguin at 6:22 AM on March 6 [7 favorites]

My father flew B17's in the European theater. He rarely spoke of it, even with gentle proofing from his three sons. Later turned to alcohol...He surely saw things unimaginable to me now.
posted by Czjewel at 6:59 AM on March 6 [5 favorites]

The horrifying attrition of B-17 crews was kept from the US public, for obvious reasons. But the crews knew and they flew anyway. I can't even begin to imagine what that must do to you.
posted by tommasz at 8:59 AM on March 6 [5 favorites]

During WWII, my grandfather was a gunner with the Flying Tigers -- he was either a rear or a ventral gunner, I no longer recall which, and I'm pretty sure it was a B-24 and not a B-17. He was fortunate to have had severe enough dental issues that he spent much of the war on the ground in China undergoing and recovering from oral surgeries, and hanging out with a monkey named Lulu. He would never talk about his time in the air.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:44 AM on March 6 [7 favorites]

This might also help offer insight into the mindset and outlook of the French government and people at the outset of the battle of France. The pointless seeming attrition of the B-17 crew was the common lot of the infantry soldier during the great war, with charging the wire etc before artillery support was understood standing in for daylight raids and so on. War is hell, never forget it and never forget that however accurate your understanding may appear, the real thing was almost certainly indescribably worse
posted by feloniousmonk at 9:56 AM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I had a grand-uncle who flew B-17s. My grandma (his little sister) always told me he was such a sweet and caring brother, but by the time I met him he was not like that. He was just miserable, and he smoked constantly. Rarely seemed like he was in a good place. Never talked about the war, either.

Rest in peace, uncle Hank.
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:08 AM on March 6 [6 favorites]

And the guilt of 1) Having survived, 2) having been responsible for enabling all that death and destruction.

Very glad I never had to go to war...
posted by Windopaene at 4:57 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

My grandfather flew B-17s and had 28 missions without a single injury. His journals are online but he didn't like to talk about the war when he was alive.
posted by mmoncur at 5:13 PM on March 6 [8 favorites]

Indeed:

...We returned to base on three engines with a full load of bombs. To further complicate an already ticklish situation, we found our base completely covered with haze and fog. This made it almost impossible to locate the field and get in. We made our return flight over England at an altitude of 500 to 600 feet. Our bomb load was 16 three-hundred pound demolition bombs. There was no injury to crew, or battle damage to the plane. This was a rather novel way of celebrating Christmas Eve.
posted by y2karl at 5:22 PM on March 6 [4 favorites]

It seems weird to have the United Nations capitalized in something written before it the United Nations was founded.
posted by srboisvert at 6:26 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

My step-dad flew B17s as well, and was called back up for the Korean conflict, where he flew in cargo aircraft. He never talked about the war, though he didn't seem to carry any trauma and was uninjured as far as I know. I have no idea how many missions he flew over Germany.

His position, interestingly, has been pretty much ignored in Masters Of The Air. He was the flight engineer, watching over the engine controls and such, and his gunner position was the top turret, which seems to be occupied by the radioman in the show -- at least they never seem to show the wall of dials the engineer stared at when he wasn't shooting.
posted by lhauser at 7:51 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

It seems weird to have the United Nations capitalized in something written before it the United Nations was founded.

The Allies started calling themselves the United Nations sometime in 1942.
posted by house-goblin at 9:17 PM on March 6