The next stop was the Briefing Room, after some of the boys had a quick session of their religious faith. After everybody was seated, the Briefing Officer on the stage up front pulled the curtain back to show the nap of Europe with the different colored tapes and markings on it. Me described times, headings, routes, anticipated German fighter opposition and Flak gun batteries and, finally, our Merseberg target in the Leipzig area. He emphasized how important this synthetic oil target was, (In some of our minds we envied those "Ground-pounder" briefing officers who got to stay home and miss the trip, even though we honestly realized that everybody was important to the overall effort.) Our crew only had two missions (Bremen 26 September, and Mainz, 27 September) under our belts and didn't really realize what was ahead of us. The, first one to Bremen only involved a relatively few puffs of Flak, which didn't seem to be close enough to register. Little did I realize the punch behind those puffs at the time. On the second mission, however, I took back my thought, "Is this all there is to it?" When a B-17 disappeared in front of us with a single direct-hit burst of flak. Wow, nine men and a plane gone in one puff! Those Germans are out to get us!

After the briefing we picked up our chest-pack parachutes, guns and our lunch of the day (Hershey bar, carbohydrate candy cubes and a pack of gum) before taking a truck ride to our assigned B-l7's on the Group's hardstands. After putting our 50 caliber guns in place and rounding up those flak aprons and helmets, we waited for the taxiing and take-off. Of course there were other pre-flight preparations, such as my own job of double-checking that all the gas tanks were topped off with 100-octane gas. This always seemed like a boring and unnecessary task, until one morning I found one tank empty and had to be filled by the gas crew in a hurry. That could have been the difference in making it back or not.

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