Presentation Date: July 24, 2003
Major Maynard Dick Stewart USAF (RET)
* WWII B-17 Waist Gunner, 95th BG(H), ETO, Horham, England. * Downed by Enemy Fire Over Railroad Yards, Hanover, Germany. * Pilot Successfully Limped B-17 Across Germany; Crash-Landed in Belgium. * WWII B-17 Waist Gunner, 95th BG(H), ETO, Horham, England
* Downed by Enemy Fire Over Railroad Yards, Hanover, Germany
* Pilot Successfully Limped B-17 Across Germany; Crash-Landed in Belgium
* GI Bill for BS & MFA, University of Utah
* Professor of Art at Cal State University-SJ & San Jose State University
* Noted Artist and Son of Well-Known Utah Artist, LeConte Stewart
* Nose-Art Artist, WWII; Painted His B-17 "Belligerent Beauty" & Others
* Extensive List of Commissioned Original Art
* Author of The Language of Painting, 1992 and Other Essays & Writings
Extensive Overseas Travel & Living Dick Stewart: WWII Veteran; Artist and Educator; Quality
Representative of "The Greatest Generation"! Those
Frightening But Wonderful Days
“
My experiences in the Air Force taught me responsibility and self-reliance that
contributed immensely to my civilian life. When I get together with my crew and
we have a few drinks, we often say that we would like to do it all over
againp.”
The
image of the first slide projected on the screen in the front room of the O’Club
was that of a handsome 20 year old man in an Army Air Force uniform and an
attractive young woman. They were Maynard “Dick” Stewart and Helen Smith. The
couple was engaged before Dick went to war, married after he returned and they
shared their lives for five decades before Helen passed away in
1992.
The
next image was an official Army Force photo of the crew of the B-17G
Belligerent
Beauty,
the ship Stewart rode as waist gunner on eighteen missions with the 95th Bomb
Group (Heavy) over Germany from January 1945 to VE-day the next May.
Stewart
says of the Belligerent
Beauty crew he served with, “They were all
great guys and they had their strengths and weaknesses.”
“In
the photograph I think we’re all looking kind of gloomy, because we had just returned from combat, where
we had been shot down over Hanover, Germany, bombing marshaling yards.”
The
Crew of Belligerent
Beauty
*
George Brumbaugh,
the pilot hailed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dick describes him as a good pilot and
strict commander, who was respected by crew: “For almost a year he was an instructor, so he really knew
how to fly B-17s. I owe my life to his courage and skill in flying.” Stewart
adds they hoped his German name would serve us well if we were shot down.
Brumbaugh is still alive in Fort Orange, Florida.
*
The co-pilot was Quentin
Warta,
a loner who wanted to fly in the left seat, and never got to do that. Dick says
the crew cheered him when he occasionally shot a landing, because Warta “did a
damn good job.” He died a year ago
of Alzheimer’s disease in Kentucky.
* Tom
Landwehr,
the navigator, was from St. Cloud Minnesota. Nicknamed “Lover” by the officers, he
was shy, religious, and remorseful after the second mission for his failure to
get the pilot a heading out of Germany.
*
“The Old Man” , who came from Missouri, was Harold
Amick,
the B-17’s tail gunner. Harold drew the name because he was 27 years old, an
Army career man, who was in the infantry in Hawaii at the time of the Pearl
Harbor attack. Amick was the “worrier and self appointed caretaker” of the
enlisted crew, and was kept busy trying to keep the boys out of
trouble.
*
Del
Siadak, from
Detroit, Michigan, was the nose gunner, armorer and togglier. His moniker
of “Sad Sack” - - after the cartoon character - - was
derived from his name. He was also
referred to as “the Polack”, due to his Polish descent. Stewart says girls everywhere were
attracted to Siadak, so much so that the rest of the crew had to “rescue” him
from a half dozen Brussels prostitutes who thought Del was cute, and held him
hostage on a street corner. Siadak died about 7-8 years ago of colon cancer.
* Prophetically, right waist gunner
Maynard
D. Stewart
was called “Professor”. Raised a
Mormon in Kaysville, Utah, Dick
completed one year of college at the University of Utah before enlisting in the
Air Corps. Dick says it was a
little odd for him to be the only non-Catholic member of his crew.
*
In the crew picture, the big man next to Stewart is
Mel Glyman,
the radio operator. “The Greek,” as
he was known, was the son of Greek parents who owned a small grocery store in
Chicago. Dick remembers Mel’s perpetual good humor in spite of bad treatment
from other crewmembers. After the war, Mel went to college and then turned the
little family business into a multi-million dollar food
company.
“I
feel a special kinship with him, too, because when we were getting shot at, it
was a comfort for me to look through the door over the catwalk and see him
there. He was shaking as I was.”
Dick
and Mel also shared a tradition regarding the post-mission beverage given
crewmembers. “Before the debriefing we were offered drinks, usually a warm
brandy or hot chocolate. Most of the gunners with me were too young to drink.
And I had certain inhibitions because I had been raised a Mormon. But all the
others liked to take their liquor, and Mel and I would give our drink to Jim
Keefe. We regretted that 35 years
later as we were enjoying a Beefeater’s in Mel’s home in Carefree,
Arizona.”
*
Jim Keefe
was the engineer / gunner on Belligerent
Beauty
. Stewart says “Big Jim”, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, epitomized the Irish
personality - - he loved to drink and always had a funny story to tell,
especially when telling of flying exploits. “Jim, I think, knew more about the
workings of the B-17 than the pilot, and George often spoke about how valuable he was,” says
Stewart.
After
the Hanover mission, Sonny
Fuller,
from Wills Point, Texas, replaced Ed Kuzma as ball turret gunner. Dick says the
story about Sonny that most often comes to mind was when, “He got a Dear John
letter from his wife, telling him everything was over. And he very quietly
climbed atop his bunk (he slept above me), got out his .45... and proceeded to
shoot holes in the top of our Nissen hut. “ Fuller died six years ago.
*
Smokey Davis
was the original ball turret gunner, and does not appear in the crew photo.
Originally from Cumberland, Maryland, “Smokey” left the crew in Texas due to a
bad case of athletes foot, but he attended several reunions after the war. Dick
says he remembers the Davis phrase, “This is not whiskey talking, this is Smokey
talking.”
*
Ed Kuzma
was the ball turret gunner (also not in the photo) who joined the crew when
Smokey had to stay behind. Badly wounded by a flak burst on the second mission,
Ed was left at a Belgian hospital (none of the crew thought he would survive).
He joined the 95th BG reunions many years later, and died of natural causes
around 1988.
*
Jack Kiley,
the original bombardier called “Smiling Jack,” did not accompany the crew to
England because by that time in the bombing campaign against Germany the 8th Air
Force no longer needed bombardiers. Instead, targets were marked with smoke
bombs and a togglier would simply drops bombs when over the
smoke.
Stateside
Training
Dick’s
training to be a gunner came in 1943 at the Las Vegas Army Air Corps Gunnery
School. He became an instructor in “ring and post” firing, which pleased Dick
because of his Utah hunting background. Helen attended Dick’s
graduation.
After
his crew assignment, he was based at Alexandria, Louisiana. Dick’s most poignant
memory there is of a beautiful girl who worked in the PX.
“She
had the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen... All of us would go to the PX to
see her and we gave her a nickname. We called her ‘P-38.’ She knew exactly what
we meant and she loved it.”
On
New Years Eve 1944, George Brumbaugh’s crew had a navigation mission to Big
Spring, Texas in a brand new B-17G. The plan was to fly at night to the west
Texas town and back to Alexandria, to test the navigator’s abilities. The rest
of the crew and the co-pilot “sacked out” in the radio room for the
ride.
At
about two o’clock in the morning, after reaching Big Spring and turning back
south-easterly to Alexandria, the crew smelled smoke coming from the front of
the fuselage.
Stewart
says, “Warta, the co-pilot, opened the door to the bomb bay and said, ‘My God,
I’ve left my chute in my seat.’ He ran through the bomb bay and we never saw him
again (on the plane).”
The
crew grabbed fire extinguishers and went into the bomb bay.
“The
fire seemed to be right under the upper turret and we sprayed the extinguishers
on the fire, but we couldn’t put it out.
In fact, it created a toxic gas, and we were all coughing and gasping for
air. We later found out that the ground crew sent us the wrong kind of fire
extinguisher in our airplane.”
At
that point the crew jettisoned the waist door and Smokey Davis took
charge.
“He
was a hillbilly from Cumberland, Maryland, and was really a courageous guy. He
went though the bomb bay, was gone about a minute, and came back running,
saying, ‘Nobody is flying this damned airplane.’ Smokey didn’t even stop to talk with us
about it. He just buckled on his chute and jumped out the waist
hatch.”
Dick
says he buckled on his own chest-pack chute, upside down at first, with the
rip-cord on his left side.
”I
didn’t know whether it mattered, but I finally got it put on right. And then I
went out. We had no instruction on how to bail out. Just what we heard from
other people about how to do this. As I fell earthward, I remember looking up at
the B-17 and had the impression of it taking off, uphill. The B-17 was still flying level, not
going uphill at all, but I was going downhill.
“I
could see the fire roaring out of the bomb bay. It was really on fire. I had an
idea that plane exploded just seconds after all of us jumped out. We had been
flying at about 10,000 feet, there was quite a wind, and I remember my chute
would collapse like that... and that scared the daylights out of me. I could
see, too I was going to finally come down near water. I thought it was the Red
River at the time. I did get myself seated in the harness and all unbuckled,
ready to land in water, but instead of landing in water I landed in a grove of
trees to the side of the water. It was a very cushioned
landing.”
Stewart
made his way through the barren territory southeast of Big Spring, until he saw
cattle coming towards him. Suddenly he realized it was a stampede, and took
cover behind a tree as the cattle rumbled by.
After
about 45 minutes of wandering through the hilly wasteland, Dick spotted lights
in the distance.
“It
turned out to be a farmer’s house. His dogs came out, barking, and he appeared
in the doorway. I could see him in
the light of his open door. He was carrying what appeared to be a shotgun. And
by the way, I wasn’t even wearing a
flying suit. I was wearing a blue heated flying suit that fit me like
leotards. I had my helmet and goggles on, but that’s all I had. My beautiful A-2
jacket I’d just acquired went down with the airplane. I still feel bad about
that.”
“I
told him I was an airman flying out of Alexandria, Louisiana and I bailed out,
and could he help. He said, ‘I
don’t believe you. I think you’re one of those reform school
guys.’
Dick
did manage to get directions to the closest highway, found the road and finally
got a ride into a little town’s telephone office where he met up with two other
crewmembers. An hour or two later, the whole crew was reunited - - including the
pilot, navigator and engineer, who all bailed out early and landed about 50
miles from the town.
Stewart
says, “They knew the fire had started right away, because it was right on
the pilot’s rear end. The fire was
created by a flaw in the B-17, where the connection for oxygen and electricity
ran through the same channel. The electrical system had caught fire and been fed
by the oxygen, and blossomed-out there. They tried to put out the fire
themselves and tried to call us on the intercom, but that was burned out,
too.”
After
a quick deliberation, they had opted to jump out the nose hatch, figuring the
rest of the crew would discover the fire and follow.
When
officers from the Inspector General’s office arrived to determine whether proper
procedure had been followed in the incident, Dick says he and his crewmembers
testified that, given the conditions, the pilot’s actions were
justified.
Back
in Alexandria, Dick took the pretty girl who had packed his parachute to dinner.
After the war, she called to tell Stewart she was divorced and would like to see
him, but it was too late - - he was was happily married by
then.
About
15 years ago, the 95th BG had its reunion in Cincinnati. All of the crew were in
attendance. They had a special dinner, with a waiter for each couple, arranged
by Mel Glyman. Stewart says remarks by Brumbaugh and Landwehr on the emotional
burdens they carried about the incident all these years, were relieved by the
crew’s positive responses.
Nearly
60 years later, the fatal flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia was on the same
southeast course of that B-17. As news of the recovery efforts was aired on TV,
Dick hoped the searchers might also find wreckage of that ill-fated
bomber.
335th Squadron, 95th Bomb Group, 13th Combat Wing, 3rd Air Division
Horham
Air Field - - between Ipswich and Norwich, Suffolk County, East Anglia - - was
the area where most American and English bomber bases were located. This was
beautiful bucolic farm land, and was captured on canvas by England’s great
landscape painter John Constable.
“It
seemed kind of incongruous. There was all this beautiful, pastoral landscape,
yet we were engaged in the business of war there,” says
Stewart.
The
95th’s base was nestled among farms. There were thatch roofed houses next to the
hardstands, and Dick remembers how Belligerent
Beauty
was on a hardstand backed up to a two-story bungalow. “Every time we would rev
up our engines, it would blow straw off the roof. In spite of that, this nice old farmer
and his wife would often come out
with a tray, carrying tea for us. The way they treated us, I was just
overwhelmed with their kindness and their generosity.
Dick
says when he first arrived, it was announced he was an artist, and all of his
spare time was spent painting bombs on the noses of B-17s, icons for
missions completed. A-2 jackets
were similarly decorated, along with the name of the bomber on the back. Dick’s
artwork also graced barracks doors and sketchbooks.
Nissen
huts held two crews and were the stage for many memorable events. Some were
simple, like playing poker into the wee hours of the morning around the little
pot belly stove that provided the only heat for the huts. One of Dick’s sketches
is of the “Old Man” getting some “sack time” on his bunk. Dick says,”My
inscription on the right is “F.O.”, and I’ll leave that to your
imagination.”
He
describes the original nose art for Belligerent
Beauty :
“Before making the painting... I did this drawing. And like the other females on
the nose art, I tried to make the gal look as sexy as I could. Then I dropped in
a Roman toga and a sword.”
The
pageantry of strategic bombing from those East Anglia bases was all around - - flares were fired before bombers
landed, a parade of B-17s along the base perimeter after landing, with an
audience of people from surrounding towns welcoming home the
crews.
In
the years since the war, Dick has connected with Ruth and Ralph Johnson, who
were among the locals that cheered returning bombers. During the war they were
seven or eight years old and lived right next to the base. “When the bombers
came home they would sneak in the bombers and steal the chocolate bars that we
didn’t eat.”
Flying
Missions
The
deadly business of war at Eighth Air Force bases in East Anglia had its own
daily regular rhythm. Dick recalls, “We would usually get a call --a guy would
come in with a whistle and wake us all up.
And the agonizing part about that wasn’t just that we were going to get
up in the cold and fly a mission, but the fact that we’d been playing poker all
night, maybe only had a couple hour’s sleep before the wake up
call.”
Stewart
says getting dressed was followed by hauling flying gear in a duffel bag off to
the combat mess, where they’d have a really good breakfast. From there it was
off to the Operations Room, with the far end wall holding a big map covered by a
curtain.
“The
operations officer would come in, draw a cord and the curtain would part, and
there you’d see our base and a
zigzag line leading in to some target in Germany. We knew where the scary,
dangerous places were, and if we went to Merseberg, Regensberg or other bergs
that were reputed to be bad... there’d be a big groan.”
Specialized
briefings would follow - - on topics like the kind of aircraft that gunners
might see - - and then crews were trucked out to the B-17s, just as the horizon
was lightening.
“I
used to feel pretty good about it, even when we had a dangerous target, until
this jeep would roll up in front of our bomber, with a Catholic chaplain and a
Rabbi. All of our guys would file out there, kneel down and receive a blessing
from the chaplain. And that just gave it an air of
sobriety.”
Missions
had a mix of activities, each providing visual, visceral experiences - - a
takeoff in zero visibility, often on a compass heading; the terror of assembling
in the skies of East Anglia and over “The Wash”, with so many large airplanes
lumbering through the sky; test firing the machine guns; wearing a flak vest and
helmet with a 45 cal pistol strapped on one’s side; sitting on an ammunition box
for protection of the “family jewels”; tossing chaff during the bomb run, which relieved
tension for Dick and the radio operator.
Post-mission,
The Red Feather Club was the favorite haunt of 95th BG non-coms. Its walls were
adorned with murals depicting the era of King Arthur and his knights, a contrast
to the Vargas girl art of most clubs for American airmen.
When
Dick visited Horham in 1995, seeing the building and remembering all the good
times in the club brought tears to his eyes.
“After
the mission we’d get cleaned up, take a shower, and come to The Red Feather
Club, drink gallons of beer and talk about the mission. The ground crews would
join us. They wanted to know everything that went on - - who was shot up, who had to bail out .
All these stories just flowed freely, like the beer. It was
wonderful.”
The
Red Feather Club was also the place for dances. Dick says, “The ‘Land Army’ was
a group of women who enlisted to
work the farms of England, because all of the guys had gone off to the service.
A group of these girls lived near our base, and they would come over to party
and we’d dance with them. I think
every time they came over , we’d fall in love with a different girl and they’d
fall in love with us, too.”
Dick
says that on one of his trips to England, 50 years later, he was in a store in
the Cotswolds buying lunch. Stewart says he would always inquire if there were
any locals who were in the Great War. The woman behind the counter said she
thought she had someone who worked there who was around during the war.
“She
went back and brought out this old lady. Her front teeth were missing and she
was carrying her mop and bucket. And she said, ‘I was here during the war. I was
a Land Army Girl. Us girls just loved you Yanks.’
“So
it was a bit of a letdown for me because I remembered the beautiful Land Army
Girls. But then, they were only 18 or 19 years old.”
The
Hanover, Germany Mission
The
target on March 14, 1945 was the railroad marshaling yards at Hanover. At the
time, most of the the danger to B-17s came from anti-aircraft guns instead of
Luftwaffe fighters. Just after dropping its bombs on the Hanover target,
Belligerent
Beauty was
rocked by several antiaircraft bursts, including a direct hit on the number
three engine.
Brumbaugh
struggled to fly the flak-damaged B-17 across Germany at tree-top level. He
managed to do so for at least a half hour, until he determined Belligerent
Beauty couldn’t
go any further. As it limped toward
Allied held ground, the B-17 was hit many times by lighter anti-aircraft fire,
and shrapnel from those rounds badly wounded Kuzma, the ball turret
gunner.
In
Stewart’s words, “His whole back side was shot off - his flesh was hanging on the control
cables in the fuselage where I worked. Del Siadek and myself had attempted to
give Kuzma morphine, but the little syrettes we had were just frozen hard. And I
can picture this today - - the two of us with these syrettes in our mouth, where
we thawed out the morphine, injected poor Kuzma, and helped to save his
life.”
Brumbaugh
managed to crash-land the bomber in a farmer’s field near Liege, Belgium, and
all the crew except Kuzma walked
away. The wounded ball turret gunner was given medical attention. He remained
behind while the crew survived on the generous supply of money in its escape
kit.
“We
just lived off the fat of the land for about three weeks. We would wander around
Brussels, visiting all the night clubs. When we would go into a club, they would
see we were Americans and they would start playing the “Beer Barrel Polka” or
“Deep in the Heart of Texas”. We
were honored guests.”
Liberty in London
Some
of Dick Stewart’s moist poignant wartime experiences came in the capital city of
England and the British empire - - London. For a young artist, the great city
offered a deep palette of experiences starting the moment one stepped off a
train at the Liverpool St. Station — a sign stated “Drink Bovril, puts lead in
your pecker”; the news stand where an old man would sing out, “papers, papers,
papers—condoms, condoms, condoms“; the Underground (subway tube) and the “bombed
out” Londoners who lived down there on the station platforms, oblivious to the thousands who walked by
their cots; Covent Gardens; the Royal Opera House turned into a dance hall;
Trafalgar Square with the statue of Lord Nelson atop a high column; movie
theatres with American GIs singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” to the music of
“God Save the King”; the Thames Embankment; and the Cockatoo Inn by Battersy
Bridge, where James McNeil Whistler lived and had tea with Oscar Wilde.
Dick was also, on at least two occasions,
a witness to the random destruction of the V-1 flying bombs. “In a Red Cross
house near Hyde Park, about four o’clock in the morning I heard this
terrific sound and then the window
came falling in over my bed.
Stewart vividly recalls the sights, the
sounds and most importantly, the people.
“We would fly three or four missions and
then take a trip to London. And I would usually stay at the Regent Palace Hotel
on the Piccadilly, or sometimes the Strand Hotel at Trafalgar Square. There were
no bathrooms in the room but down the hall they had bathtubs so big that you
could practically swim laps in them.
“The most exciting thing to do in Piccadilly
was to go down and flirt with the Piccadilly Commandos, the prostitutes. There
were hundreds of them, and they weren’t just English girls. They were from all
over Europe. Some of them were beautiful women, some of them were homely. Not
all the GIs intended to go home with them, they just liked to flirt with them.
The girls seemed to like to flirt, too. The GIs would make a pass at them and
the girls would make a pass at the GIs.
“The guys would be talking with one of
the Commandos on the street and an English guy in the infantry might try to cut
in, and the girl would just turn her back on him, so she could talk to the
Yanks. I felt sorry for the English because we arrived in England and we took
over their towns and cities and girls and they welcomed us for being
there.”
Stewart describes Piccadilly Circus at
night as another world, far from the terror of bombing missions. He spoke of the
night life, a carnival-like atmosphere with service men and women from all our
allies, the pubs with popular music from the States and England’s Vera Lynn, and
activity in darkened doorways of office buildings near the
square.
“You’d walk by and try not to look in the
openings. Because in almost every opening, there were GIs having a ‘quickie’. It
wasn’t just quick sex, it was sex standing up. I’ll leave it to your imagination
to fill in the details.”
Engaged to each other, Dick and Helen
gave each other the freedom to date while he was overseas. Stewart says he had a
girlfriend in London, who walked with a limp because she’d been injured in a V-1
buzz bomb explosion.
“I took her home one night on the ‘tube’
- - the Underground - - and said goodbye. It was very late as I came home... The
cars had all stopped running on the
Underground, so I had to walk about 2-1/2 miles back to my hotel, in the center
of London. It was a rainy, foggy night, and I was walking along briskly. All of
a sudden someone stepped out of a
doorway and started chasing me.”
Dick says it must have been someone
trying to ‘roll’ him for whatever money he might have. He responded with a full
sprint and simply outran his would-be assailant.
Nearly sixty years later, Dick Stewart
says,”Flying combat was sometimes a terrifying experience, but it was also a
great adventure— the greatest adventure of my life! That adventure now provides
me with exciting memories that amuse me in my old age.
“My experiences in the Air Force taught me responsibility and self-reliance that contributed immensely to my civilian life. In retrospect, I feel pride and honor in having flown the “big birds” of the 8th Air Force. When I get together with my crew and we have a few drinks, we often say that we would like to do it all over again.”