Walter Stewart, Benjamin, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, May 25, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 21 and 22

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WALTER TEWART May 25,2000 and I'd like to have you make me a package." They were real nice to do that. They made me a package, and I went up to Glasgow, and spent two or three days with Brother and Sister Junor, little Billy and the little girl-oh, they were cute little kids. On the way up on the train, I was eating a banana (I had about five or six of them), and the lady across the aisle-well dressed, with some lovely little children, two or three-said, "Lieutenant, I hate to be so nosy, but would you mind if I borrowed one of your bananas to show my kids? They've never seen one." So I said, "What about each one of them having one?" She said, "Oh, I didn't mean that, I didn't mean that!" I said, "I do, though." And those kids were amazed when their mother peeled them. They just reveled in those bananas. Of course, the same thing happened when I got to the Junor family. I had a lot of this American food--eggs and some nice bacon and stuff. We had good food. The air force, you know, we didn't have to pack ours on our back. So I had a good three days to visit the old mission. As to the war, oftentimes we'd be briefed, and we'd taxi out and the mission would be scrubbed. Sometimes we'd be right in the middle of a briefing room and the mission would be scrubbed. Sometimes we were briefed, maybe twice a week or so. A time or two we got in the air and would be called back You must remember, there was only one squadron of us (nine planes). Also, the weather was so undependable. We had no fighter cover. The RAP would go with us a little way, but Spitfires had little range. I think it was about February or March when our other three squadrons returned and told us of conditions in Africa. They told us they had lost a lot of airplanes down there. They were 29