| OCR Text |
Show ROBERT THAYER D B '2002 (laughs). The "o's" and the "p's" and the' b's" little pieces would be flying laugh ). And this would all be done about-we'd get the field order-well to begin with I d go home in the evening, go back to my quarters after I d had dinner at the mess hall and then I had a telephone right at my bed, which was one of the perks of being Communications Officer, and they would call me and tell me the field order was coming in. Then they'd send a jeep down to get me, and I'd have to get dressed and get ready, and go back up. And this would be, probably, I would say, generally, around twelve or twelve-thirty at night. Then we would prepare all the information, and get it from the field order, prepare the information for the Flimsy Office. And then we would brief them, and the briefing was a real, real tense and interesting part of the mission because the Intelligence and the Operations and the Communications, the Armament, and the Ordnance, all had to present to the flyers. They brought all the, they brought everybodythey brought all of the officers in. They didn't bring in the enlisted men; they were taken directly out to the aircraft. But in this big briefing room they would have all of the officers in there, and then they had a big map on the wall. The wall was twice the size of that wall there, and they had a big map showing the area from England over to Europe. And on that map, when they pulled the drapes back-because it's all covered; it had all been prepared by the intelligence department-they pulled the drapes back, then the crews saw exactly where they were going. They had the routes marked out, showed them what the target was, and then the return route. They always came back a different way than they went over. They had big indications of where there was flack, where they could expect flack and everything. And there was a lot of intelligence that was manifested on those maps. And these, when they'd draw back those drapes, I can remember some of 20 |
