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Show ROBERT THAYER 2002 Hall was one inch taller; he was small. But he could fly. He could hav f1 wn a kit . H could fly any kind of aircraft that you wanted, and these other two-I alway fi lt lik if they had a tough mission, they sent Colonel Hall. And he was fearless. He led the Schweinfort raids, he led the Berlin raids, and always did an excellent job. And I have to tell you a little story on him, too. He loved to fly, and that was his whole life. He wasn't administrative at all; he was a flyer. So he got in with our maintenance officer, the service officer, and whenever they'd hear about an airplane crashing somewhere that didn't break up too much, he sent him over there with a truck, and they'd bring that aircraft back, and we had about five or six aircraft on our base that they restored, and he would fly it. He had a little Piper Cub, he had a Cessna, he had a Navy dive-bomber, and he had a C-47- that I remember. We often wondered what happened to them. We called it "Colonel Hall's Air Force." I flew with him in the Cub, Piper Cub; I flew with him in the Cessna, you know, just around England and that. He kind of took to me. He was, well, I got a promotion from Colonel Nazarro, I got two promotions from Colonel Lieber and he was the one I was telling you about, and then Colonel Hall gave me the Bronze Star, so all in all I did pretty well by all the commanders. But I always felt Colonel Hall was more favorable to me. And when we came home, when we got our orders to come back to the States, why, he came to me and said, "I'd like you to come home with me." He was going to fly one of the planes back. So I flew in a B-17 home, sitting right in back of Colonel Hall. I was very fortunate to do that. BEC: Really. It sounds like he did like you. ROB: Yeah. We had, well, you know, he had other ground officers, too, he brought back, but I always felt that that was kind of an honor [phone rings]. 33 |
