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'Big Russ and Me'
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How did all this affect Dad? On the base, the ground crews and the air crews lived in separate quarters, and some of the flyers referred to ground crews—especially the officers—as paddle feet or pencil pushers. These were not terms of endearment. And what was it like for the ground crew when a plane failed to return? Or, in Dad’s case, did the plane crash at Ainsdale make these other questions irrelevant? Billy Suchocki told me that when Dad was in the army, he was popular, happy, and full of good humor. He was that way after the war, too, but I find it hard to believe that the crash didn’t affect him or change him in some fundamental way.
And what was life like at the air base? One thing is clear: everyone complained about the food, especially the powdered eggs, which were served from enormous cast-iron vats. There was no butter, just orange marmalade. The men had plenty of meat, at least in theory, but most of it was Spam, or imitations of Spam, which was baked, breaded, or fried until the Americans were sick of it in any form. Once, on a visit to London, Dad and his friends went into a restaurant and ordered Welsh rarebit—which is often pronounced rabbit—in the hope of finally enjoying a good meal. They expected rabbit, and were deeply disappointed when the waitress brought them a concoction made mostly of melted cheese. Another disappointment for Dad, and for many other young Americans, was that the excellent English beer was always served warm. Dad gave up beer altogether, which for him was a sacrifice; during the war, he made do with scotch and soda. When he came home he switched back, because, as he put it, “I couldn’t afford scotch on a beer budget.”
Because the bombing missions over Germany were so dangerous and so stressful, about halfway through their tours, flight crews were given a week of rest and recuperation at various rest homes, sometimes known as flak shacks, that were operated by the Red Cross. Here the men could relax out of uniform and were free to ride horses or play golf or tennis. The food was good, too, with bacon and fresh eggs for breakfast and steak and ice cream on the dinner menu. The Palace Hotel in Southport was the largest of the Eighth Air Force’s rest homes, and on the morning of October 25, 1944, a B-24 left Flixton to take some of the men for a well-deserved vacation on the other side of the country. Several others on board had completed their missions and were on their way home. There were a couple of other passengers as well. “They asked if anyone wanted to go,” Billy Suchocki said. “Your dad and I went along for the ride.”
The plane took off in mid-morning. Just before 1 p.m., the pilot, Donald Cheffler, circled the landing field at Birkdale and began his third and final approach. “Cheffler was told not to land,” Lloyd Furthmyer, a survivor, remembered. “The visibility would have made any sane man not land. There was a fleld twenty miles away where the conditions were good, but he was blockheaded and determined to land.”
Another survivor, named Bert Dice, recalled that he heard copilot Alva Tompkins shouting to Cheffler, “You’re too low, you’re too low!” Cheffler responded, “Shut up!” and banked sharply to the right—so sharply that the wing hit the ground and the plane flipped over. According to an eyewitness on the ground, “One of the wings went straight up in the air, and the next moment the plane was a mass of flames.” Cheffler, Tompkins, and five others were killed instantly. Three more men died the next day.
The moment the plane went down, three railway men who were working nearby ran to the wreckage and carried several of the passengers away from the crash site. One of them was Billy Suchocki. Another was Dad. Billy has never forgotten what he saw: “I can close my eyes any time of the day, and I still see your dad stumbling back toward that burning plane.”
Dad remembers the first two approaches, but not the crash itself. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in the hospital with bad burns and a broken jaw. The nurses brought him steak, but he couldn’t eat a thing because his jaw was wired. Later, during his long recuperation, he became friendly with a young nurse named Margaret, and when his condition improved, they went out for a walk together. When he came back, one of his hospital buddies told me with a wry smile, the rubber bands on his jaw were all broken. So I guess Big Russ really was a young man once.
There is no question that Cheffler took an unnecessary risk when he insisted on trying to land the plane in bad weather. They had taken off with eight hours of fuel on board, which was more than enough to return to Bungay if a safe landing at Ainsdale or another nearby field was impossible, so he was certainly prepared for that contingency.
It’s tempting to focus on the pilot, but there were heroes in this story as well. Dad told me that the British doctors and nurses were extraordinarily kind and attentive, and I feel grateful, too, to Billy Suchocki and the railroad men who put themselves at risk to save several of the passengers. I don’t know what went on in their minds, but they chose to love their brothers, and I’m thankful they did. Dad’s father had started out as a train man, so a train man brought him into this world, and other train men, on another part of the planet, kept him alive in it.
Thanks to Ron Tompkins, and to some of the survivors of that accident, I have learned everything I could about that day, and I have relived that awful flight in my mind. When Billy Suchocki described what had happened, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the roaring fireball of a crashed plane and the badly injured young man who was going to become my father staggering toward his death. Only because his army buddy and two total strangers stopped him, do I have the honor of having Big Russ as my dad.
The plane crash took place about a month before Dad’s twenty-first birthday. What was he thinking and feeling in that hospital bed? Was he angry at the pilot? (I am, but he probably wasn’t.) Was he feeling sorry for himself? (I doubt that, too.) Did he blame himself for going along on that ?ight? (Possibly.) Did he wonder why he was spared when ten other men died? (That seems more likely, but I don’t really know.) No matter what he was going through, it was an awful lot for a young man away from home to absorb, especially in a society where you didn’t discuss your feelings. But he did say this: “I was thankful, because I knew my experience could have been a lot worse. Some of my friends suffered like hell.” Didn’t he realize that he, too, had suffered like hell? Even after that terrible accident he retained his innate optimism.
Dad’s bravery and his stoicism are in such stark contrast to the scenes we see played out every day in newspapers and on television, where people can’t wait to describe their pain and their agony in front of an audience. Dad wants no part of that. Despite everything he went through, he considers himself fortunate. After all, he came back from the war when many men did not. He spent the war thinking about terrifying scenarios, doing what he could to try to save the lives of men who were forced to bail out of a falling plane over enemy territory. He prepared parachutes for men in the worst of circumstances, but he never had to use one himself. Instead of feeling sorry for himself, Dad felt blessed and grateful that he was able to make a contribution.
It wasn’t just Dad, of course; it was a whole generation that embarked on a mission they had never even imagined, much less prepared for. When duty called, they answered immediately. They performed bravely and well, and if they complained, they did so with humor. Learning about Dad’s experience in the war has made me more aware of the many men, and women, too, who sacrificed and did their part to defeat the German and Japanese armies. They didn’t talk about it; they just did it.
“When I look back on it now,” Dad told me not long ago, “it was worth giving up three years of my life rather than be ruled by someone like Hitler.” If that scenario sounds improbable half a century later, it’s only because our side won the war. It’s easy to forget that Germany and Japan were mighty adversaries, and that when World War II began, America was almost totally unprepared for combat. Had events occurred in a slightly different way, we would be living today in a vastly different world.
It wasn’t until 1980, when I was thirty, that I really began to understand how Dad’s generation had affected the course of history. I was working in Washington when I was offered a fellowship to visit Europe for five weeks. I wasn’t sure I could spare the time, but my boss encouraged me and finally insisted that I go. I had never been overseas, and except for Dad during the war and my ancestors who were born there, nobody in my family had ever been to Europe. When I arrived in Germany, I decided to visit Dachau, the site of the notorious concentration camp, which is not far from Munich. As much as I had learned about World War II, and about the Holocaust, nothing prepared me for what I saw and felt at Dachau. The remnants of the camp were still there, including the barracks, the gas chambers, and the ovens where the bodies were burned.
Suddenly, another visitor, a short, older man, came running up to me. He threw himself at my knees, grabbed my ankles, and started sobbing. Then he stood up and started talking to me in Polish, of which I understood not a word, except for “American,” over and over again. I nodded yes. Then a woman came over and began to translate. This man was a Jew who had been a prisoner at Dachau when it was liberated by the Americans. He had come back to visit for the first time in thirty-five years, and when he saw me, looking like an American, he was overcome with grief and gratitude. Over and over he kept saying, “Thank you, America. Thank you, America.” He was crying, I was crying, and so were the other tourists who had gathered around us. He led me to a marker where one of the buildings had been, and he motioned for me to take his picture there.
It was hard to believe what had actually happened at Dachau, and being there did not make it any easier. But my encounter with this survivor, the embrace of this man who was liberated and saved from certain death, touched me to my core. I thought of Dad, and of all the other young Americans who went overseas in World War II to save the world from the tyrannical Nazi regime. When I returned to Munich, I went straight to the post office, and for the first time in my life, I placed an overseas call. I wanted to tell Dad what I had just experienced. And I wanted to thank him for going to war.
Excerpted from "Big Russ and Me," by Tim Russert. Copyright 2004. Miramax. All rights reserved.
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