大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jenny Christian of the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library on behalf of Norman Marshank and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was with the 446th Bomb Group, 704 Squadron and we were a replacement crew and we began flying combat around the 20th June 1944. We came over on the Queen Mary with almost 20,000 people. I came over as a co-pilot and was checked out as a first pilot after about fifteen missions.

Just prior to the time we came overseas, they changed the requirement of twenty-five missions before you finished your tour and went home, to thirty. When we reached about twenty-five missions, it was changed again to 'more than thirty', which our group commander decided was thirty-one. When we finished thirty-one, there were three crews waiting for orders to go home, and we were advised that 8th Air Force had changed the requirement to thirty-five. When they changed it to thirty-five, I requested to go back to being a co-pilot so I could fly with my original crew.

We were shot down on our thirty-fourth mission, and I was a Prisoner Of War for seven months. On April 29th of 1945, we were liberated at Moosberg just north of Munich by part of General Patton's army (the 14th Armoured Division).

We were stationed outside Norwich, where we found the people extremely nice and lovely. However, when we got to London, the people there resented us. I understood how they felt, as some of the Americans there behaved badly and threw their money around. They must have liked us here in Norwich, as part of the main library is dedicated to us, which I think is wonderful.

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