Lee

When I contacted Lee he was very open and helpful. In the following I have included much of this extraordinary airman's memories. Most of the story of the Meltin' Pot could not have been written without Lee allowing me use of some of his personal memories and I am eternally grateful to him.

Leland Kessler, staff sergeant and gunner of the 368 Squadron, had signed enlistment papers almost a year ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. His great-great-grandfather had fought in Napoleon's Army in 1812. As he floated in the cold water off Greencastle his thoughts went back to how he got there.

Here are Lee's word of an earlier flight and what he thought of the crew.

By July of 1942 we began to form crews and these crews were given their own planes. I was assigned to captain William 'Curt' Melton's crew and was assigned top turret. The crews were placed in Flights A, B and C. Melton, the lead pilot, was the leader of A flight. At the time I had no idea how I ended up on his crew, but later I was told that his crew had been picked from their record. In other words, I must have done well at gunnery school. Either that or the others must have done lousy. All of us were so new at this that it made little difference.

The next phase of our training was practice bombing missions and each squadron held their own, ours schedule for Alamagorda, New Mexico. We would take off, fly there, drop our practice bombs on a designated target laid out in the desert and then return non-stop. This was to be like the real thing and everybody was excited. I was flying top turret with Captain Melton. None of us had any ammunition so we gunners were just going along for the ride at our respective positions. We flew at night and saw a great phenomenon over the Grand Canyon. On our left the moon was full and bright, but to our right was an electrical storm which we skirted. It was a beautiful sight, seeing the canyon by moonlight, but as we passed, a ball of blue fire appeared on the edge of our right wing. It moved from right to left and jumped over number four engine, then three and over the fuselage in front of me. Then it moved over the engines on the left wing and off the end of the wing. It happened so quick I was petrified and I thought about getting out of there. It was then I heard somebody on the intercom say, 'Boy, did you see that?' I screamed, 'I sure did! What the hell was it? I was out of the turret standing behind the pilots when Melton said, 'that was St. Elmo's Fire.' I had never heard of it until now and since neither of the pilots was concerned I guessed it was all right and climbed back in the turret.

By now our crew was formed and I liked all of them, although I didn't know all of the officers as well as I did the enlisted men.

Cherry, a farmboy from Indiana was a likeable kid and a good engineer. Snover was a short, meticulous guy who was hard to get to know, but he was a good radio man. Shoemaker was from Binghampton, New York and had worked in a foundry. He was several years older than the rest of us. Garland was from Texas, a farmer, but had put in a three year hitch with the Army before coming into the Air force, a very likeable guy. Not being around the officers other than flying they took a little longer to get to know but they were all decent guys. Melton was a tall gangly guy who rarely smiled much although not a college graduate gave the impression he was a West Pointer. He was all business and went by the book. We all admired him. Kramarinko was just the opposite. He was boyish, always cutting up, a jokester and got on Melton's nerves at times, but we all liked him. Pappy Grimes and Levy were two direct opposites. Grimes, a big guy and the oldest of the officers, was nicknamed, Pappy by the crew. He had been raised by an uncle and had previously planned to be a doctor, but ended up playing saxophone in Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra before being drafted. Levy was by nature a playboy. He was short, Jewish, had never worked before entering the service and had no plans of doing any here. His father was a big owner in the New York newspaper business and none of us could understand how his old man didn't keep him out of the service. He was one of the officers who had a car at Wendover as well as money, so he was a friend to everybody. We all liked him and so did Grimes, although he dominated him, I got along well with Levy and if and when he had to fire his gun, a 30 caliber up in the nose, he would pay me five bucks to clean it for him. I never knew if he didn't know how, or he was just lazy, or both, but it was a good deal for me. Robert Levy also did me a good turn.

One morning we were lying under the wing in the shade waiting for our plane's engine to be repaired when Pappy asked me where I lived. I told him and he said, 'Hell if I lived that close I'd go home.' His statement embarrassed me in front of the others, especially with Melton sitting there. Pappy must have seen the way I looked and said, 'What's the matter? Don't you want to go home?' Of course I did, and while I thought it was impossible I used the excuse that I did not have enough money At this Levy broke in saying he would help get me a plane reservation, but the catch was a pass. I looked at Melton who had a blank look on his face as though he was not interested in what had been said. Then Pappy leaned forward and said, 'How about it Curt? You can fix him up can't you? Melton looked at me smiled and muttered, 'I'll see what I can do.'

Later Pappy gave me $75 and Levy gave me an envelope with a letter stating the flight was official government business. The reservation was in his name, but if he was unable to make it I was to take his place and it gave my name. The letterhead was Westover field stationary and all very official looking. What a con artist he was, I learned that airline flights were very difficult to get, but this early in the war things were very confusing and if it was military connected it seemed to have priority and Levy made it look that way.

Later, before I went home I found out we would all be flying for Thurleigh when the weather improved. Two Royal Air Force Officers spoke to us as to what we might expect as to living conditions, weather and the English themselves. We were told that the biggest problem we may have was the language. This threw me since I knew we both spoke English, but they assured us it was quite different. Over there it was not a line, it was a queue. To get paid was to get screwed. This we thought was correct. To knock someone up, was to pick them up, which was quite different to our slang. Their money was called quid, pence, half-penny, shillings and pounds. In the Colonel's speech we talked of how we were to act. We were to be soldiers at all times, respect their women, and not refer to the English as 'Limeys'.

Lee Kessler passed away on 2nd October 2003.

Back