LA7M-JA

Parents address: Mr & Mrs Harry T Lustig

269 W. 72nd St, New York, NY

Wife’s address: Mrs Lucille Lustig

2410 Polk Ave, Ogden UT

High School: DeWitt Clinton, graduated Feb 1937.

Enlisted May 29, 1939

Graduated Air Corps Technical School at Chanute Field, Air Mechanics, April 1940

Stationed: Chanute Field, Ill; Hamilton Field, CA; Salt Lake City, UT.

Overseas since Nov 21, 1941, Campaingns: Australia, Java, New Guinea.

It was mid-February, but the afternoon sun of Java beat down on us like the Devil’s blow torch. Changing fuel tank self sealing cells on LB-30s isn’t exactly the best job for relaxing a white man either in that climate. What’s more, some of us were sweating additionally from slight cases of apprehensions, for the air raid alert siren had sounded over our tiny field at Djokaja. We boys who were ding the most sweating had just returned from spending a weeks work at our bomber command base at Malang. There, we’d caught our first real sight of how the Nips could work over an airfield -- but good. Somehow we’d just missed the raids, but what we saw of the aftermath didn’t leave us with any particular yearnings for a “veterans” label. As yet, none of the maintenance crew, sweating our guts our in that revetment, had actually been under fire. But we guys who had just come from Malang had sobered up quite readily.

I, for one, was keeping one peeled eyeball on the scrawny, but wiry little brown natives who were tediously engaged in building up the dirt walls of embankments about the ship. Their technique called for steady heads and one-track minds. All day long they would slowly file up the embankment with large baskets of dirt atop their heads, dump them; file slowly down again to refill, singing a nerve-racking, unvarying chant.

“Boys”, I said, “I’m watching them ‘cause when they start taking off, I won’t bother waiting for the “raid” siren to blow or red flag to be flown from that control tower. I’m just leaving.”

Maltiais informed us that he had his heart set and his toes turned toward an ideal little fox-hole nearby.

Across from us, near the next revetment, which housed another grounded ship, was a gun-pit cut flush with the ground, housing one of our cal .50 machine guns which had been removed from a grounded plane. It’s crew of two morose young Dutch soldiers sat near by boredly munching bananas. These .50’s on doubtful mounts were installed in a half dozen more places and they, together with about eight antique Lewis guns in pill-boxes manned by some Dutch reservists, constituted the local ack-ack. Of course, we had some glowing rumors of four near-by secret 3.7 inch ack ack, and also the presence of Brewster Buffalo, and Kittyhawk fighters. News of U.S. production was also taken into account, but we had more faith in our own rumors.

To collapse and remove the damaged self-sealing tank cell, we had to wedge a plank up into the wing and pry on the tank sufficiently to partially compress it and so allow one man -- a brave on -- to force his torso up into the space thus created. Once inside, he was to attempt to pull the top of the tank cell downwards. It was, in short, a hell of a job -- one for a midget in an oxygen mask who had turned superman.

One of the boys about to relieve the exhausted “G.I.” who had last attempted the job cautioned me: “Lemme know when that black ball (raid imminent) goes up -- I’m not sticking around like I used to.” (He’d been at Malang.)

And no sooner had he wiggled himself up into the wing than my heart started to pound and throat to tighten -- “Hey, that’s it!” A black fabric ball had replaced the alert warning flag from the great concrete control tower. Looking up towards the embankment, I perceived that the native workers having first economically, and carefully deposited their earth filled baskets, were now, themselves, but a fleeting (and fleeing) memory -- all two hundred of them. Which cinched things in my mind -- and in the other’s. As one man we released the plank which separated the tank cells and grabbed our personal equipment, tin hats, gas masks, and a couple of .45 pistols. This left Casey in a rather awkward position -- he’d been pinned by the suddenly expanded tank and was irritated to no end. We considerately released him by prying with the plank, then beat our strategic retreat after Maltais, who was all ready pointing to two vacant gun pits about fifty yards away from the revetments. A heavy clump of jungle grew close by, on the opposite side of which were some small wooden hangars. The two Dutch soldiers charged their machine guns. Across the nearby run-way strip, we could see personnel from the armament section lugging their heavy burdens of .50’s and loaded ammo cans toward their chosen emplacements. The Dutch men were already manning their well-nigh invisible pill boxes. We had, between us, two .45 automatics to man -- nothing else, so we decided to sit this one out, if it ever did come off. for there’d been other alarms like this one before, and they had been no more than alarms in the end. It was still hard for us to comprehend us -- the U.S. Army Air Corps -- the pride of the same -- that we should be “on the spot”. Those little yellow B____’s wouldn’t dare, anyhow. We’d heard that they handled their ships clumsily, that their guns had low muzzle velocity, etc. And that their aim was lousy. So we stood three men to a pit, stood up outside of them and watched our interceptors prepare to take off.

These ships, Dutch owned, were Curtis “Falcon” and Lockheed trainers, each armed with one fixed and one flexible .303 machine gun. Of course, they weren’t supposed to do anything more that to get away from that field -- though these Dutchmen had pulled off some suicidal stunts of recent date. Our own few ships -- “Fortresses” and LB-30s were on a combat mission.

We watched those Dutch flying fools take incredibly short take-off runs deliberately bounce their ships off the ground, then hedge-hop themselves out of sight.

The siren began to blow anew as the red flag of “raid on” (enemy sighted) went up on the tower, and the green-clad Dutch towerman went scampering downstairs to slit trenches at the base.

Only one nearby serviceable ship, an LB-30 which had been undergoing maintenance work, remained on the field. It was sitting on the concrete ramp before the field’s big stone and steel hangar, four hundred yards across from us.

We literally raked the hostile sky with our eyes, trying to peer behind it’s high-blown clouds. All was very still but for a few distant native drums, which slowly pulsed their warnings to their people, then were silent. Nothing was visible to our distant view of the lush jungles to the coast, 35 miles north, or to the awesome, smoking cone of the soaring, solitary volcano 20 miles to the south.

Then -- we heard them. Just gentle, distant droning at first, but approaching steadily from the west. Someone’s voice broke the spell. “God dammit, where the hell’s our fighters?” “Where the Hell’s our planes?”

“Wait’ll our P-47s get into mass-production, it’ll all be different then, a wise guy snickered. The droning didn’t increase in volume, they must have turned off.

A single, brown, erect native soldier emerged from somewhere to take his place by a fox-hole between the Dutch-manned .50 cal and ourselves. Almost at attention, his small bore bolt-action rifle firmly at his side.

“Hm-m-m, little guy’s got guts, all right.”

“Wish I had a gun myself; there’s nothing at all in the ship tho’.”

“Aw what good would a rifle do ya, tho’?”

Now the droning became insistent, louder.

“Anybuddy see anything?”

“I dont’ watta see anything.”

“God, it’s hot!”

“Hey, look-look-see ‘em?”

“Where -- I don’t -- oh yeah, yeah-h. Boy, their sure high!”

“I count two -- five -- seven -- nine --, no, eight -- eight of ‘em!”

Eight specks which formed themselves into single engined monoplanes, strung well out in file, and going like Hell. Scudding in and out of the clouds as they came directly over the field.

The padding inside my helmet was dangling, and I fussed with it, never lowering my eyes. We were still not under cover.

“How high you figger they are, about...”

“Whaddya think I am, a range-finder? -- Maybe fifteen, twenty thousand.”

Someone, probably me, attempted to whistle a sprightly tune. It was toneless as a boilers whine.

The Japs went around again without apparently loosing altitude, slower this time, but deliberately weaving about. Probably had hear that rumor about our ack-ack cannon. The little native soldier fingered his rifle.

“Goddam, where’s those _______ ack-ack guns?”

The wise guy sounded off again: “Aren’t you happy in the service?”

We laughed, nodded assent. “That’s right, they don’t seem to be doing a dam thing up there, but weavin’ around.”

“Yeah, but they’re gettin’ lower y’know.”

“Yeah, no dam ack-ack, no nothing.”

“Say, see that egg shaped thing under their bellies?”

A few of us gently began to ease in or towards our pits. The naive soldier stood rigid.

“Notice how that leader gets way ahead of the others?”

“He’s turning in , getting lower, see him? -- Two of the ships are just staying up there, doing nothing.”

“Say, don’t he look like a P-40?”

“Like a P-40 with a radial engine. More like a P-36.”

“Coming right for the field, ain’t he? Slowed down a lot.”

“Don’t make much noise, does he?”

A “.50” cut loose just then with a hard hammering, just as the leading Zero flattened and throttled back over the far side of the take-off strip. Fish-tailing expertly, sparks and wisps of smoke spurted from his nose with a sharp, vicious crackling as if packs of Chinese fire-crackers ignited simultaneously. The Dutch lairs chattered madly and the whole airport became filled with the sound of battle, the smell of cordite as everyone started expending cartridges.

Casey, Crow and myself found ourselves bunched up together in our pit staring into each other’s sweaty, saucer-eyed faces. As the air just above our pit became filled with whining, snapping, and the grass above could be heard being shipped by slugs, the realization -- lot’s of ‘em -- hit us all at once. This is “IT”. Up ‘till now it’d all been but a rough, grueling, distressing game, a man maneuver. And now, here it was, either we or they -- possibly both -- were going to kill or be killed -- a very conclusive realization, no room left for doubts. Particularly when the Nips, after ranging by their machine gun tracers, began blam blaming away with their 20 mm’s. Wing-cannon at some target just ahead of us, then hitting their throttles just over our humbled hats. They blotted out our sky above the pit as they would go by with their “whir-r-r-r-o-o-m-phs. The big orange disks on wings and Rising Sun on fuselages so close that we could have squirted ink from our fountain pen on their canopies. But, not having fire-arms much less fountain pens of any description, we resorted to fervid, if not silent, prayer, unsuccessfully attempting the while to pull our hitherto much-scorned helmets down over our shoulders. Out 4 ft wide and 5 ft deep pit apparently to our minds, offered some prime attraction to the slant-eyes, for they kept scaping their bellieds thru the few tree branches overhead. I was undergoing considerable mental stress each time they came over, for I couldn’t seem able to burrow under Casey and Crow who had monopolized the pit’s floor. Consequently there was a choice between exposing either my head or my narrow buttocks. Reason told me that a bullet in the head would be final, but a slug in the other place would be, besides ignoble, pretty damn painful with an incendiary. This inner struggle caused me such maneuvering that neither one nor the other end was favored.

The two Dutchmen in the nearby “.50” pit, while directly in the Japs rain of fire kept their gun blasting away steadily; the native soldier could be heard potting away wit his bolt action .25.

“Wonder if those guys in the other pit are OK?”

“I’d call ‘em -- hey, you guys -- OK?”

No answer -- call was repeated, this time with my head raised just a bit -- no reply yet.

“I’m gonna go over and see what the score is.”

“Oh no ya don’t, ya dope, get back down here.”

“Br-r-r-r-rp, came a fresh burst. The would-be hero got down quickly.

This time, though, they were concentrating on a target down the other runway, apparently in front of the hangar. A frying, splintering sound soon announced what it had been -- the parked LB-30. A moment later, the shooting ceased altogether, the same faint droning of engines still sounded.

“Let’s go see if those guys are all right.” We clambered out of our hole, taking our first deep breaths for the en minute scrap that had seemed like ten days. From the other pit in question popped up two helmets, followed by a third.

“Yeah-h, we’re OK.”

“Then why’n the hell didn’t you answer us, you dubb b____’s”

“Aw---”. The siren, blowing anew, cut us short.

Looking up we saw the high sinister specks. But there were only four of them now, where there had been eight at the outset. And the trailing ship was wobbling perceptibly as it made after its climbing, fast vanishing mates. It was all over -- for now.

Over by the hangar, the burning LB-30 slowly, tragically, nosed over as its undercarriage supports burnt away. We felt rotten inside, started to move towards it in a gesture to somehow save something. But the flames reached its ammo boxes and with fierce popping, the cal .50 cartridges began to detonate -- so we stayed away.

Erect once again, our little native rifleman beamed pridefully at us -- must have done some good with his pop-gun.

At the Dutchmen’s pit, the boys who had been pouring slugs steadily, our words of praise, which, while not understood, were greeted with broad, joyous grins -- they claimed two Japs downed, pointing that they had crashed over in some of the cane-break. At that moment, a jeep with a Dutch officer and men, guns at the ready, bounded over in that direction. The two gunners were making love to their U.S. -- built toy. They had fired from an aircraft gun -- without any jamming. Somehow their cheerfulness combined with our own unparalleled joy in living helped to ease most of the anger and remorse we felt over losing our well-nigh irreplaceable “LB.”

Without looking back over our shoulders, we returned to that damned wing tank removal. We had to “get back on the ball.” There was a job to be done.

That potent Dutch beer certainly did go down our gullets easily that night.