“I wanted to regain for a few moments the experiences that could be relived only by those men who flew from this field in that long ago time of war,” wrote 62-year-old Texan, John Comer, on his return to his former air base in England in 1972. “We were such ordinary men from whom the extraordinary was demanded.”
Comer’s return was one that was mirrored by thousands of other American airmen who revisited their British bases long after the Second World War had ended. A similar scene was depicted in the opening sequence of the 1949 movie, Twelve O’Clock High. But what John Comer wrote in the prologue to his book, Combat Crew, was a revelation. “Although I flew out of other combat airfields far distant from England, none was burned as deeply into my memory as Ridgewell. To me this was ground as hallowed as Lincoln’s Gettsyburg.”
Until I grabbed Comer’s book during a dash through Heathrow Airport in 2003, I’d never heard of Ridgewell. Yet, I was stunned to discover I lived just nine miles away. John Comer, then, was the instigator of an inspirational journey.
Comer had arrived in England in the summer of 1943 – the bloodiest period during the Combined Bomber Offensive. A former B-17 Flying Fortress engineer and top turret gunner with the Eighth Air Force’s 381st Bomb Group, he flew 25 combat missions; no mean feat when crews were given a one-in-four chance of survival. By contrast, two of his closest friends were less lucky, both killed in action on the day Comer left England.
Combat Crew compelled me to learn more about Ridgewell and the 381st. When I located Comer’s old base in 2003, there was almost nothing left. No control towers, no runways, no hardstands. On his return in 1972, its two hangars were still standing, although both were filled with farm machinery. “They had traded airplanes for tractors!” he’d grumbled. But the hangars were now gone. So, too, the vast majority of the airfield’s 500 or so buildings.
I was soon sharing John Comer’s consternation. How could something so “hallowed” be so disposed of? And if I hadn’t known about Ridgewell, why would anyone else? Locals were using public roads that were once bomber taxiways. Did they not know? Do they even care? All these questions soon had me searching for answers that might make sense of the place – somewhere Comer had strikingly likened to “Lincoln’s Gettysburg”.
Fortunately, in the early 2000s, there were some I could ask. Sadly, John Comer passed away before I had the chance, but there were others – like Ray Ater and Bob Gilbert.
I first met Ray Ater in the living room of a small Essex bungalow, home to Bill and Maureen Tatum. Ater was a tall, distinguished 90-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, who had been friends with the Tatums since his days as an administration clerk with the 381st at Ridgewell. It was his 16th trip back to England since the end of the war.
With my first live veteran sat captive before me, I immediately began interrogating him about his time at Ridgewell. Unfortunately, his memory of events was vague at best. He couldn’t recall “zig-zagging” across the Atlantic on RMS Queen Elizabeth as part of Operation BOLERO (the converted troopship slewed to avoid German U-Boats); he knew little about the cause of the explosion of a B-17 on its hardstand at Ridgewell on only the second day of combat operations; and he couldn’t remember much about VE Day, largely due to countless pints of “ale”. But when prompted by the Tatums about a local girl he’d once known, he became alert, straightened up, and described her to a tee. In that moment, he was lucid.
Although Bob Gilbert and I never met, his recollections were vivid. The 85-year-old lived in Murieta, California, which meant our interactions were limited to phone calls and emails. Gilbert had been a ball turret gunner assigned to the 381st in September 1944. His was an unenviable task requiring him to curl into a foetal position for hours on end, usually without a parachute, rotating his spherical turret while swinging twin 50-caliber machine guns to defend the bomber’s underside. The “ball” was reserved for the smallest man on the crew.
During our correspondence, it came to light that the pint-sized Californian was writing his own memoir, soon to be published under the title, The View From the Bottom Up: Growing Up Fast in World War II. It told the story of an 18-year-old who’d lived through the Great Depression, only to end up with a most unusual perspective on the Second World War. Our stimulating conversations (and Gilbert’s book) helped fill an empty gap in my research.
Someone who helped tie the whole thing together was the 381st’s literary chaplain, James Good Brown. Unfortunately, I had no opportunity to talk with him, as he passed away on Christmas Day 2008, aged 107. He did, however, leave behind the most detailed personal account of the three years the 381st was in existence. His The Mighty Men of the 381st: Heroes All was a literal Godsend when I finally obtained a copy. From observing a “city morgue” following the 381st’s worst combat mission on August 17, 1943 (110 men were lost in action); to detailing the crash of a B-17 near the base (one that saw him having to wrench bodies from its mangled wreckage); his book, written in the moment as a diary, took me deep inside Ridgewell and the heart of the 381st. I now look on it as “Ridgewell’s Bible”.
It was with an overwhelming sense of place that I found the building where James Good Brown had once lived, worked, and written this bible. Ridgewell’s chapel was still standing, despite fighting a losing battle with Mother Nature. At one end was Brown’s room. It’s still there – a dank, dark, weed-infested space, which had witnessed so many profound moments (Brown was woken to attend every one of the 381st’s 297 combat briefings). Just as the public were unwittingly driving along roads that had once been taxiways, so others strolled past this dilapidated place without knowing its significance. This saddened me.
Bomb Group was borne of that sentiment. It came from a quest to understand the background of places like Brown’s chapel, and to convey them in a meaningful way.
For some 20 years I lived and breathed Ridgewell, to the extent that I became a volunteer at a museum commemorating “Essex’s only long-term heavy bomber base”. It was in this role that I was able to connect with many hundreds of relatives of those who served. Each story became a part of the completed jigsaw; with one missing piece handed to me in 2019.
It is not accurately known how many 381st veterans are still with us. At the last count, only a handful remained. Gone were the days when more than 50 would attend the group’s Stateside reunions. It was with some surprise that I received an email explaining that a little-known veteran would be returning to England and was hoping to visit Ridgewell.
I was not familiar with the name Casey Bukowski, but I did know of his B-17. On February 22, 1944, during a period we now know as “Big Week” (a week-long period of sustained attacks on the Luftwaffe, its airfields, and the German aircraft industry), the ominously named Friday the 13th was shot down over Germany. Bukowski (its left waist gunner) and two others were the only survivors. That was the extent of my knowledge.
Three-quarters of a century after Friday the 13th had last taken off from Ridgewell, Casey Bukowski returned. I resisted the urge to fire a barrage of questions at him, but was keen to learn why Friday the 13th had been so named. I was told that he and his crew had suffered a training accident in the US when their B-17 suddenly caught fire inflight over Texas. They had no option but to bail out. It took place on Friday, August 13, 1943. “My crew agreed it would be a good name for our plane when we got to Europe,” Bukowski explained.
At Ridgewell, I watched as he stood to attention before the 381st Bomb Group’s memorial whispering, “I’m finally back home.” I understood what this meant. It had taken him just more than 75 years to make it back. Friday the 13th never did. It was smashed to pieces on the ground close to Bielefeld, Germany.
Although Ridgewell was Bukowski’s home for just four months, it was “home” – a place those like him had hoped to see again as they took off for their targets in Europe. Comer had once called it his “home, prison, and refuge.” It had then become his “hallowed” ground.
Like John Comer’s return to Ridgewell in 1972 was the prologue for Combat Crew, so Casey Bukowski’s became the same for Bomb Group. It was the culmination of a journey, which saw me stood in awe among the crumbling remnants of a wartime base, watching the return of an unassuming man who had been wounded, declared missing in action, then taken prisoner-of-war. There’s so much more to his story, but it would take another book. For now, Bomb Group says it all. It’s the story of those like Casey Bukowski (“ordinary men from whom the extraordinary was demanded”) and also an ode to “Comer’s Ridgewell.”
Paul Bingley is the author, with Mike Peters, of Bomb Group: The Eighth Air Force’s 381st and The Allied Air Offensive Over Europe.
