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pg.38

his first pass- we had to bail out of the trailer but it's always too late. We have to stay there in the trailer until he's over the begging of the runway and by the time we get out of that overcrowded little unit with so much equipment it's usually too late - he's past us going around again. The law of averages is going to catch up with us some day....I just hope I'm not in thre trailer when a B-29 comes plowing into the side of the unit. I've seen a Negro solider mangled ot death by a spinning prop - it is not pleasant...  It's funny, I am no longer as afraid of the Japs as I am of our own planes. We are too near the runway. P-51's take off in the morning and pass within fifty feet of my tent... One morning a P-51 missed the GCA unit by only six feet and crashed a few yards away. The pilot was taking off on a morning mission, turned too soon, caught his wing in the ground and spun wildly into the midst of a group of high octane gasolene trucks. The entire plane was smashed to bits save for the cockpit. As we ran toward the scene of the ^[[smoking]] wreckage which at any moment threatened to burst into a holocaust with so much gasolene around, the drivers of the gasolene trucks [[strikethrough]] jumped i[[/strikethrough]] corageously jumped into their vehicles and drove them away. As we reached the smoking wreckage, the top of the cockpit slid back and amazingly the pilot [[strikethrough]] in [[/strikethrough]] stepped out, pale and drawn and said," Damn it". The flight surgeon forced him to get into a stretcher and he was placed [[strikethrough]] i [[/strikethrough]]