The Boxcar Blues (32 page)

Of course if the cadet answered, yes, they
were left there until they collapsed. If they answered, no, they
were ridiculed for sitting in an uncomfortable position. Catwalk
suffered the hazing and bracing with the other cadets, but he
noticed, it wasn’t racially motivated and it was done to everyone
equally. This and the understanding that it was part of the
military routine made the treatment bearable, although some cadets
found it to be too much and dropped out of training.

Catwalk focused on his flight training so he
wouldn’t dwell on the events surrounding him. Tuskegee was often
described as “A hell hole of racism.” The people in town didn’t
want the black cadets there and often held town meetings trying to
find ways to get rid of the base. Although, the microcosm of cadets
and instructors were intent on making fighter pilots out of the
cadets, very few other people including most of the military brass,
supported the program.

On Kendall’s orders no blacks were allowed
to visit or join the officer’s club. Promotions to blacks were
non-existent and when black officers protested the “Colored” and
“White” signs on the toilets, they were told, “They were going to
take these signs and like them.”

Fortunately, help was on the horizon. In
1941 Colonel Noel F. Parrish joined the squadron as director of
flight training. Parrish, a keen student of the human mind,
eventually replaced Kendall as the base commander and had all
“colored” and “white” signs removed. He also arranged for black
entertainers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway and Lena Horne
to be brought in for dances and celebrity visits. Once the cadets
saw that they had someone who treated them like human beings moral
improved at once.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Catwalk
was out running when he heard the news from another cadet. “Hey,
Jackson, the Japs just bomber Pearl Harbor!” Stunned, Catwalk ran
to the mess tent where they had a radio. He found it jammed with
cadets eager to hear the news.

“
At seven fifty-five this
morning the peaceful calm of a Hawaiian Sunday morning was riddled
with the sound of Japanese Zeros and bombs exploding in Pearl
Harbor. The toll from the raid cannot be determined, but several
battle ships in the harbor have been sunk and most aircraft on the
island are in flames or shot up beyond repair.”

Catwalk left the mess tent with another
cadet. He said, “Now, for the first time since I got here, I feel
like I’m in a war.”

“
It’s more than just a
war. We got the Germans in Europe and the Japs in the Pacific.
We’re going to be fighting this one for a while.”

Catwalk’s class graduated on April 18, 1942.
He then went to Mabry Field in Tallahassee for advanced gunnery
training and back to Tuskegee to await orders. His orders came two
weeks later, although their destination was not revealed. They
boarded a bus for a ride to the Norfolk Navy Base, where they’d
crowd onto the USS Mariposa for destinations unknown.

It was on the bus that Catwalk got the
surprise of his life. As it was pulling out of Tuskegee the bus
stopped at a red light. Most of the men on board were nervously
jabbering, trying to guess their destination. Catwalk was looking
out the window, thinking about his family; he didn’t know how long
it would be before he saw them again.

His thoughts were interrupted by a young
lady walking down the street. She looked exactly like Sam. He
watched her; she had the same proud posture that Sam had, head held
high, walking with confidence. Catwalk felt a tightening in his
throat and his heart beat increase. Then, he remembered that Sam
had told him that she had a twin sister who’d moved to Alabama.
Could it be? Was he looking at the single living relative of the
only woman he’d ever loved.

By now the rest of the GIs noticed Catwalk’s
interest and the good-natured taunting began. “Take a good look,
Jackson. You won’t see any of them for a long time.”

“
She’ll be old by the time
you get back.”

“
Don’t ya’ wish you could
take her with?”

Ignoring their catcalls, he watched the
woman. When the bus pulled away and she turned and looked directly
at him, as if she knew she was being watched. He saw a smile and
her eyes, her nose, all her facial features were identical to
Sam’s; he felt like he was seeing a ghost. He almost yelled at the
driver to stop, but realized the futility.

When she was out of sight, he tried to
remember if Sam had mentioned where her sister lived, but couldn’t
recall a specific town. The guy next to him said, “Jackson, You
O.K.? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“
Yeah, I’m O.K. That woman
reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

For the entire voyage across the Atlantic,
Catwalk thought about that woman. He didn’t know how long he’d be
overseas, or if he’d ever return, but when he did he was coming
back to Tuskegee to look for that woman. He had to know.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

When Catwalk and the rest
of the 99
^th
arrived at Oued N’ja, Morocco, they found their living
conditions hadn’t improved. They lived in tents with an outside
mess and the airstrip, which hadn’t been well maintained, was dirt.
In dry weather the dust flew so much that visibility was measured
in feet. In wet weather the airstrip and their entire living areas
were mud.

Luckily, they brought with them 27 brand new
Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and the new aircraft raised everyone’s
spirits. Shortly after their arrival, two instructors with recent
combat experience joined the group and proved to be helpful in
preparing the pilots for actual combat. To test their skills, they
often engaged in practice dog fights with a nearby fighter bomber
group. After one training flight Catwalk told a fellow pilot, “I
remember how impressed I was the first time I flew the Jenny and
the first time I flew the Boeing Model 80. But flying the P-40 is
an experience all its own and I’ll never forget it.”

After a month of shaking down the new
aircraft and honing their aerial skills, the group moved to
Fardjouna, near Tunis. Catwalk’s first mission was to bomb gun
positions on Pantelleria Island, which proved to be uneventful
because the only opposition was light flak. Still, he agreed with
most of his fellow pilots that it felt good to be flying in defense
of his country.

Five weeks later they were assigned their
first mission to escort B-17 and B-24 bombers. It was during his
second mission that Catwalk first came face-to-face with German
fighters. He was at 10,000 feet in escort formation, when he saw
four Messerschmitts coming out of the sun. He radioed his wingman,
“Flight of four, ten o’clock, high.”

Catwalk then increased power and banked his
P-40 to engage the attacking Germans. Screaming toward them at
three hundred knots he fired his first rounds of actual combat. His
tracers seemed to fill the sky, but the German’s flew through his
rounds unscathed and kept on coming. He pulled the P-40 through a
six-G turn to re-engage the enemy. Before he could sight in on the
German, four British Supermarine Spitfires had jumped the Germans
who dove for the deck and fled.

After the sortie, he talked among the pilots
over a cold beer. He said, “The Spitfires just chased the Germans
away. It seems to me that we’d be better off if we shot them down.
That way we’ll never again have to deal with them.”

Another pilot chimed in, “That’s true, but
the limeys might be more interested in saving their ammunition in
case they run into a more formidable formation.”

For the next twenty minutes a debate ensued
about this and Catwalk realized there was more to this than firing
on the enemy at every opportunity.

The next three days were spent escorting
bombers to Sicily, Sciacca and Trapani. Several German aircraft
were spotted but they choose not to engage the formation. Catwalk
talked to his wingmen on the way back to the base. “The Germans
must have heard about us, they didn’t even take a look at the
bombers.”

“
They’re smart. They want
to survive the war.”

Another pilot said, “Maybe they got a sign
in the briefing room that reads: “Attack whites only.” This brought
laughter from the men who’d spent their lives sidestepping the
signs that prohibited them from so many activities that were only
available to white people.

On the fourth day twelve
P40s from the 99
^th
were escorting bombers over the Egadi Islands
when eighteen Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfe 190s appeared above
them at eighteen thousand feet. The radio call had just gone out
alerting the P-40s to the enemy aircraft, when the Germans
attacked.

Just as Catwalk shoved his throttle forward
to engage a German, he saw a P-40 take several hits in the wing and
tail. The aircraft went into a dive and Catwalk turned his
attention to the German who’d shot his wingman. They wove a
switchback trail through the skies until the Messerschmitt filled
his sights. Catwalk fired a thirty degree deflection shot and the
German aircraft exploded.

He then saw another P-40 with a German with
guns blazing on its tail. Catwalk dove on the German and fired. He
didn’t score, but the enemy aircraft broke off and departed the
area. He looked around for other enemy aircraft. Seeing none, they
continued on their escort mission, which continued with no further
sightings of Germans. Once he landed congratulations were in order
for Catwalk’s first kill. Over cold beer Catwalk’s fellow pilots
gave him the customary ribbing for “breaking his cherry” and he
felt great about it.

Catwalk was feeling pretty
good as he and his crew chief painted the first swastika,
signifying a downed German aircraft, on the side of his plane. Then
came a major assault in the other battle the
99
^th
had to fight—the Momyer report.

A captain held a copy of
the report and told the men about its contents. “Colonel Momyer is
the white commander of the 33
^rd
Fighter Group, and he
doesn’t support the black fighter squadron. His report all but
called us, the pilots in the 99
^th
, cowards. He said our air
discipline is not satisfactory, that we lack aggressiveness, and
that the expectations for future performance are low. The report
has already gone up the chain of command.”

A week later, after they’d
extended their perfect record of never having lost a bomber they
were escorting, the men of the 99
^th
learned that Time magazine
had picked up on the report and published an article that basically
asked, “Is the negro as good a soldier as the white
man?”

Again a senior officer addressed the troops,
“I know you men are as furious about the negative press as I am,
but there’s little we can do, even though we’ve actually performed
in an exceptional manner. I do, however, have some good news.
Colonel Davis has heard about his and he’s assured me that he will
take some action. Until then, keep up the good work.”

Colonel Benjamin O. Davis
had been a former CO of the 99
^th
. He knew what an excellent
job the men were doing and he knew there were many members of the
white military, Momyer being one of them, who sought to discredit
them. Davis testified before several committees on the performance
of the 99
^TH
. As a result of his actions General Eisenhower went on
record as saying Momyer’s report was inaccurate, but the damage had
already been done.

It was this lack of support that eventually
caused the black military men to adopt a double ‘V’. Many Americans
had taken to flashing a ‘V’ for victory sign, to signify a victory
over axis forces. The black men however used a double ‘V’ because
they had to score a victory over the enemy troops, and score a
victory over the racism they faced on both the battle field and at
home.

Two months later the
99
^th
moved to Capodichino, Italy where they supported the battle
of Anzio and escorted allied ship convoys. In the first week at the
new field, the 99
^th
downed twenty German aircraft while racking up an
incredible eight kills in a single day. By the time they’d been at
the field two weeks, Catwalk had scored three more kills, but had
also come close to losing his aircraft to enemy gunfire.

They’d engaged a flight of Germans who were
firing on allied ships. Catwalk had just fired a short burst at a
Focke Wolfe and had gone in for the kill, when he saw tracers
whizzing past his own cockpit—someone was firing on him. He stayed
on the 190 and fired another burst, then saw the enemy flip over on
his back and crash into the sea. It was then that he felt more
rounds hitting his plane. A voice on the radio said, “I’m on him,
Cat, break left.”

Catwalk banked left and saw another P-40
hammer the German that had fired on him. Then he saw the smoke
coming from his cowling. A voice said, “You’ve been hit, Cat, bail
out.”

He looked at his gauges and saw low oil
pressure, but everything else looked good. He decided as long as
his engine had power, he’d try to limp back to the base. He
radioed, “I’ve got power, I’m going to try to make it back to the
base.”

Then he took a long look around him, because
being in a wounded ship meant he was a sitting duck for any
Germans. Seeing only friendlys, he turned for the base. A wingman
pulled up alongside him and said, “Cat, you’re leaking fuel out of
your starboard tank.”