Taking Enemy Fire

From the time you crossed the French coast, about . . . oh you could see the ground, we'd be flying around 10 . . . between 10 and 12 thousand feet. And from the time you crossed the French coast you'd see nothing but flack coming at you, tracer bullets coming up at you. Not only at you... they missed an awful lot, fortunately. They weren't . . . I didn't seem to me to be very good shots on the ground. They, they, their, their shells would explode either above you or below you. I remember one night, one, one shell exploded, well it wasn't too darn far from us because you could feel the jolt of it in the air craft. But we came through it alright. Oh there was usually a hole or two in the air craft. I know one night . . . that could be one of the nights we flew to Italy. But anyway there was a shell, shell went through just ahead of the tail gunner, missed him about that far. The hole would be probably that big. Now how the hell it ever missed the ailerons I don't know. But they're up here, I don't know how many came up here and the centre... they're through the centre. Now the shell came up through here I guess the hole would be probably that big where it went in and same where it came out. We didn't know until the next morning. Or maybe the rear gunner knew when he came out, I don't remember. But it was a good sized hole.