Targets and Tinsel

We went down to the briefing room. We were all ready to go on our first trip and when we went down to the briefing room, of course the target was covered and as soon as they opened up the curtains and all the red lines were pointing to our most feared target which was Berlin, Aw!! Our hearts sank because we heard so much about Berlin and we thought, wow, our baptism of fire is going to be Berlin. Anyway, we did that trip but the fact on that trip I would open up my little window beside me, pull the blind up to look out and, yah. I was scared because you would see a line of tracer going out from somewhere, then you would see an explosion, you would know, wow, somebody got hit or all of a sudden out of the clear blue, out of the clear dark sky, an explosion from a ground anti aircraft so very quickly you realized that people were dying, planes were getting hit, people were dying, were suffering on this trip and so I kind of closed my curtain because yah, I was scared and so but I had a job to do. I had to listen to the radio. I had to make sure that I did not miss any communication from base because sometimes they would have a diversionary target. If the cloud formation was too heavy over the target or conditions were not right, they would have a diversionary target so instead of going to initial target, you would go to the secondary target but if you missed that signal, then your crew is going to the initial target and you were dead ducks.