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Scanlon's War: An Enlisted Man Remembers

by G. R. Scanlon

302 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0711; ISBN 1-4120-0342-3; US$18.50, C$21.00, EUR15.00, £10.50

Scanlon's War: An Enlisted Man Remembers 1941-45 is the story of a P-38 mechanic who serves with the 94th Fighter Squadron in North Africa and Italian campaigns during WW II. George tells it like it was with California women, booze, and bombs. 302 pages, 30 squadron photos. It is the best and most honest enlisted man's story you will ever read.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book This book is NOT politically correct! It is a true story of what it was like for a tough little Irish blue-collar worker who goes AWOL from the Army to join the Air Force in WWII. He is a hard working enlisted man who never backs down from a fight but hates authority and incompetent officers. He loves women from California to England and North Africa. He is a maverick through and through! Scanlon's War: An Enlisted Man Remembers1941-45 was Copyrighted in 1999 and 200 copies published in August 1999 for Scanlon's 12th Reunion of the 94th Fighter Squadron, First Fighter Group, held in his home town of Franklin, PA August 11-14, 1999. The ISBN number was 1-883956-06-4. In October 1999 another 500 copies were printed for sale in area bookstores, through mailing lists and Amazon.com. Another 2,000 copies were printed April 11, 2000 as a result of sales increasing through advertising in Military type magazines.

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About the Author George Scanlon turned 84 on April 13, 2003. He is a 14-caret maverick and has spent most of his life so far fighting authority figures from his dictatorial Irish father, to military officers, and finally as Mayor of his small Northwestern Pennsylvania community. In 2002, he went to his WWII reunion in Billings, MT on the back of his son's motorcycle and plans more lengthy cycle trips this summer. He cam back from the War in 1945 to take care of his elderly parents and still lives in the same row house in Franklin's ethnic Third Ward. He has invented a baby bottle warmer and prospected for uranium in Canada. He is a great storyteller and most certainly "one of a kind."

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Sample Excerpts

I got my first three-day pass and headed for home with nothing but my right thumb to hitchhike a ride. I didn't get my pass until noon, and it took me until two the next morning to get home. Out of a three-day pass, I got twelve hours to visit and look around the town. Every time I turned around, my mother was handing me something to eat. The old man wanted to go walking so the local draft dodgers could see me. To him, any fellow who looked healthy should have been in the service.

I owned an old '28 Chevy that I'd left home with a friend of mine when I was drafted. When I had rolled my '37 Chevy into a tin can, I'd picked up the 1928 model from an old man who had used it to haul his bird dogs out to hunt. I got that little beauty for 50 bucks. and I got a hundred pounds of dog hair for nothing. Now I meant to take that car back with me without a permit from the Army. You had to be a corporal or buck sergeant before you could get a permit, plus you were required to have had more time in the service than I had. I solved that problem ahead of time by making a place in the woods to hide that old Chevy. It had a rumble seat that two small G.I.s could squeeze into, but they always came out with sore ribs.

When it was time to leave, my mother started crying an hour early. The old man was up at 4 a.m. frying me some eggs that looked like white doorknobs and were damn near as hard. I said something about them, and the old man replied, "If you'd gotten your ass out of bed when I yelled, they would have been fine."

"You're right," I said, "but those doorknobs aren't worth three hours' sleep." Nevertheless, I put the eggs between two slices of bread and told him how good they tasted. When the old Chevy had been stuffed full of food and we had all had a good cry, I was off in a cloud of burnt oil. In the rumble seat, I had an old suitcase stuffed full of civilian clothes; in my head, I had a plan that I hoped would work. Before I got to Fort Meade, I stopped at a rest stop and put on my civilian clothes. Although it's hard to believe, any civilian in any kind of car could drive through Fort Meade until the sun went down. No one batted an eye or asked any questions, and I never saw a civilian get stopped by the M.P. during the whole time I was there. I breezed through Fort Meade like a first-class citizen and headed for my hideout down in the woods. After changing into my uniform and packing my civvies in the old suitcase, I went to work covering up my old '28 Chevy with brush.

When it was hard for me to see the old boat, I walked away with a smile on my face. I didn't need to get a permit or to kiss someone's ass-I had my own private parking space right on the base, and it didn't cost me a dime. When the guys I ran around with found out that I had a car on the base, they went nuts. Gas was no problem, and the booze was free-all I had to bring was the old Chevy. No more hitching, man, we went in style. Try to imagine that beat up old '28 Chevy going down the main drag in Baltimore carrying five G.I.s loaded to the gills. I remember one night when some guys in a big beautiful Packard convertible pulled up beside us and poked fun at us. One of those smartasses yelled, "That long-necked fucker in the back seat looks like a fucking Jew."

Old Slim stretched up and out and said, "You're right, I am a Jew. But I'm not a fucking Jew, I'm a puking Jew." Then he puked all over the guys in the back seat. The driver tried to run us into the curb, but old Slim puked him one for the road. You don't get even many times when you're a G.I., but that was one night when the world was right for us.

Most of the nice bars and restaurants in Baltimore had signs in the window saying that soldiers and sailors weren't permitted. The first sign I saw like that blew my mind, and I walked right in the front door and up to the bar. "Gimme a beer please," I said.

The bartender was so taken aback that he sat one on the bar. But before I could grab it, the bouncer picked it up and said, "Can't you read that sign in the window?"

"Is that beer you got in your hand any good?" I asked him.

"Hell yes, it's good beer," he said.

"That's great, you big bastard," I said. "Shove it up your ass, then. Good things won't hurt you." Before he could grab me and wring my neck, I jumped out the door and flipped it back as hard as I could. It took that bouncer right between the eyes.

I drifted down to the waterfront where they loved everybody. The bars were long and narrow, and the women were huge and good-looking. I mean, they were six feet tall, weighed at least 200 lbs, and had the biggest tits I'd ever seen. If they thought you were nice and wouldn't start any trouble, they'd lean over the bar in their low-cut dresses, look you straight in the eye and ask, "What would you like, darling?" If you stared too long at those beautiful soft mounds of flesh, you got an icy stare back and maybe a "Not here, soldier." I used to just smile and say, "God, those are beautiful. Give me a beer before I die of a broken heart." That got me a big smile and a good friend whenever I was in town.

The tires were shot on the old Chevy, and a good many nights we came home on the rims. One night we got out too far, and when we got back the wheel was egg-shaped. Not too long after that in Baltimore we blew a tire, and the only spare we had was our egg-shaped wheel. We made the whole city laugh when we hit the main drag.

Before we got some old second-hand tires that would fit the wheels, we were down to patching the tires right along with the tubes. We cut up our floormat twice, and the tires were so loose on the wheels that we didn't have to take them off to patch the tubes. We just jacked that old care up, pulled the tube out, and left the tire. When we forgot the jack, we just picked the old Chevy up and piled rocks or logs under the axle.

In town with five guys in her, I had to drive in second gear. High was out of the question; she just chugged down and stopped. The radiator started to go, and we got some new stuff that was supposed to run around in your radiator and find the leak and plug it. It worked so damn well that it plugged the whole thing. Some guys suggested caustic soda, which would clean anything that was plugged especially radiators. We loaded the old radiator up with the stuff and drove into Baltimore to have some fun. The old Chevy was steaming and looking like she was ready to blow that radiator clean off.

We pulled into a gas station to buy two gallons of gas, and before we could say, "For Christ's sake don't touch that radiator cap," the attendant did. The cap flew ten feet straight up, and caustic soda blew all over the gas station. the wind was blowing away from us, but the attendant looked like a snowman. He hadn't been boiled alive, but he sure looked like hell.

The next thing to go was the little pump on the side of the carburetor. There was supposed to be some kind of connection between the foot feed and the pump, but it fell off one night down in the woods and we never found it. The old girl ran fine on the level, but when you came to a steep hill you were out of luck. We solved both problems and it didn't cost us a sent. When we got into hill country, we had two guys rid the front fenders, one with a five-gallon can with a long spout pouring water in the radiator and the other guy working the pump on the carburetor by hand.

* * *

Stuka Juice was the best drink in our outfit, and you couldn't get it anywhere else. This gave some of our officers a pain in the ass, because we now had better booze than them and ice with which to cool it down. We ran our bar with a tight hand, and we lived by a set of good rules. No money for drinks ever exchanged hands; instead, we hand our own paper money made at the orderly room and sold there also, for real money. On payday we'd purchase a stack of play money, and when we wanted a drink at the bar we'd tear off the price and give it to the bartender. He'd place it a metal box for a bean counter in our office. The person tending the bar was not permitted to drink and could refuse to serve any man who got drunk, came there drunk, or didn't belong to the 94th.

No officer was permitted in our bar when it was occupied by enlisted men. We figured that if we couldn't enter the officer's bar, we had the right to keep them from our place. On weeknights the bar closed at 10 p.m., but weekends got a little wild. I was running the bar one Saturday afternoon when two pilots walked in and demanded ice and Stuka Juice to take back to their bar. I walked up to both men and said, "Gentlemen, you're not permitted in our bar. This place is off limits to officers." They both puffed up like sparrows on a cold winter day and tried to outrank me. Eventually they backed out the door bitching and promised to go to the orderly room and report me. I said, "Gentlemen, that won't be necessary, because I'm going to report your conduct in our bar right now." Out the door I went and over to Major Beleau's office. He was surprised that those pilots had pulled that stunt, and he promised to see that it never happened again. I'm pleased to remember that it never did, even though I got some dirty looks for a few days. Our regular pilots thought we had done the right thing, and one of them even gave me a fifth of his own whiskey from the States.

We only had one real good fight at our bar, and I was half of it. Someone was playing jazz on that old piano and one of our own Texas cowboys was bleating like a jilted sheep, when the piano man stopped for a drink. Everyone was having a hell of a good time, when in walked "Big Woods," drunk and mean. He shoved his way through to the bar and bellowed, "Give me a drink, and make it quick." My helper looked at me, and I told him to move out of the way.

I bellowed back at Woods, "You can't get a drink in here. You're drunk and I just shut you off."

"Why you little S.O.B.," he yelled. "I can lick you with one hand, drunk or sober."

"You big son-of-a-bitch," I yelled back, "you can't lick me with both hands." We had had a platform built behind the bar to keep our feet out of spilled drinks and the drainwater from our cooler, so I was looking down his throat and was off balance. He caught me by surprise, and with two giant hands and long strong arms he jerked me tight over his head and let me fly. I landed on one of our belly tank tables, and we both crashed to the cement floor. When he leaned into finish me, I kicked him in the stomach and that gave me a chance to get off the floor and defend myself.

Just for a moment, it looked like that was going to be all there was. Then Big Woods bellowed and came at me head down like a real bull. The room split in half, one half yelling for me, and the other for Big Woods. I ducked under that first charge, and using his momentum I sent him sailing four feet into the stone wall. I rushed at him to get a chokehold, but he moved before I could get it locked on. Then he put one on me, but I pulled my neck out just in time so the pressure went around my head and across the tops of my ears instead. Both of them split like small bananas, and the sap in my sinuses squirted out my nose like toothpaste.

It was then that I knew I'd have to fight dirty, if I was to survive. With all my strength I put an elbow in his guts, and when he let go of my head I put a knee in where my elbow had come out. At one point he crushed me to his chest, but I opened my mouth in time to half bite off a mouthful of his breast before he let me go. Twice he tried to crush my head, and the second time I bit him. After that, it was "pick up and smash down" time, until all the tables were just flat boards with nails sticking up. The crowd just shove the debris aside and screamed for more blood. We strong-armed eachother until neither of us could stand up, then we rolled on the floor like two snakes making love. When neither of us could raise a hand or stand on our own, the men pulled us apart and let us lie. I finally got up, staggered to the bar, had myself a big shot of Stuka Juice, and slid to the floor like a wet towel in the locker room. The boys went nuts, and everyone yelled. The boys who were on my side picked me up and carried me to my tent, pulled off my clothes, tucked me into my cot, and pulled down the net.

The next morning I was one huge sore muscle with ripped eartops. My good friend Pete poured me a double shot of booze, washed my swollen face, and combed my hair. I remember telling him, "I don't think I can make it."

"Bullshit!" he said. "You whipped that big man's ass last night, and by God you have to walk to chow to show those fuckers what you're made of. Wait five minutes, Scanlon, until you get your sealegs - and make sure that booze stays down." He patted me on my sore back and added, "God damn, you are one tough little man. I love you!" and out the door he went. "I'll save you a seat at the mess hall," he shouted over his shoulder.

When I walked out of my tent and turned toward the mess hall, the guys began to yell, "Champ, Champ." I waved and started to choke up but fought it back. By the time I got to the main path, Big Woods was waiting there for me. I didn't know what to expect, but I remembered what my old man used to say: "Get that first punch in fast to the panic button, just below the spot where the ribs meet." My old right arm was cocked and ready, and Big Woods got the message from my eyes. He put up both hands, smiled, and said, "No more, Scanlon. You proved your point. I couldn't beat you with both hands!" Then he put his arms around me and squeezed me easy. The gang in the mess hall went crazy and began to yell for both of us. Woods stopped and opened the front of his shirt, and I was ashamed at what I saw - two big flesh wounds that matched my teeth. Not to be outdone, I had him look at my split ears. We shook hands right there, got a big hand from the crowd, and put that fight behind us. I saw Woods one more time, fifty years later at one of our reunions, but he didn't remember me or the fight.

After chow we hand a roll call and a lecture about "conduct unbecoming soldiers of different rank." Our major told us, "Any more trouble like that what went on at the bar last night, and that will be your last night out. That place will be closed for the duration." I was asked to remain after the outfit was dismissed, and there I stood after the rest had vanished. I lit up a cigarette and tried to act calm, but my insides were jumping.

Finally the door to the orderly room opened and a G.I. yelled, "Scanlon, front and center." We recently had gotten a new officer fresh from the states to run the business end of the squadron. He had a tough reputation, and I was about to meet him firsthand. He was maybe two inches taller than me, barrel-chested, and had darting green eyes that gave him the look of a huge cornered river rat. When he smiled I wanted to laugh, because his fierce look changed to that of a pleasant likeable fellow who should have been working at a grocery store.

He put out his hand and said, "I'm new here, Scanlon, I know that I come with a bad reputation, and I like to meet badass G.I.s who beat up on big master sergeants. Please step into my office and have a chair." I waited until he twisted his chair around, stepped over the seat, put his forearms across the back and sat down staring at me. I sat down and gave him a direct look that I used to practice in my mirror. I refused to look away, and he smiled, rubbed his hands together, and said, "I heard it was one son-of-a-bitch - tell me about that fight last night."

I told him about having been in the back of the bar when Woods had come in drunk and demanding service, and that when I'd told him I wasn't permitted to serve drunks he'd flipped his lid. I told him the whole story, complete with the mouthful of ice and the shot of Stuka Juice. When I gave the major a look at my split ears and told him that that big son-of-a-bitch had squeezed my head so hard that the snot in my sinuses had come out my nose like toothpaste, he stood up and cheered.

"Son-of-a-bitch, I'd have given a hundred dollars to have seen you in action, Scanlon, " he said, and he ended that statement with and ear-to-ear grin. Then he said, "What in hell am I going to do with you, Scanlon?" If I bust you, I have to give Woods the same medicine." Then he looked me right in the eye and asked, "Was it a fair fight?"

"No," I said. "He was at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me, so I fought dirty. The first chance I got I gave him an elbow in the gut, then a knee in the nuts, and then I hit him in the throat with my elbow. One more thing - I bit him twice when he was smashing my head."

"Where in hell did you bite him?" he barked.

"On both breasts, as far in as my teeth would go," I answered.

"God damn, Scanlon, you are a friggin' savage," he said, and stood there shaking his head.

"I would have ripped out his bobbing apple," I said, "but I couldn't reach that high. You have to realize that that big man was out to do me in, and I was trying to save my life, sir." He walked over to the window and stood looking out on our small parade ground. Then he spoke in a whisper that had a razor-edge and a promise of revenge.

"Scanlon, I'm going to let you two birds off the hook. But I'm telling you now - one more time and I'll dig a hole out there in the yard and put you in it dead. You got that?"

"Yes, sir!" was all I could say.

He walked over to his desk, looked at me with those wild green eyes, and said, "Scanlon, do you smoke?" Before I could answer, he pulled a carton of cigarettes out of his desk and laid them on top. Raleigh were the worst-smoking cigarettes of them all, and he was about to offer me a carton.

I thought quick and replied, "I gave up cigarettes, sir. I just smoke cigars when I can get them." He made another dive into the big drawer at the bottom side of his desk and tossed a box of cigars onto the top of the Raleighs.

"Take a fistful, Scanlon. Your prize for the fight last night."

"Thanks," I said, and opened the lid.

"Take the whole damn box, Scanlon, and forget where you got them." He stood up, put his hand out, and tested my grip. A slight smile tried to cross his face, but he held it back and said, "No more fighting at the bar or any place on this field. I meant what I said. I'll plant you in that yard."

"Yes, sir," I said, grabbed my cigars, gave him a snappy salute, and made for the door. In a couple of days the bar was put back together, and that was the last time anyone in the outfit offered to kick the shit out of me.

* * *

You could tell the war was coming to a close, because we went back to having tent and area inspections. These were sort of "sneak attacks" made by two or three officers together. As a result, we were always sweeping the floor, making our beds, and rolling up the sides of our tents to let the farts out onto the wind for all to enjoy. My last fart sack was inside a belly tank crate. I had hinges on the side facing the stove, and I left it open except when I went on pass. Then I would fold it down and shut the place up like a box. I also fastened my mosquito net on top so I could roll it down when I was resting or sleeping at night. All of this stuff was portable, and it came apart when we moved to another location. The boards in the tent floors worked the same way.

Some of us with more guts than most hooked into the officer's electric line without permission. We had gone for years without electricity, but if the officer's line ran within fifty feet of my tent, I had light. I would dig a shallow trench from the line to the side of my tent, then wait for a dark night when the camp was quiet. I would splice into the officer's line from the bottom and snake it over to my bunk. The trick was to smooth out the ground and make it look natural again after the line was covered up. Inside our tent, I ran the line under the wooden floor beneath my box, through the hollow side, and out a hole large enough for a fifty-watt bulb. When I left my bunk, I poked the bulb back down into the hole with a string hanging out my side. When I wanted light I pulled the string, the bulb came up, and I had to do was tighten the bulb in the socket.

* * *

While we were in Corsica, I saw a plane crash that haunts me to this day. Sometimes when I'm down now, or when I see a bad plane crash on TV, I come close to crying. (As I grow older, I've softened up and now cry much more easily. Some of the other old-timers at our reunions also admit to bouts of depression and crying spells when they think of those days with the First Fighter Group). My plane was on a mission, and I was killing time just walking around. I was at the edge of the landing strip and was thinking about crossing over it - just like the chicken, to get to the other side. Our group's B-17, which we called the "cock wagon," was due to arrive soon with a load of beer to be divided among the squadrons, especially for the G.I.s. About ten G.I.s who were going home on rotation were flying in for one more going away party with their old buddies. When I took a second look up and down the strip, I saw that old B-17 coming in at low level and getting ready to land. Suddenly, a flare shot up into the sky at the other end of the field, and that's when I saw the crippled P-38 coming in steep for a landing.

The pilot in the B-17 was a fighter pilot and reacted like one. He racked the stick back and turned to the left, and that big bomber climbed like a fighter for a few seconds, then started to stall out. The pilot pushed the throttles full forward, and we could hear those four engines scream to high heaven as that big plane hung in the sky for one moment moving sideways - then it flipped over and dove into the ground. Before it flipped, I was almost directly beneath it. I had on a pair of shorts and G.I. shoes that I'd cut into sandals when I'd been in the desert, and I started running through head-high brush that stung the hell out of me. I turned my head for one quick look and realized that I was saved.

I saw the plane hit the ground. there was no explosion, and it stood there with the engines covered by the wings; then it fell flat on the ground as if it had made a belly landing. The fuselage was intact, and that big tail stood there without a mark on it. I ran around the plane, but everything was jammed together from the crash. Men were still alive inside and were screaming for help: "Get us out before she blows!"

I saw a big crane mounted on wheels about 200 feet away, so I ran over to it. A G.I. was standing there, and I yelled, "Can you operate this machine?" He shook his head "yes" and jumped in the cab. He set the brakes on the truck, got on the crane, and took the brake off the winch. I grabbed the hook and ran toward the tail of the plane. I could hear those men screaming as I gathered the slack in the cable and heaved that hook up over the fuselage and down the other side. As I was placing the hook over the line so we could pull the fuselage away from the engines before the plane exploded, I heard a voice behind me say, "Just what the hell do you think you're doing with my crane, soldier?" I turned to see an officer with captain's bars on his shoulders.

"Sir," I said, "there are men still alive in that plane screaming for help before it blows, and this crane can save some of them."

"Soldier," he replied, "take that cable off that plane and be quick about it. This is war, and I can have you shot if you don't do it now!" If looks could kill, that bastard would have dropped dead in his tracks. I pulled the cable off the fuselage and held tension on it so it would wind up straight on the winch. Then I walked over to the big crane, grabbed a pickax used for cutting metal, turned and looked that rank-happy bastard right in the eye, and had the urge to split him like banana. He opened his mouth to say something, turned his back to me, and walked away.

Turning away with his mouth shut saved his life. I ran over to that plane, and the G.I. who was operating the crane went with me. I asked him to keep an eye on those smoking engines and to grab me by the arm when he thought the plane was ready to blow, to make sure we didn't burn up. Every hole I cut in the fuselage was blocked by bracing, and the whole time I was swinging that ax, I could hear those men screaming. My friend kept yelling that we had to get out of there, and I was yelling back, "One more try!"

The odor of gasoline fumes was getting stronger when my friend yanked me around and screamed, "She's going up and so are we!" At that moment she blew, and we ran for our lives. I could feel my bare back and legs heat up, and I turned to see what was coming. A solid wall of flame, curved at the top, was coming down on us. We were so close to it that the blast of heat blew us out of the way, and it singed the hair on the back of my legs.

When I got to my feet, I saw something that haunts me to this day. The flames had settled down to ten feet, and as I watched, a G.I. came walking through that solid wall of flame. He was holding his arms out in front of his body like a sleep-walker, and the flesh from his hands and part of his forearms hung down like black banana skins that had rotted in the sun. His hair had been burned to a black cinder and was still smoking, and his ears left holes in his head when they had melted down. He stopped six feet in front of me, died standing, and fell over on his own face like a scorched log. One man was blown clear of that burning wreck, and five minutes later he died from shock. His right ankle was broken, and when he felt the doctor checking it he opened his eyes and said, "I'm OK, doc, look after my buddies." He never knew that his pals had been burned to death, but I've never forgotten. Fourteen med died that day, and thirteen were turned to cinders.

I cried on my way back to my tent, where I started to look for my big knife. I wanted to kill the friggin' captain, and a knife would be silent. I put on regular pants so I could hide the knife in my sock, and then I walked back to the wreck. I spent hours looking for that bastard, but he must have crawled back under his rock with the other snakes. I think there's something to the quotation, "Time heals all wounds." For years I had that captain's stupid face stamped in my memory bank so that I could recall it whenever I thought of those fourteen men. Then someone recalled that crash at one of our reunions, and that's when I realized that that captain's face had turned to dust in my mind. I still wonder, though, if he's still alive and if he ever regretted letting those men die without trying to save them. Did he ever learn that they had been ready to go home the next day? One thing was certain: he never came back to that crash scene, because I was there after it cooled down. I watched out guys pull the beer out of the back end where the cases must have slid when the pilot racked the stick back. At the time, we speculated that the load shifting could have been part of the problem, changing the way the plane reacted to the controls.

I know this sounds like hell, but the guys cleaning up the wreck got drunk on those bulging cans of beer while their friends' bodies were still melted to the wreckage. But their buddies' souls had long since departed - and if you believe that pure energy never dies, but goes back to where it belongs, then those G.I.s who died really had just shed an old overcoat. And what's so hard about that? I'd like to believe that we all might get a chance to pick up another on the road of life.

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Catalogue Information

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