The Pittsburgh Press (June 6, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, head of the 8th Air Force over here, noticed one day in the roster of officers at his staff headquarters the name of a Capt. Doolittle.
The name is not a very ordinary one, and he made a mental note that some day he would look the fellow up for a little chat. One day not long after that his phone rang and the voice at the other end said, “This is Capt. Doolittle.”
The general said:
Oh, yes, I had noticed your name and I meant to call you up sometime.
“I’d like to come in and see you,” said the voice at the other end.
The general said:
Why yes, do that. I’m pretty busy these days, but I’ll switch you to my aide and he’ll make an appointment for you. Glad you called, captain, I’ll look forward to seeing you.
He was just ready to hang up when the voice came back plaintively over the phone:
But Dad, this is me. Don’t you recognize me? I’ve got a package for you from Mom.
The general exploded, “Well, why in hell didn’t you say so in the first place?!”
It was Capt. Jimmy Doolittle Jr., a B-26 pilot in the 9th Air Force. The general hasn’t got around yet to seeing the other Capt. Doolittle. It’ll probably turn out to be his brother or something.
The last time I had seen Gen. Doolittle was some 16 months ago, way down at the desert airdrome of Biskra on the edge of the Sahara. That was when he was running our African bomber force that was plastering the Tunisian ports.
Gen. Doolittle flew in one afternoon from the far forward airdrome of Youks-les-Bains. The night before, his entire crew except for the co-pilot had been killed in a German bombing at the Youks Field.
His crew had manned their plane’s guns until it got too hot, and then made a run for an old bomb crater 50 yards away. It was one of those heartbreaking freaks of hard luck. A bomb hit the crater just as they reached it, and blew them all to pieces.
Gen. Doolittle has written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of letters to people who have lost sons or husbands in his air forces. But one of the men in that crew was the hardest subject he has ever had to write home about. Here is the reason:
When he led the famous raid on Tokyo, Doolittle had a mechanic who had been with him a long time. Doolittle was a colonel then. The mechanic went on the Tokyo raid with him.
You remember the details of that raid, which have gradually seeped out. The planes were badly scattered. Some were shot down over Japanese territory. Others ran out of gas. Some of the crews bailed out. Others landed in Russia. The remainders splattered themselves all over the rice paddles of China.
That night Doolittle was lower than he had ever been before in his life. There wasn’t any humor in the world for him that night. He sat with his head down and thought to himself:
You have balled up the biggest chance anybody could ever have. You have sure made a mess of this affair. You’ve lost most of your planes. The whole thing was a miserable failure. You’ll spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth for thus, and be lucky to get out of it that easy.
As he sat there, this sergeant-mechanic came up and said, “Don’t feel so bad about it, Colonel.”
Doolittle paid no attention. But the sergeant kept at him.
It’s not as bad as it seems. Why, I’ll bet you that within a year you’ll have a Congressional Medal for it and be a brigadier general.
Doolittle just snorted. The sergeant said:
Well, I’ll bet you so, And I’d like to ask one thing. As long as you’re flying, I’d like to be your mechanic.
That finally got inside Doolittle’s gloom. Somebody had confidence in him. He began to buck up. So, he said:
Son, as long as I’ve got an airplane, you’re its mechanic, even if we live to be a thousand years old.
As you know, he did get a Congressional Medal of Honor, and now he has not only one star but the three of a lieutenant general. And that sergeant, who devoted himself to Col. Doolittle that miserable night out there in China, was still Gen. Doolittle’s mechanic the night they landed at Youks-les-Bains in February of 1943. He was one of the men who ran for the shell hole that night.
Gen. Doolittle had to write the letter to his parents.