Lot # : 408 - WWII NAMED 9TH AIR FORCE FLIGHT JACKET CATERPILLAR

Named uniform grouping of Sgt. Clarence Clark of the 597th Bomber Squadron, 397th Bomb Group of the 9th Air Force who flew 41 Combat Missions over France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He was shot down at Rouen. France at the Oissel Railway Bridge and bailed out West of Caen France on 8/11/1944. While in service he received the DFC, Air Medal with 7 oak leaf clusters, Good Conduct Medal, European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with 4 battle stars and the Distinguished Unit Citation. The flight jacket is a type B-14 is a size 38 and in excellent condition. Nicely patched out with a 9th Air Force SSI, Staff Sergeant Chevrons. Two Gold Overseas Stripes. Ribbon Bars Blue Backed Sterling Aerial Gunner Wings and Caterpillar Club Pin. The uniform is complete with a wool shirt that is also nicely patched out with a theater made 9th Air Force patch and matching chevrons. Trousers are stenciled with Sgt. Clarks name and service number. There are several other items including his period WWII Sunglasses, WWII lubricant for Machine Guns, Bulova Wristwatch issued to Caterpillar members and is inscribed to the reverse "S/SGT. CLARENCE H. CLARK 15337680 SHOT DOWN ROUEN FRANCE BAILED OUT NEAR CAEN FRANCE RESCUED BY CANADIAN INFANTRY AUGUST 11, 1944 B-26 MARTIN MARAUDER" A very rare and unusual item. Large lot of Ephemera including original and copy photos documents Ect. A shadow box that the Veteran erected himself and can been seen in the albums. The shadow box has replacement medals but does have a period bullion Catapillar club badge and a Balfour marked Sterling Aerial Gunner Wings. A large cutout piece of his faithful parachute that he used when he bailed out. There are also 5 VCR tapes containing pertinent information of the 9th Air Force and historical missions of the bomb group. A model airplane painted up exactly like S/Sgt Clarks plane including tail number. Modern sunglasses and his last license plate. Lastly a type written account of his time in service that reads: "In My Time by SSGT, Clarence H. Clark 15337680" Meeting my new and wonderful family that I love and owe so much, have insisted that I give them a complete resume of my life in the Army Air Force I kept no diary, so all of the story is based on memory, newspaper articles, photo's personal album and declassified material that I retrieved from the archives at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. All of the following is true to the best of my knowledge, although some dates and times may not be exact. I was 18 years old, enlisted in the Army Air Force unassigned at Wheeling, W.Va. I was shipped to Fort Thomas, Kentucky and sworn into the service on October 26, 1942. My next assignment was to the Army Air Force recruit training center, Atlantic City,N.J. I don't recall any training at this center whatsoever. Being unassigned and being an enlisted man you had your choice of assignments. 1 chose Aerial Gunnery, which I thought would be glamorous as they come. Got to wear a set of wings, flying, all of this is your young man's thinking. Little did I realize that this could be deadly. Testing at the time consisted of physical shape, depth perception and perfect eyesight. To become an Aerial Gunner in 1942 and part of 1943 was strict and limited to enlisted men. Later on in 1943 when volunteers began to decrease they had to go to drafted men. Then age, size and shape went out the window. Volunteers were decreasing due to the publicity of the Bomber loss during the raids over Germany during 1943. From Atlantic City I was shipped to Buckingham Army Air Force Flexible Gunnery School, Fort Myers, Florida, and started school on Nov. 29, 1942 and graduated on January 3, 1943, known as class 43-1 and promoted to Sergeant on the same day. From enlistment time to graduation time was two months, one week and two days, I guess it was some sort of a record. I was in charge of a group of men during all the transfers from Wheeling to Florida, and could never comprehend this assignment when I was the youngest of all. The best answer I could come up with, I must have been the toughest of the group. Gunnery school consisted of five weeks of intensive training, consisting of aircraft identification, close study of the 30 and 50 caliber machine guns, instruction in methods of estimating the speed and distance of planes. Rifle and machine gun practice on ground ranges, training in the operation of modern and complex power operator turret guns and finally practice firing from a plane at a target towed behind another plane. We were probably the last class to fire at targets from a single engine aircraft, known as the AT-6. All pilots at that time were Ssgts., I think they were promoted to officer rank in March or April of 1943. I had no problem with any class that they offered, I was gung ho and all the classes seemed to be made for me. I am reluctant to say that I was at the top of my class, but I will say I was one of the top two. One thing I was sure of, I could disassemble and assemble a caliber 50 machine gun blindfolded or otherwise faster than any in the class. I graduated from school on January 3, 1943. Known as Class 43-1, we were ordered to pack our gear and to report to a designated area as names were called and placed in certain groups to be shipped to radio, mechanics, armorer school or to some bomb groups for crew training. There were ten men left if I remember correctly whose names were never called. We stood around wondering what was going to happen to us. We took a lot of cat calls from the other groups, such as too dumb to go to another school, permanent K.P. duty, latrine scrubbers, etc. After a lifetime of waiting our names were called and said that we were to be retained as gunnery instructors at the base. you will be given a three day pass, issued a logo patch indicating that you are now a first class airman of this base. (NOTE: a first class airman could come and go from the base without a pass). All the cat calls ceased immediately, all we heard was one big cheer. I was assigned as an instructor of the 2nd student squadron, thinking that I was a big wheel at the age of 18. During the early stages of aerial gunnery the instructor taught all phases of gunnery which was quite a demanding job along with trying to control all the students. We had men from every walk of life and it took a stern hand to control them. Each instructor was in charge of approximately 50 men in a barracks, with the instructor stationed at the end of the barracks. Each instructor had 10 men in a class for 6 days a week and you carried out discipline as you saw fit and students were not allowed off base during training. Some leeway was given by the instructor for married men whose wives were visiting and a pass was issued from SPM Saturday to 5PM Sunday. I was relieved from duty during my second class of students and entered into a 48 hour course in Martin electric turrets, receiving a certificate of proficiency in operation and maintenance on February 27, 1943. Some time during 1943 sweeping changes were made in the method of training. Under the new system each instructor would specialize in only one phase of gunnery. This was a great improvement over the old system and you didn't have to take the students back and forth to class. It was great to sit up front at the desk and wait till the flight leader marched the students to your classroom. You had more time to study and become an expert in the subject that was assigned to you. Some instructors were shifted from one subject to another when they found that you were proficient enough to teach other subjects. This was good for the instructor in relieving you from the monotony of the same subject and also gave you more prestige as an instructor. Some instructors, including myself, were sent to Central Instructor School which was held on the base. The schooling was to hone your skills in teaching methods. All the instructors teaching this class were men in their late twenties and early thirties. All were privates and were school teachers and professors in civilian life, all were too old to be gunners. I was sent along with a few other instructors to a special school on twenty millimeter cannons. We could never figure out the reasoning for this class. Little did we know at the time that this gun was being used on the B-29 Bomber which we had no knowledge of. I guess they thought that they had better have a few extra gunners in case the casualty rate increased to an alarming rate. In November 1943, there were several airplane crashes killing all men on board. One of the men was Cpl. Edmond C. Stephens from Orlando, Florida. He was a good student and a friend of mine. I was assigned to accompany the body as escort to Orlando, Florida for interment. I was in charge of the Military aspect of the funeral, including the presentation of the National Flag to his wife. I was treated like royalty by relatives and friends, taking me out to eat, even loaning me a car if I so desired. During the following months of 1943 and beginning 1944 it was the same old routine, class after class. There were several of us old instructors who started to let it be known that we wanted to enter the war, it may pass us by. We were invincible and didn't really know what war in the sky was like and that you could be killed. On March 7, 1944, I was promoted to Ssgt. This should have triggered my senses of what was to come. If I had only know that when you were a Ssgt or above, you were above being placed on work detail by the enemy according to the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. All of us were under the impression that we were being shipped out due to our insistence of entering the war. Little did we know that our departure was due to the heavy loss of men in combat. During the middle of March 1944, forty instructors gunners were shipped out to a staging area in Greensboro, NC. We spent some time there and shipped on to Fort Hamilton, NY, where we departed by boat on May 11, 1944 and arrived in Liverpool, England on May 24, 1944. NOTE: While at Fort Hamilton and waiting to be shipped out a few of us were walking around and looking out over the water, which appeared to be 100 feet below us, someone found a pair of steps so down we went, at the bottom was this huge room with a retractable coastal gun about twenty five feet long and two feet in diameter at the breech. There were several steel doors marked "ammo stay out". There was an aperture for the gun to extend out of the bunker. We could look out and see people on the sidewalks outside of the Fort. Evidently this could not be seen from below. I always thought that I would like to return to the Fort and explore it again. After our arrival in England and run through the normal process some us were flown to Northern Ireland for training in a B-26 Martin Marauder. The B-26 was housed in a barn. Every day we would go out and practice on the turrets, waist guns and the tail turret. We were flown back to England and assigned to different groups. Sgt. Bernard Stipek and I were assigned to the 597 Bomb Sqd, 397th Bomb Grp. (M) B-26 Martin Marauder and were required to participate in regular and frequent flights on Special Order No. 150, dated July 15, 1944. We were designated as aerial gunners only. I flew my first mission on July 19, 1944 on my 20th birthday and oh what a surprise, there was light flak, but when I saw those puffs of black smoke, I knew they could kill or wound you. The mission didn't bother me but I knew there was more to come. On this mission I met Eugene J. Zielinksi, the engineer gunner with whom I would have a life long friendship. All of the crews had approximately twenty five missions when I joined the groups. They trained together for a year back in the USA. On my eighth mission, August 8, 1944, we ran out of gas and landed on a fighter strip No. A-12 in France. They gave us 200 gallons of gas and we were off to England. If you were a Flight Leader, you took off first on the mission and you were in the air longer than the rest of the flight and on long missions you were the first to run out of gas. On August 9, 1944 I flew my ninth and tenth missions. I was assigned to Lt. Col. Wood, the squadron commander to be in the lead ship as the tail gunner. Of all the experienced gunners in the group, I could never understand why me. On the second mission, I flew with my regular crew. On August 11, 1944 was my eleventh mission. We were to bomb the "Oissel" railroad bridge near Rouen, France. We were the flight leader and started to take flak about half way down the bomb run. We started to pull out of formation, took a direct hit in the left engine and were losing power. The right engine lost prop control and the left rudder cable had been severed. We also had several hits in the bomb bay and a fire had started with a tremendous amount of smoke flowing to the rear of the aircraft along with hydraulic fluid. We gunners in the rear of the aircraft were instructed to jettison all guns, ammo, flak suits and anything loose overboard to lighten the ship to maintain aircraft stability. Somewhere along the line the left engine was shut down and I can remember looking out the window and seeing the paint peeling off the wing from the excessive heat from the engine and the shell that hit it. There was a sudden jolt of the aircraft and the tail gunner apparently decided that the airplane wasn't going to fly much longer and bailed out over the channel, he is listed as MIA. We were informed by the pilot that we could leave the ship or stay for a while longer because the right engine was failing and it could be controlled only by feathering the prop, he told us that he was heading for land because we would never be able to cross the channel. Zielinski went through the aft bomb bay to extinguish the fire but on his return the fire had started again, the fire and hydraulic fluid was hard to contend with. You could hardly see or breathe. In the meantime I was trying to roll a canister of ammo from the upper turret and dropped it to the floor. At this time the plane rolled to the left and the turret foot rest pressed me against the side of the aircraft. I could not move a finger being pressed so tight against the aircraft. All I could think of was going down with the aircraft and what a horrible feeling 1 had. Suddenly the aircraft rolled to the right and the turret spun in that direction and I was free. The turret was a runaway due to the loss of electrical power and probably out of gear due to all the vibration. Zielinski and I were trying to find other ways to lighten the ship and stuck the ammo track from the waist guns out the window. All the ammo was gone so fast you couldn't see it. I had to place my left foot against the left window edge to direct the flow of hydraulic fluid from blinding us and keep our flying suits dry & my parachute cover was already wet and this caused me some concern. The smoke and fluid was getting unbearable when the bell rang to bail out, Zielinski first, then me, I don't remember anything when I left the aircraft, all I knew was, here I am floating towards earth. Looking at the ground was a sight of fire and guns, just the same as the place we left. I could see barrage balloons to my right and this struck a fear into me, all I could think of was drifting into them and having my chute collapse and I would fall like a rock. I couldn't believe the amount of large artillery guns that were being fired, large round smoke rings, black, blue, red and purple were formed around the gun as it was fired. I thought what a hell of a place to land and all I could think of was this is the enemy, I'm going to be a P.O.W. Everything was going through my mind on how I was going to cope with all the things to come. (I can recall even today the feeling of horror of being a POW.) Suddenly, bang, I was on the ground, shells landing in all directions and dirt falling on me like I was under a dump truck, immediately I thought that this was the end. Immediately two soldiers grabbed me by the shoulder straps and dragged me backwards and down a ramp to an underground bunker. I finally looked up and saw that they were Canadian soldiers. Oh happy day. Later on they told me that they were going to shoot me on the way down because I was wearing a pair of coveralls similar to the Germans, but they noticed that I had a pair of neon stripes of a Ssgt on my sleeves. The crew was scattered over a few miles of the battlefront and it was more than a week until we knew about the rest of the crew. The Navigator and Bombardier were found close to me. After the shelling died down the three of us were placed in a truck and they drove us toward the rear of the front lines, one would never believe that a truck ride would be out of this world. The truck stopped and the driver said get off and pointed to go in that direction. We started to walk and there was still small arms fire going all around us. You would never believe the human carnage that we saw. As we were walking into the little hamlet there was a Canadian soldier hanging a lister bag on the extension section of a house timber. We walked across the street and there were two dead German soldiers with their guns stuck in the ground and their helmets hanging on the butt of the gun, there was also a dead cow next to them. I was going to take a gun or some other article from them, but thought that they may be booby trapped. From this point on I don't recall one earthly thing. My mind went totally blank and to this day I don't know how I got back to England. (NOTE: For years I thought that some day I would recall what happened but I never did). I have been told that we found our way to an emergency airfield near Omaha Beach and were flown back to England. The first recollection that I had was being interrogated in London. They sent a member of our squadron to identify us and we were flown back to the base. There is a picture of our crew and a story of our shoot down in the book "Riding the Skies" by Bruce Stait and Brad Boger. A crew picture in "Wings of Courage" by Jack D. Stovall Jr. They probably thought I was a great gunner, they had me scheduled to fly on August 16, 1944 with a strange pilot. Some time on a date that I failed to mark down, I was flying with a strange crew, on landing the nose gear collapsed, all of a sudden here I am thirty feet off the ground in the tail all by myself. I have a picture of the plane, it was called El Lobo. Another close call. On September 29, 1944 we flew to Blitburg Germany to bomb troop barracks. We had our old crew together again with the exception of the co-pilot. This was no doubt the heaviest flak that we had ever encountered, the sky was black all around us. This was O.R. Buckler's (our original pilot) last mission. His back was in such pain (NOTE: when he bailed out on 8/11/44 his chute opened and he hit the ground a few seconds later) that the co-pilot had to land the plane. Buckler was shipped back to the states within a few days. On December 27, 1944 I was scheduled with a crew that I did not know. On landing we had an engine cut out and ended up landing on part of the runway and the area next to it. The Army and the Army Air Force introduced a program to exchange personnel so that we may understand the problems that each of us encounter on the ground and in the air. We were fortunate to go during January 1945 during the biggest snowfall in Europe's history and during the outbreak of the Battle of the Bulge. We were on the outskirts of Houffalize Belgium on January 14 or 15, 1945, the town was officially taken on January 16, 1945. (Note: I have a picture of our crew and the Infantry men we were with). A scene that I'll never forget is seeing all the dead German soldiers lined up on each fence post and barb wire in all positions that one could imagine. The Infantryman did this in retaliation for what the Germans did to our troops at Malmedy, Belgium during the German threat at the start of the Battle of the Bulge on December 16, 1944, Fifty one years later while reading the monthly report of our group, I found the name of Pvt. Raymond 1. Hanson of the 10th Armored Division. Pvt. Hanson was visiting our group in February 1945 and decided to go on a bombing mission, the aircraft failed to return from the mission. On February 23, 1945 we were scheduled for a mission to Jackerath Germany. The flak was extremely heavy and black puffis all around the aircraft. We took a direct hit in the right engine and the aircraft took a diving turn to the right and fell 2000 feet. The co-pilot (his first mission) had his left leg severely wounded, The pilot had a piece of flak in his left upper arm. The Pedestal of the aircraft was caved in about three inches from the flak that hit the co-pilot. We had to make an emergency landing at A-93 Liege, Belgium on a single engine. The co-pilot was removed from the aircraft by medical personnel. We stayed all night at this landing strip so that the engine could be replaced. Zielinksi and I went over to a farmhouse to see if we could get permission to sleep in the barn. The family came out, Mother, Father, and two small children, ages probably four and six. We offered oranges, apples and candy bars to the children but they refused to take them. They had never seen fruit before because they were born during the German occupation. The parents convinced the children that the gifts were good to eat. They gave us permission to sleep in the barn. On a mission that I failed to note the date and target, I was flying with Lt. Col. Berger. We were hit by flak in the left wing between the engine and the fuselage. I called the pilot and informed him that we had a three inch stream of gasoline coming from the wing and under no circumstances should he alter course and also that the other planes in the flight were pulling away from us knowing that at any moment we were going to be nothing but a big ball of fire. At this particular time I thought of asking permission to leave the ship, but I kept reporting that the leak was diminishing in size, finally the leak was sealed off (self sealing gas tanks). I was so saturated with fumes that I was afraid of static electricity blowing me to who knows where. Oh lucky me. Some time in March 1945 I was admitted to the hospital in Saint Quentin, France for a period of 21 days due to the mumps. The mumps no doubt saved my life because our group flew thirty missions during March and there is no doubt in my mind that one of them would have been the last of me. After leaving the hospital I flew my last mission on April 19, 1945. I don't recall much about the mission only that I hoped it would end soon. We were stationed at Dreux, France in September 1944. Zielinski and I decided to take a walk into the countryside. We went down this little valley and found a small house, no one was home. Firewood was stacked by the side of the house and everything was nice and neat. Out front there was a flower bed with a wooden cross in the middle. The cross held a dog tag of an American infantryman. We always wondered if Graves Registration ever found him. We did not enter the flower bed to check the narne for fear that it may have been booby trapped. I have lived through all the anguish and fear of battle. The terror of battle lingers with you till the day you die. All the scars of battle are not visible and I would like to know what kind of a man I would be today if I had missed all of these events. I hope that I have earned the blessings that were bestowed on me. You had to pick up courage from out of nowhere and be sure to never yield. I felt a great deal of apprehension and anxiety after being shot down, and found that I was totally frightened of combat and I have never been able to wash away the horrible times that I went through. I always wanted to live to a healthy old age so I would have more time to thank God for all the times that he was near me during my time in combat. I read one time that Scholars will make history more so than the combat men who were actually there during the action. Note: England lost 400 bombers during the last four months of the war, that was more bombers than they had at the beginning of the war. The U.S.A. lost 2500 bombers during 1944. I now end my service with the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with seven oak leaf clusters, good conduct medal, European African Middle East campaign ribbon with four battle stars, Distinguished Unit Citation and a member of the famed Caterpillar Club, and forty one missions. I spent one year, six months and twenty one days of Continental Service and one year, two months and fourteen days of Foreign Service.