The Cold Blue (2018) - full transcript

Whenever this war is over,

the victory will have been won

by you,

with the uniform you wear,

the chevrons on your sleeves,

and the instincts in your gut,

and the blood on your boots.

We will sail

across God's vast ocean,

where we will meet our enemy

and make the difference

between freedom of the world

and its enslavement.

You fought

bravely for your country.

You found in one another a bond

that exists only in combat.

Every man that's wounded,

every man I lose,

I have to believe

that it's all worthwhile

because our cause is just.

Well, I don't know.

The odds were all against you.

It was more or less like being

in death row in a penitentiary,

waiting on your turn,

and you knew it was coming.

You fly a real tough mission,

and you're so glad to get back,

and everybody says,

"Boy, we made it

through that one, didn't we?"

And the next morning

they'd come in,

put the flashlight

in your face...

"All right, boys, get up.

You're gonna be leavin'.

We're gonna be flyin'

in two hours."

Now, that's... that's tough.

I was 21 years old, yeah,

and we felt like

we could live forever.

Don't get me wrong.

We'd still get

that tight feeling...

when we would would see

bursting flak nearby,

when we'd see fighters...

We still got that feeling,

but...

you can't make a living

that way.

All you could do

is make a dying.

Anybody said

they weren't afraid,

they were full of crap.

'Cause you were always afraid

what was gonna happen next,

particularly in flak,

you're just waiting

for something to go off

around you.

And that's when the fighters

would come up.

One of the men in

our crew kept saying,

"I know I'm not gonna make it,"

et cetera, et cetera.

And you don't like to hear that.

And he was very concerned

because his wife

was expecting

within a day or two.

And, uh, the next day,

they had him flying,

which they shouldn't have had,

and...

they took so many men

from our crew to fly with him,

and they never made it back.

They crashed into the Channel.

And, incidentally...

And this isn't storytelling...

But he, he, uh...

he was killed

the day his son was born.

The war came,

and we went and did

what they told us to do.

That's the only thing I know.

The Japanese ruined my youth,

because I was 20 years old

or 19 years old

and everything was wonderful,

and the Japanese,

in one fell swoop,

ended all that.

And it lasted four years.

Well, I can see why

they get young fellas to fly to war,

or ground or submarines

and so forth.

When you're younger,

you feel you can do anything.

I think when you get older,

you get smarter.

There was

a 19-year-old navigator,

Jewish kid, sharp as a tack.

And I had some older boys,

my bombardier was 26 years old.

I was 22, 23.

Oldest man we had in our crew

was a Pennsylvania Dutchman,

32 years old.

We called him "Pappy."

Thirty-two years old!

Our navigator was 26,

and everybody else

was anywhere from 22, 23.

I can look back now

and see why...

young people are in a war...

Not older people.

Old people got better sense.

Sometimes they

say that the older you get,

the more wiser you get.

There weren't too many,

I don't think,

too much younger than me.

I flew every one

of my missions at 19.

The old man on our crew

was our waist gunner.

He was 25.

I'll tell ya, when we got

into this thing, you wanted to fly.

You know, you had a great time

training and all that.

But when you get over there,

and you got shot at the first time,

you knew you were

in deep doo-doo.

And you really

took life seriously after that.

They said we

was gonna fly 30 missions.

They started out at 25, and then they

changed it to 30 when we got there.

Then we got 26 missions in,

and they give us a week off,

then we come back and they says,

"You're gonna fly 35."

And that was kind of a shock.

It seemed like

I was flying all the time.

There were 40 bomb groups,

and our bomb group had a lot of people.

I don't know the logistics

of keepin' the fuel

and the ammunition,

loading the bombs at night,

getting 'em ready

for the next day.

I don't know how they did it.

When you're

in a position like that,

there's no tomorrow.

You do everything that you

want to do, that you can do,

when you feel like doing it,

and do it then,

because you may not get

the chance to do it again.

Wouldn't be

unusual, they'd wake you up,

the first thing you'd do

would be

go to the mess hall to eat.

The mess hall was all lit up

and everybody was laughing

and talking,

and usually,

they had Berlin Lynn,

or whatever her name was,

on the radio, broadcasting.

We hadn't been briefed yet,

we didn't know where

we was gonna go,

but this lady in Berlin

knew where we were gonna go.

And she says, "Boys,

you've got a tough one today."

You're going to

so-and-so and so-and-so,

and we'll be waitin' on ya."

And so...

that they knew more than we did.

Now, in the Air Force,

when we went to the kitchen

for breakfast,

and we were getting, say, eggs,

we'd get powdered eggs.

That's what they had.

Once in a while,

we would get fresh eggs.

You could get two over easy,

and this was a treat.

But we knew after a while

that when you got fresh eggs,

it meant you were gonna have

a real tough mission,

so they gave you fresh eggs.

That's the story.

We don't want fresh eggs,

but we want fresh eggs.

When you go in to

get ready for a flight,

you'd go into the locker room,

and you wore long johns,

and then you'd wear

the heated suit, put that on.

And we had gloves

that were attached to those.

You had to get your gloves

into those.

They came clear around

your ankles, too.

And then you had

your flight suits.

Those were the things

that you just wore.

Then you'd load back on a truck

and they'd take you to the area

where the debriefing rooms were,

so all the crews and everything

would be sitting there, waiting,

and they had a sheet

over the wall.

They'd pull the sheet back

and say,

"Our target today is Germany.

The weather looks pretty good

as near as we can tell."

One thing always

got me about these briefings.

The Catholic chaplain,

he was back in the corner

hearing confessions...

and giving out communions.

So you knew that you

was goin' some place

that you might not

come back from.

That was one of the

most amazing things of the war,

the choreographing of putting 1100

airplanes together in formation at war.

We'd all line up

on the perimeter strip

that come around to

the end of the runway.

And the lead ship

would taxi around and line up,

and when they fired the flare

to take off,

that lead ship

went down the runway.

Next man pulled right up

behind him.

Thirty seconds, he moved.

Thirty seconds,

the third man moved.

Every 30 seconds a plane

was goin' down that runway.

That lead plane

never got off the ground

before that second plane

was already running.

Well, we'd just spin

out there on the end of the runway

and give it full throttle,

and you had to have

enough speed for it

to lift all that load up.

You had a full gas load,

you had all your ammunition

for the guns,

and you had the bombload.

'Course, while you're up there,

I could see the sun comin' up

around the Earth,

and I thought that

was the most weird thing,

to see the sun comin' up and it's

dark on Earth, you're knowing.

But you realized what was

happening to you,

and the next thing you know,

why, the sun come up,

and you see all these airplanes

circling,

straining, so to speak,

to get up to the altitude

with a heavy load of bombs.

You had to form

up, and you had a circle

you were supposed to fly till you

got formed up with your group.

And then there'd be

another bomb group over here.

And one day we come within

three or four inches...

of flakin' up

another bomb group.

Well, on some of 'em,

when the young pilots'd come in

as replacements,

if I was first man to take off,

we'd be up in the air,

say, two or three hundred feet,

climbing,

all of a sudden, boom!

You'd see a bright flash,

a red flash,

and stuff coming down,

you knew darn well

it was a midair collision.

And those were scary times,

as far as getting up.

Two B-17s,

one came down right on top of the other.

They all went to their death.

That's when I started smokin',

by the way.

Well, actually,

I believe that our officers

were closer to the crew

than they were

with other officers.

As a crew, most crews

stuck pretty well together.

We did a lot together.

I don't think

we would have appreciated

one new man joining us.

We knew what each man

was capable of doing.

Each man did his job good,

and no one complained.

We were family in the

air... you absolutely had to be.

We all had our duties.

We just wanted to stay together.

And we flew 25 missions

as a crew, all of us together.

You're a family...

exactly... you have to be.

However,

I can remember one mission

when our flight engineer

came out smashed.

And I climbed all over him.

I said,

"What is wrong with you?"

We depended on one another.

There was a

lot of spit and polish

with the officers,

and that didn't happen.

Like you say,

we're a family of brothers...

and we didn't have time

for all that stuff.

But there was no saluting and...

and "Yes sir, no sir"

and all that.

Each guy was his own guy.

Well, of course,

each man would do his job

and we all knew exactly

who was gonna do what,

so to speak.

So I knew I had a good crew.

And we just

got along beautifully.

We had a crew chief

that took care of that plane

after we got it back

off a mission.

So the three of us

walked that plane,

looked at everything

on the ground,

ask him all the questions

we could think of.

If there was any little thing

that we thought we should

pay particular attention to,

for him to tell us.

You never flew the

same plane all the time.

It's just like your car

havin' an ouchie

and you take it in to Firestone

or somewhere to get fixed.

They'd work overnight,

all night long,

trying to patch planes.

As soon as you got in,

they would take care

of any damage,

they would get in the plane

and check the engines out,

start 'em up and check 'em out.

And they would

clean up everything.

Tremendous workers.

They were so good.

We came back in B-17s

with two engines,

with the tail fin shot up

and busted away...

with all kinds of holes

in the plane,

and in two days, that plane

was flying missions again.

We had armor on our crew.

And he'd be there when they...

Most cases, not all cases...

Sometimes a plane'd be loaded

before we ever got there.

The armor gunners

took care of all that.

They'd bring 'em out

on big carriers, and...

it was a dangerous job.

We did not load the bombs,

no, but we did come out and check.

They were all fused,

and they had fusing wires

stuck to the propeller.

These fusing wires

were hooked on the shackles

that the bombs are hung on,

and when they left the plane,

they would pull the wire out.

Now the bomb is alive.

If you've seen movies

and you hear bombs...

goin' down,

that's this fuse spinning out.

Now the bomb is live,

and once it hit,

of course, it detonates.

We had two missions where I

had to go back in the bomb bay

and put the cotter pins back in.

And that is a little hairy.

Why? 'Cause when you landed,

if you didn't,

the bombs were armed,

and if you had trouble,

of course, you'd detonate.

Well,

we talked about just about everything.

Our families, et cetera.

It didn't matter what it was.

We kept pretty much of a running

conversation between everybody.

It made the mission

go a little easier.

First thing you did,

soon as we cleared

the coast of England,

everybody would test their guns.

Well, of course,

I can only speak for myself,

but when you're in

hostile territory,

and I was in a top turret,

so all of my vision was 360...

90 degrees this way, ya know.

Contrails would

form at the tail of the ship.

The moisture in the air

and the ship flying through it

made the contrails.

And a lot times

we wouldn't have 'em,

because it depended on the

amount of moisture in the air.

Couldn't see a

prettier sight than that.

Kind of spell-bound,

ya know, spell-bound.

A beautiful sight.

If you're watching

on the ground over in Germany,

they tell me, it took about 30

minutes for 'em all to come over.

They said on a clear day

that the Germans could see us

coming 50 miles out

from the contrails.

And unfortunately,

when that happened,

that wasn't too good,

because they were ready for us.

In 1938, I was down in Chile,

and they threw a good will tour

down there.

I remember going out

with my father

and seeing these big planes.

And I said to my father,

"Someday I'm gonna fly in one of those."

Little did I know.

The B-17 was not

only a beautiful ship,

but it flew like a dream,

it flew like

an overgrown Piper Cub.

It flew nice and smooth.

Beautiful.

Took a lot of punishment.

The greatest

airplane ever built,

as far as I'm concerned.

It brought us back 35 times.

Sometimes in condition

that you would never even think

of trying to fly an airplane,

any other airplane,

that plane came back,

and that plane brought us back.

It was a marriage, I'll tell ya.

A lot of guys,

they'd name their own planes.

And they had

all kinds of kooky names.

The original crews

had a lot of good painters

and they had a of planes

that were decorated

and had logos on 'em and so on.

Vargas girls, like Petty

girl... Petty girls, Vargas girls,

sexy girls...

There weren't too many

serious things.

I think to keep guys loose.

Well...

on a warm day

it would be 20 below.

But sometimes it got 60 below.

And often times

I had to take my oxygen mask

and crack the ice out of it

and check if it would

freeze into the tube.

That was one of the worst parts

of the mission,

was the cold air.

The only time you didn't feel it

is when you were

fightin' fighters

or goin' over the target.

Oh, at 30,000 feet the...

I think the temperature drops

two degrees every thousand.

It'd be about 40 below

at that altitude.

In the cockpit, a little bit of heat

came off the number three engine,

it came into the cockpit

where the pilot and I sat.

And there's enough

to kind of keep your feet warm

and your hands.

Our ball turret

gunner had a gun problem,

his gun jammed,

and he took his gloves off to work on it,

and both his hands

got frostbitten

and he didn't fly with us for a

month until his hands healed up.

Well,

it was so cold on one mission

our copilot suffered an anoxia

situation where he passed out,

and his hand froze

to the plexiglass window,

and then they had to amputate

the fingers of his hand

because it was so cold that his

hand, when he tried to help himself,

froze to the plexiglass window.

Well,

the British treated us very nice,

in some cases royally.

They called it

"The Friendly Invasion"

'cause we flat invaded

that country.

England's a small country,

and we had it

absolutely covered up

with American soldiers.

And they tolerated us.

I was single then,

I could run around,

do whatever I wanted.

But I didn't feel uncomfortable

with the British people

at all...

once I got to be able

to understand the language,

because... that English language

is a little different then ours.

Very good people.

As you know,

at the beginning of the war

they weren't too enamored

by the Yanks comin' over.

They said we were "overpaid,

oversexed, and over here."

I remember that.

Flak is German

88-millimeter cannon shells.

Flak was responsible

for more planes being shot down

than enemy fighters.

And when you see a flak,

black puffs of smoke,

that's after the shell,

of course, has exploded.

And it explodes, hypothetically,

into 200 pieces...

and it's powerful.

You don't know where

the flak is coming from.

You don't know if the next

burst is gonna hit you or not.

You never know where

the next one is gonna be

in a case like that,

and that's what scares ya.

It just looked

like a big thunderstorm,

so to speak,

that's what it amounted to.

But you had to keep on flyin'.

God was on your side

when you didn't get hit.

The flak would vary so much.

The Germans had

pretty good radar...

They could judge your altitude,

your speed,

and your direction.

I think the

worst that I ever had...

Over Kassel, Germany,

I will never forget that one...

It blew my windshield out

and come into my face

at 160 miles an hour.

You'd look at that

flak out there, and you'd swear

you're not gonna

get through it...

where the sky's almost black

with these things

bustin' all over the place.

It's amazing we did make it

through as much as we did.

Well, we had a dog,

and it looked more like a pig

than a dog.

But it was our mascot.

We had a stove

in the middle of the barracks,

and we used to make sandwiches

on it and so forth.

If the dog was around,

we'd feed him whatever we had left over.

He hung around the barracks

until we got back.

Don't know if

he had a name or not.

He was a faithful little dog.

But it had a real wide nose.

Oh, you get superstitious.

I remember I had to put on

a clean pair of socks

the day I was shot down.

I'd been wearing

the same pair of socks.

Evidently, I think that the pup

got one of my socks

and was chewing on it

and hid it,

and I couldn't find it

that morning,

I had to put on

a clean pair of socks.

That might have been the reason

I was shot down.

You are to believe this or not,

but somewheres around

the 10th or 12th mission,

I got to a point, and I know some of

the other fellas reached the same thing,

that they were feeling blasé.

"They didn't get us up to here,

they ain't gonna get us hereon."

I was somewhat superstitious.

I always felt

God would bring me home...

And I mean that sincerely...

However, I wasn't sure

if it would be in one piece.

I flew five days in a row.

Five missions.

And I remember

by the fourth or fifth one,

you really didn't care...

You were worn out.

You wanted to get away from it.

I saw a lot of

'em break under pressure.

Come back and told the flight

sergeant, "I can't fly anymore."

And they didn't.

Nobody pointed

their finger at 'em

and ridiculed 'em.

Nobody.

Yes, the bomb run.

That was the worst,

'cause you had to

keep everything steady.

If you weren't on a bomb run,

you could slide over

once in a while,

that made 'em

think they'd miss ya.

But on a bomb run, you just

had to set there and take it.

Try to shrivel up, I guess.

The lead ship does it all.

You just follow what he does.

The lead ship, and then

the two on each side,

one down there and one up here

and around there.

I was flyin'

right above the leader,

and when you're watching him

and you see that the bomb door

is open, then you open too.

And then you wait

for him to drop bombs,

and when he drops bombs,

then you drop 'em.

We can't change our altitude,

and we can't change

our direction,

and we're what you call

sitting ducks at that moment.

It was rough,

because any minute,

you were gonna get hit.

The bombs are

dropped, bombs away,

and the first thing you hear is,

"Let's get the hell outta here."

We make a sharp turn,

and the group follows the lead.

After a while,

fighter attacks

started coming in,

and they didn't miss very often.

They'd be out 20, 30 miles,

and they'd come rush

straight at your level.

You couldn't hit

anything with those guns like that.

By the time you saw a guy,

he was gone.

You'd see one comin', he's gone.

You don't have

much time to shoot at 'em.

If you get off a burst or two,

well, you're lucky,

then they'd go zoop!

He'll drop off, he'll fly down,

and then he'll line up on ya.

Then he'll peel off.

The copilot was hit

pretty hard when we were shot down.

A 20-millimeter shell

popped right above his head

and it knocked an eye out.

So it was high noon,

an ME-109 was back there blasting at us,

and I heard the copilot,

he said, "Jesus Christ",

number four's on fire. Get out."

When that thing is spinnin'

and headin' down,

you were glued to your seat,

you couldn't move

if you wanted to.

And you're lucky if you

see two or three guys bail out.

We would count the chutes,

and usually if we

started to look too long

after a ship

that was going down,

the pilot would say,

"OK, guys, off... ".

We didn't want

to spend too much time

looking at a plane going down

when we had fighters

in the area and so forth.

The gunners and the others

that were watching all the time

would tell ya, "Boy, I don't think anybody

got out of that one, nobody got out,"

and then sometimes you'd

see chutes comin' out of 'em

before they blew up or anything.

If you didn't have your chute on

and get out of there

in less than 30 seconds,

you're gone.

You're gone.

And seven out of eleven

out of my crew got out alive...

and one of 'em,

when he got on the ground,

they pitchforked him to death.

How could you kill a human

like that?

As we approached the

field, we set off flares.

Red flares means

you have wounded aboard.

Everybody else

gets out of the way

and the wounded comes in first.

To this day, I still see it.

When I think of it, I choke up.

I can't help it,

they were friends of mine,

they were good friends,

and it hurt so bad.

"What a waste."

With the job we had,

the chance of dying was at least 50%.

50% chance of living,

50% chance of dying.

You know, a guy

said, "Your name's on it."

Well, maybe it was.

But it was scary.

And I get very irritated when I hear some of

these guys say, "I wasn't scared one bit."

They're full of prunes.

I was scared every time.

I went out to a ship one time

when they were taking

a young fella off,

and I thought I could help them.

The guy they were pulling

out of the ship...

he was calling for his mother.

In about late 1944,

the Allies decided

to do away

with precision bombing.

We went to pattern bombing.

Unfortunately, it killed

a lot of people,

but brought the war to a close

about a year sooner.

The United States military

did not go out to carpet-bomb

civilians or anything.

They went out to bomb factories,

rail yards, refineries,

and places that had something

to do with the war.

I don't think that

I felt bad about that at all.

That's what we were

supposed to do.

But toward the end of the war,

the Germans would not give up.

Never thought a thing about it.

We didn't think about people

being down there.

That never crossed my mind,

about a human being

bein' down there.

Never gave it a

thought, they just Germans,

you know, and I never

gave it a thought.

For some reason,

I didn't hate 'em.

If I had a fighter plane

come within

shooting-me distance,

my thought was, "This kid probably

wanted to live as bad as you did."

I really didn't have

any hate for 'em.

I was just scared of 'em.

Never gave it a thought.

I honestly

never gave it a thought.

I JUST FELT THIS WAY:

"They're gonna do it to us,

we better do it to them

before they do it to us."

And that's the way I felt,

and I couldn't help it.

Bring any thoughts, seeing that?

Well,

I drifted off into several thoughts.

Most of 'em, you know, uh...

were bad thoughts when

you're lookin' at a mission.

I see what took place

on that mission,

and your mind drifts back

to those times, you know.

We had a lot

of midair collisions.

Some guys would get mixed up,

pilots,

and they'd start flying...

the wrong direction and so on.

But the scary part

of most of our missions

was just getting through

all of that.

Did it get easier or

harder as you flew more missions?

I just... Like I

say, I was scared to death.

But, uh...

those were not good days.

There was no radio

communication at all.

We had the intercom goin'

all the time, though.

I'd check in with the man

with the oxygen mask on,

make sure their oxygen

was flowing right.

Especially the tail gunner,

he was layin' back there

by himself so much.

You got very close

with the men and everything.

And they're all young kids.

They're all dead now, I'm sure.

When you're that high up,

everything on the ground

looks like a little toy.

If you see a truck or something,

it really looks small.

It was hard,

but you had to do it.

We had to get rid of Hitler,

and so we did it.

You guys know that some bombs

went through the wings of B-17s?

I always wondered

how in the world...

They were out of position...

in the formation.

God's been good to me.

First of all,

he's given me 70 years

with that lady over there,

and we have a wonderful family.

We have six kids

and we have 20 grandkids,

22 great-grandkids.

So we've been

a very blessed family.

I didn't say I want 'em all

at the house at once.

What do you

think about "The Good War"

and "You're

the Greatest Generation"?

Well...

I'm beginning to believe it.

Does that make sense to ya?

You kind of grew up 10 years

when you went into that thing.

And when I came back home,

I didn't feel like

the same man anymore.

What do you say to

people who say, "John, you're a hero."

You're a hero"?

I say, "OK,

you're probably right."

I don't know what else to say.

I wasn't one of the hero-heroes,

the guys that finish their tour

and sign up for another one,

I wasn't them kind of heroes.

But I want it clearly known:

I do not profess myself

to be a hero.

I was the pilot;

The heroes are buried in

England, Germany, and France.

The boys didn't make it,

they're the heroes.

I was just a normal pilot.

This is called pattern bombing.

No offense,

but you guys aren't getting any younger.

Why do you think it's important

that people know

what you guys did?

Well, for one thing,

we don't want it

to to happen again,

in fact or in fancy.

We just don't want it

to happen again,

for my grandson,

my granddaughters and their husbands.

I don't want to see them

have to face what we did.

I cannot say it

much more eloquently...

It was a hazardous profession.

OK, up at altitude and,

of course, bombs away and all,

and you got this on,

I think fear more than anything,

you'd perspire and sweat.

You got this on.

Ice would form,

and you'd take a deep breath

and break the ice

out of the oxygen mask.

And then put it back on.

This is Bud

trying to get down on the floor.

This is the Mae West.

Remember I told ya

about the oxygen?

I mean, the CO2 cylinder?

This is it. There it is.

CO2 cylinder.

This was before underarm

deodorant, hair spray...

I think this was the birth

of aerosol containers.

And if guys bailed out,

they didn't want it totally inflated

couple hundred feet up,

because if they hit the water,

they could break their backs.

So it wasn't that easy.

I never did it.

This is a throat mic.

This is how I talked to Eric.

And this plugged in.

And as I showed ya

on the helmet,

this is how I heard.

So we had

our communication system.

But, Bud, to be clear,

this should have been returned

to the government in 1945.

Come and get 'em, baby.

What we just did with you

might be the credit roll

to our movie,

so you have any messages

for people

that just watched this movie?

Well, I'm just so glad

that people in America,

or anywhere,

can get an idea what 19 and 20

and 21-year-old kids

went through,

and as I tell kids

when I get done with my talk,

"I'm gonna ask you guys

a favor now."

"What's that, Bud?"

"When you go home tonight,"

you say a prayer of thanks

to God

for those 28,000 guys

that gave their lives

"so that you got

the life you got today."

Well,

thank you for your service, Bud.

Not at all. Not at all.