PILOT DOWN! One day we were informed that German Artillery was firing on U.S. Engineers building a pontoon bridge across a river. Capt. Tony led a flight of four on a straffing mission to discourage the attack upon the Engineers. Lt. Moose was flying off Tonys right wing while I was element leader on his left with another pilot off my left wing. Tony led us over the area at 100 feet altitude. We spread out with each of us firing our 8 fifty caliber wing guns down the hedge rows ahead. I glanced to my right to locate Tony----and he was not there! Back at base, Moose told us that ground fire had hit Tony's plane and he had crash landed, wheels up, along side the now famous Normandy hedgerow. Moose also related that while flying with his canopy open, a bullet had knocked the goggles off his own helmet! We believed Tony had survived the crash and expected him to become a prisoner of war. A few days later we were assigned an unusual mission for fighter-bombers. The entire Squadron of sixteen aircraft was armed with anti-personnel bombs to be dropped in a designated area near St.Lo. At 250 ft. altitude we flew with each flight of four aircraft line astern behind another flight of four. Upon signal from our leader we all dropped our bombs at the same time , thus providing maximum concentration over a small area. I do not recall any hostile ground fire. I soon knew why. There was a line of planes ahead of us as well as behind us bombing the same area. German troops were no doubt in their fox holes. I do recall, nearing the end of the bomb run, looking to my right and seeing a twin engine bomber seconds before it expoded in a ball of fire. Four crew men come drifting out of the debris ,falling to the ground with parachutes on fire. Back at our airstrip, I lay on my cot beneath the apple trees and watched wave after wave of bombers streaming across the Channel enroute to bomb that same area. This saturation bombing so stunned and demoralized the enemy that our ground forces streamed through the breach in the German defense, clearing the way out of the beachhead, and on toward Germany. A day or so after this horrendous bombing, Tony came home! When he crashed his P-47 beside the hedgerow, he dived over the side and buried himself within the hedgerow. German troops searched for him for five days, jabbing bayonets in and around his hiding place without success. After the bombing ceased, American troops drove the enemy from the area. They found Tony, more dead than alive, returned him to our airstrip and then back to the U.S.A. where he fully recovered. My good friend Tony died from natural causes in 1998. We had been in the same Sq. from Dec. 1942 unil his return home, June i944 ©whcameron2000