Alfred Capuzzo

Tell me a little bit about your basic training

We did basic training for the Air Force in Mississippi.  I took some exams and was able to qualify to go to school.  We were there for three weeks for basic training.  The camp there was not the greatest. The training wasn’t too terribly difficult, but the conditions were not that great.  There was an incident that happened there that I don’t know if I should even tell you, but I will anyhow. At this point I was a raw recruit, brand new. I went into the mess hall to get a cup of coffee and there was a big cockroach floating on top of the coffee. I said, “Oh my God, what am I getting myself into?”  After three weeks of basic there, I passed my exam, and then I went to school for armament training to learn how to work on the turrets on the airplanes.  I got some training for that in Indiana for a couple of months. All told I had about a year of instruction on how to be a mechanic.  Then I went overseas and was there for two years.

Tell me about when you first left the US to go to Europe

We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. We went over on the Queen Elizabeth.  There were over 20,000 troops on board. People were sleeping on the deck, in the swimming pool, and all over the place. We finally got over to Scotland.  From there we went right into England. Then I started working on planes.

Tell me about what it was like when you first arrived in Europe

It was a funny feeling really. We knew we were in a foreign country and we didn’t really know what we were up against.  It’s kind of like going into a dark room and all of a sudden the lights get turned on. It was quite an experience.  I was one of the lucky ones, only being there for two years, mostly just working on airplanes. The planes I worked on were B-24 bombers.

In my outfit sometimes gunners would go out in bombing raids and every so often a plane would come back and their gunner would have been killed. Sometimes I would have to take there place, and so I went on a couple bombing run missions over Germany. 

Tell me about what those missions were like

We would usually have fly-over missions and we would go early in the morning.  When we got near to Germany there would be flack all around.  Once in awhile the Messerschmitt used to come after us and we lost a few planes.  It was quite an experience.  Sometimes I was scared going on those bombing runs, not really knowing what we would be up against.  I was very lucky.

What do you remember about VE Day?

Oh yeah, I will never forget that.  Everybody went crazy.  All the girls and guys were running around. It was unbelievable.  People embracing in the middle of the street, they were just going crazy. We were only kids then, but boy were we excited.

VJ Day was really a ticket home for me. I had been transferred into a maintenance unit in France and from there was supposed to be transported to Okinawa.  As luck had it the War ended over there and we were able to come home in October 25, 1945. I was lucky enough to have enough points to go home then. Some of the others had to spend a little more time in Germany after the war. 

When we came back to the States we were sent to Camp Devon. There they interviewed us and asked us if we wanted to sign up again. They checked us out to make sure we were okay, and then they discharged us.  I remember when I got home; my mother and father were really tickled pink.