The Most Dangerous Night in San Bernardino

Second Lt Bombardier Ray Konen writes his sweetheart after a dangerous night off base in California.

Transcript

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October first, nineteen forty four. Second Lieutenant Ray Colin sits in the coffee shop of a hotel in San Bernardino, California, pushing a fountain pen across a sheet of stationery. He is writing to his sweetheart back in Chicago, trying to explain a night that spun entirely out of control. Ray is stationed at the Victorville Army Airfield, a place the men casually refer to as Vville. Out there in the Mojave Desert, the Army Air Forces are running a massive advanced training school. Young men are being forged into bombardiers. They spend their days crammed into the plexiglass noses of AT 11 Kansan training planes, or perhaps the newer B 24 Liberators that arrived earlier in the year, staring down at the scrub and sand of the bombing ranges near Murrach Lake. The mechanical process of being a bombardier is an exercise in extreme high stakes precision. A cadet has to peer through the eyepiece of a Norden bombsite, an intricate analog computer of gyroscopes, motors, and mirrors. They have to input the aircraft's airspeed, the wind direction, and the altitude, twisting the knobs until the crosshairs remain perfectly still over a designated white circle painted on the desert floor. In those final seconds of the bomb run, the bombardier actually takes control of the aircraft. The bombsite itself flying the plane to ensure the trajectory is flawless. It is a grueling, unforgiving regimen. A slight miscalculation, a failure to account for a sudden desert crosswind, and the practice bomb lands hundreds of yards off target. Ray writes in his letter that the course is rugged. He is always tired, tumor cadets from his class washed out just the week before. He knows the pressure is a deliberate mechanism to weed out anyone who might break under the flak filled skies of Europe or the Pacific. He is determined to stick it out until he either gets his wings or gets kicked out. But the relentless focus, the deafening roar of the twin radial engines, and the ever present shadow of the war taking place across the oceans creates a titly wound coil of anxiety inside every young man on the base. When they get a weekend pass, they hitchhike the thirty odd miles south through the Cajon Pass into San Bernardino, desperate to release that tension. San Bernardino in the autumn of nineteen forty four is a boom town heavily populated by young men in uniform. The streets are a collision of local residents, defense plant workers, and service members from multiple branches. Ray arrives in town at eight o'clock in the evening, secures a room for the night, eats a quiet dinner, and catches a movie. For a few hours, the world feels peaceful. But the need to chase away the desert dust and the phantom crosshairs of the bomb site leads him to a local establishment called the Grizzly Bear. He orders a whiskey sour, it tastes excellent, the sharp citrus cutting through the fatigue, so he orders a second. This is the precise moment the fragile piece of the evening shattered. Across the room, a marine sergeant hauls back and slugs a waitress. The impact is brutal. The woman groans and collapses to the floor. The sheer, unprovoked violence of the act sends a shockwave through the room. Ray is instantly consumed by a visceral, shaking anger. He starts moving toward the Marine, fully intending to retaliate, but he is not the fastest one to react. Another soldier beats him to it. It is a private first class from Ray's own airfield at Victorville. Ray notes that the PFC cannot be an inch over five foot four. He wears glasses, he looks by all outward appearances like the mildest, most unassuming person in the entire establishment. But the sight of the battered woman on the floor breaks something open inside him. The diminutive PFC reaches up, carefully removes his glasses, and stares down the Marine. Tears are streaming down his face. He's actively crying, overwhelmed by a potent mixture of rage and moral indignation. He calls the Marine a son of a bitch for hitting a woman, and then he launches himself forward. The small, bespectacled airman wails into the sergeant, throwing punches with a furious, uncontainable velocity. He batters the much larger man, slugging the daylights out of him with a chaotic, tear streaked ferocity. The Marine, faced with this screaming, crying, unstoppable force, loses his nerve completely. He turns and sprints out the door, fleeing from a man half his size. The victorious PFC stands in the aftermath, breathing heavily. He bends down, picks up his hat, swears one final time, and walks out of the grizzly bear into the night, still weeping. The explosion of violence leaves Ray profoundly disgusted. The whiskey sours, it's sour in his stomach. He decides to abandon the night and head back to his hotel room. He walks to the darkened streets of San Bernardino, hoping for the quiet sanctuary of his bed. But the city is not finished with him. Just as he approaches the front door of his hotel, he hears the screech of tires and a sickening thud. A car strikes an elderly man right in front of him. The old man falls hard, his head striking the pavement, and blood immediately begins pooling on the concrete. Ray sprints to his side, a Navy chief petty officer materializes from the shadows, and together the two servicemen lift the bleeding man and carry him into a nearby store. They apply pressure to the wound, keeping the man conscious and calm until an ambulance finally arrives to take him away. Ray is informed the man has a severe knock to the head but will likely survive. By now, Ray's nerves are utterly frayed. The adrenaline of the bar fight and the panic of the hit and run have depleted him. He starts walking the final distance to his hotel again. He gets exactly one block away when the blaring sirens of fire engines shatter the air. The heavy red trucks skid to a halt directly in his path, hoses on spooling into the street. A cheap residential hotel is engulfed in flames. Plumes of thick acrid smoke billow into the night sky, illuminated by the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. The road is completely impassable. Defeated, Ray flags down a passing cab just to travel the final two blocks around the fire. Once inside his room, he throws the deadbolt, double locks the door, and collapses into bed, deciding he will just stay on the airfield from now on. Ground travel, he writes to his sweetheart, is entirely too dangerous. But the letter also details the earlier part of the evening, the peaceful hours before the chaos descended, the cinematic escape he found upon first arriving in town. Ray had ventured to Mount Vernon Avenue, into the heart of the Mexican section of San Bernardino. He bought a ticket at the Teatro Azteca. The Azteca is a prominent cultural hub, a theater that has been screening Spanish language and Mexican cinema since the late 1930s. The Mexican film industry is in the midst of its golden age, producing stylish, captivating movies that rival Hollywood's habit. When Ray steps up to the ticket window, the girl behind the glass asks, Cuantos? Ray, eager to test his vocabulary, immediately answers Uno. Inside the theater, an usher repeats the question, and Ray boldly replies again, Uno. He is intensely proud of this small exchange. The film playing that night is a picture released earlier in the decade, directed by Renee Cardona, titled La Mujer Sin Cabeza, the woman without a head. Ray sits in the darkened auditorium of the Teatro Azteca, surrounded by a local community finding its own respite from the war. On screen, a bizarre mystery unfolds, involving a famous Chinese jewel, floating heads, and decapitated bodies. He notes the hero is handsome and acts well, the comedic sidekick delivers the laughs, and the villain is the sinister Dr. Fu Man Chu. He even enjoys the Spanish dubbed Mickey Mouse cartoon playing beforehand. He manages to catch the general drift of the plot, though the language barrier leaves some of the finer points mysterious. But the real spectacle for Ray is not just on the silver screen, it is in the seats around him. He observes the young man in the audience, the dashing young caballeros. He remarks to his sweetheart that they are wearing the zootiest zootsuits is ever seen. He claims they would put Harlem to shame. This observation carries immense cultural weight. Just one year prior, in the summer of 1943, the Zootsuit riots had torn through Los Angeles. White servicemen had stormed through the streets, violently attacking young Mexican American men, pachucos, stripping them of their oversized, sharply tailored suits, and burning the garments. The suits with their high waisted, wide-legged, tight cuffed trousers and long coats with wide lapels were seen by the establishment as unpatriotic wastes of fabric during a time of strict wartime rationing. But for the young men wearing them, the Zuitsuit was a defiant declaration of identity, a rejection of marginalization. Here in the Teatro Azteca in the fall of nineteen forty four, the Zutsuit is still worn with pride. Ray does not look at these young men with the hostility of the rioters from the previous year. He views them with the genuine sense of awe and amusement, recognizing their vibrant, unapologetic style as a vital part of the city's fabric. He is a Midwestern boy from Chicago, a long way from home, absorbing the vivid, defiant culture of Southern California. The letter Ray writes the next morning is a testament to the surreal holding pattern of a soldier waiting for war. He includes a dollar bill in the envelope, instructing his sweetheart to give it to a boy named Eddie as a two week allowance, demanding that Eddie use it to buy at least two banana splits. He jokes about the wildlife at her job at the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago, suggesting it sounds more like a zoo. He spins a tall tale about fighting a polar bear, then amends it to a kangaroo just to see if she will believe him. The mundane, sweet details of life back in Illinois serve as an anchor, a tether to the world he hopes to return to once the bombsake crosshairs are no longer a matter of life and death. Ray Conan survives the training. He survives the war. The second lieutenant who locked himself in a San Bernardino hotel room to escape the madness of a Saturday night eventually returns to the Midwest. Decades later, the young bombardier becomes a grandfather. The terrifying roar of the twin radial engines over the Mojave Desert is replaced by the quiet rustle of trees near Lake Geneva and Wisconsin. The nervous energy of military leave is traded for the steady, comforting rituals of family life. He takes his grandchildren to a big box store called Prangeway, pressing crisp ten dollar bills into their hands, a direct echo of the dollar bill he once mailed home for Eddie's banana splits. When he and his wife leave their house, they make sure to leave the radio playing in the kitchen so their dogs, a Dachshund's named Frida, and a cocker spaniel named Sam will not feel lonely. The man who once watched a tearful soldier defend a waitress in a chaotic bar, who pulled a wounded stranger from the path of a speeding car, and who watched a neighborhood burn beneath a desert sky builds a life defined by quiet kindness. The letters written on hotel stationery remain, preserving that single frantic night in 1944, a snapshot of a world on fire, seen through the eyes of a young man who just wanted to hitchhike back to the safety of his airfield. If you found the story compelling, please share this episode with a friend.