Love in the time of B-29’s

Transferred again, Ray moves his way across Nebraska while confiding in Shirley how ready he is to fight.

Transcript

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Second Lieutenant Raymond Conan lay back on his narrow cot at the Lincoln Army Airfield in Nebraska, the sharp crease of his uniform trousers finally yielding as he kicked off his shoes. It was May 23rd, 1945, and the mailroom had just delivered a lifeline, a letter from Shirley Rutlich, his sweetheart back in Chicago. He didn't read it immediately. Instead, he hoarded it, a small act of emotional discipline in a life now dictated by the U.S. Army Air Forces. He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling toward the barrack ceiling, and finally broke the seal. Shirley was a bank teller, a woman who navigated the bustling financial heart of Chicago, while Ray trained to pilot one of the most destructive machines ever built, the B-29 Super Fortress. Her letters were filled with the everyday surrealism of the home front, of late night taxi rides and coffee at the WNR restaurant, with drivers who treated her like a neighbor. Ray read her words twice, shaking his head at her audacity and her luck. He felt a swell of pride thinking, that's my gal. But as the cigarette burned down, the reality of his situation remained pinned to the map. He was a bombardier in the final frantic push of the Pacific War. The lectures he attended daily were no longer about abstract physics or navigation. They were about the Japanese mindset, about an enemy that viewed death for the emperor as a glorious end. Ray knew they would get their wish. He was being prepared to deliver that end from 30,000 feet. Even as he spent his afternoons hunting for a lost electric razor or tearing apart his bunk to find a missing towel. The contrast was dizzying. The domesticity of a lost razor and the cold mechanics of a B-29 crew being forged for a mission that could change the world. The Lincoln Army Airfield was a place of frantic, structured waiting. Ray was a big B-29 boy now, a title that carried the weight of four Wright-3350 engines and a pressurized cabin that felt like a glimpse into the future. But the training was a meat grinder. He was waiting for a crew, a group of ten other men he would have to live with, breathe with, and possibly die with over the next three months. The timeline was fluid, dictated entirely by the movements of the Japanese. If the pressure on the front lines spiked, his training would be cut short, and he'd be over the Pacific in weeks. If things stabilized, he might get a few precious days of leave in Chicago before deployment. The uncertainty was a constant low grade fever. It manifested in the strange climate of Nebraska, one day a sunbath under a summer sky, the next a freezing gale that soaked him to the bone three times before dinner. He described the weather as insane, but it was the quiet moments in the barracks that were the hardest. The train ride back to base from his last visit home had been a slow motion torture. He had paced the aisles, wanting to scream, to fight, or to get drunk, anything to drown out the silence of leaving Shirley behind. He had thunk it all out until sleep finally claimed him, and it was only Shirley's letter that pulled him out of the daze. He was a man caught between two worlds, the steady serious type she teased him about, and the young soldier who almost broke his toe on an electric razor hidden under his bed sheets. By May twenty seventh, Ray was on the move again, though not yet to the front. He found himself in Omaha, a city that surprised him with its skyscrapers and rattling streetcars, looking like a mirror of Chicago's loop. He had reached Omaha by a series of happy accidents. He had simply pointed his nose to the east and waited for a lift. A car stopped, the driver asks if he wanted a ride, and Ray forgot to mention his destination. That was how a second lieutenant in the Army Air Forces ended up eating lemon meringue pie in Wahoo, Nebraska. It was a moment of pure Midwestern serendipity in the middle of a global conflict. From Wahoo, he caught a bus, passing the well kept grounds of Boys Town, a place he noted he'd like to explore properly one day. But his real mission in Omaha was logistical. He was at the United Airlines desk checking plane schedules. The war had transformed civilian travel into a labyrinth of priorities. While United ran three hour flights from Chicago to Omaha every evening for a fare cheaper than the train, a civilian, like Shirley, couldn't just buy a ticket. She needed a reason deemed essential to the war effort to avoid being bumped for military personnel or government officials. Ray was persistent, though. He told her they would find a way that they could dig up the money and beat the priority system. He was dreaming of a reunion in the clouds, even as he joked about his own vanity, wondering if he would glitter in his gold trimmings when he finally worked up the courage to have his picture taken in uniform. There was a bittersweet lightness to Ray's voice in these letters, a protective layer of humor over a deepening sense of dread. He confessed to Shirley that while he was doing his best to be a soldier, he was still a cream puff at heart. In a world of cognac and combat missions, he admitted he'd had two chocolate sodas the day before and found they tasted better than any liquor. I'll do most anything to make you happy, he wrote, but I can't give up my chocolate sodas. It was a small, stubborn hold on his civilian self. But the war always forced its way back in. He spoke of Tokyo with a chilling casualness, mentioning the unbearable heat of the Japanese capital and wishing he were there with his little blowtorch, the B-29. This was the paradox of the 1945 serviceman, a man who could be tenderly concerned about Shirley's mother and a taxicab driver having coffee, while simultaneously preparing to firebomb a city of millions. He ended his letter on a note of fierce, desperate optimism. He felt the end was near, a happy thought, that allowed him to sign off with love and kisses. He was a guy in a raincoat he'd spent twenty bucks on, hoping for thirty days of rain just to justify the expense, while secretly counting the minutes until he could hear her voice on the phone. Ray Conan was a bombardier, a lover, and a fan of lemon meringue pie, standing on the precipice of a history that hadn't yet been written, holding on to a girl in Chicago like she was the only fixed point in a spinning world. Recommend this window into the heart of a B 29 bombardier to a friend who appreciates the human stories behind the history books.