AN EXCEPTIONAL COMBAT MISSION
By Edward E. Schultz
The U.S. Army decided to ship me to Japan when I was 17 years old, and more or less, I think I grew up there. I felt very much at home in Japan, and I still manifest some of their traits to this day. I fell in love with a local woman while stationed there, and I asked for permission to marry her. That turned out much different than I had intended. I was forced to leave Japan in 1951, simply because G.I.'s were forbidden to marry Japanese ladies.
I’ll never forget what happened when I went to see the chaplain to ask for permission to marry. He gave me one of those superior looks and said, “I do not approve of marriage to Japanese.” Right then I took my T.S. card from my billfold and asked the chaplain if he would care to punch it. He jerked the card from my hand, punched it four times and handed it back. However that was not the end of it. I was in love and I wasn’t ready to give up. It took me a year to obtain orders for Japan, and I was married in 1953. A lot of guys talk about how rotten their mother-in-law has been to them, but that was not the case for me. My mother-in-law’s name was Isa (EE—SAY), and she was just like a mother to me.
In addition to flying combat missions, sometimes we were sent to Japan on logistic missions. Just before one of those trips Isa gave me a wooden tag about the size of a dog tag, and she asked me to wear it at all times. She told me that if it should save my life it would break in two, and as I put it around my neck she told me the story behind its importance.
Isa was less than four feet tall and she had difficulty walking. She kind of wobbled from side to aide, but she didn’t let that stop her from tackling her mission. Isa carried that wooden tag with her as she walked around a temple one hundred times, all the while chanting a prayer for my safety. Considering her age and state of health, it was a miraculous feat. Even though I did not put much faith in the wooden tag, I always wore it to humor her.
My new wooden tag was hanging down on my chest as we prepared to taxi out to the runway for takeoff, and just before the pilot released the breaks a colonel came rushing over to our aircraft. We knew this officer quite well because he only flew with us, and he never hesitated to tell everyone that we were the best aircrew he ever flew with.
As soon as we were airborne and leveled off I always asked the colonel if he would like to take my position between the pilots. He always accepted and without fail he would light up a strong smelling cigar that filled the cockpit with a cloud of obnoxious smoke. As soon as he lit the cigar I would give the colonel a cup of coffee, and I believe what he enjoyed most about flying with us was the fact that I never let his coffee cup run out. I don’t know why, but it seems that when you’re airborne it doesn’t take very long for the coffee to run its course to your bladder, and the colonel was no exception.
The fuselage of a C-47 is a little over six feet high behind the cockpit, and it is something less than five feet high at the door to the urinal. The urinal is attached to the door, and when one steps inside and closes the door, it automatically forces them into an uncomfortable stooped over position. As soon as I saw that the door was closed I would wait for an appropriate amount of time, and then I would tap the pilot on the shoulder. The pilot would then jerk the elevator control back and forth to simulate rough weather, and without fail it had the desired affect. When the colonel came out of the bathroom his pants were always wet and he took a seat at the rear of the aircraft. The colonel never approached the cockpit for the rest of the trip, and this episode occurred every time the colonel flew with us … and he never caught on.
One afternoon during May 1953, we spent two hours searching for an Australian pilot that was shot down ninety miles behind enemy lines. Unfortunately fading light forced us to return to base, but we vowed to be airborne before sunrise the next day so we would arrive at the search area by first light.
The next day while I was on my way to the flight line I stopped by the mess hall to pick up the lunches for the flight. As fate would have it, all they had was a peck sack of old apple turnovers. The aircrew turned their nose up at the stale pastries, and that was fine with me. I’m not that particular and I had turnovers to eat for a week.
We departed on schedule and were about forty-five minutes out when we heard a conversation on the radio between some F-86 fighters, and from the strength of their radio signal, they were very close. I heard one of the pilots say, “Sugar May one, this is sugar May Two, I have six of the bastards in a corner." We knew what that meant. The enemy was on his tail and he was headed south just as fast as he could go. That was a standard maneuver to draw the enemy’s attention so Sugar May two could get them from behind. Not knowing for sure where the MIG’s were, our pilot decided to take evasive measures and dove toward the Yellow Sea, pulling out just above the ocean, and I MEAN just above. We were so close that our propellers were kicking up ocean spray. Just two months before, a C-47 was attacked by a MIG, and by doing this same maneuver he made the MIG fly into the sea. When a fighter attacks it is nearly impossible to tell how high he is above the ocean.
We reached the search area and we had spent two hours searching the islands. The pilot was turning the aircraft for another pass when we spied a North Korean gunboat. The pilot kept our left wing pointed at the gunboat and we began to circle it. My station as flight engineer was behind and between the pilots, and that put me in line with the propellers. I had to lean far forward to see out the cockpit window, and the wooden tag was leaning against my shirt. Above the loud drone of the engines I heard a very loud snap and felt the wooden tag fall to the bottom of my shirt at my waist. I did not think much about it at that point, but when we got back to the base that changed.
Each time when we returned to base I always turned one blade of the propeller down. As I turned the blade down I found a bullet dead center in the leading edge of the blade. My life had been saved, and today that wooden tag rests in a temple in Japan, along with other symbols of things that are simply unexplainable.
