[HCARC] Silk Map

[Jack McKenzie]

Dear Don W4WJ,

I am Jack McKenzie N5MFG, a Winter Texan but a member of HCARC.  I read 
with extreme interest your account of the map of Germany printed on 
silk.  I had such a map.  I was First Pilot and Aircraft Commander in 
the 453rd Bomb Group (Heavy) of the 8th Air Force flying 4-Engine B-24 
Liberators on missions over Germany during WWII.  (I was 20 years old; 
now I wouldn't let my 20 year old grandsons drive my car!)

We were issued tiny plastic boxes that would fit in our flying suits 
that contained the silk map plus all the other stuff that they were able 
to put in the Monopoly pieces that you describe.   It also contained 
several pictures of ourselves.  Before we were deployed overseas we were 
sent down to the Photo Lab on our base and directed to a great heap of 
old, dirty, frayed clothing and ordered to remove our uniforms and get 
dressed.  They told us that the Underground in Europe could print 
documents of all sorts but had no facilities to make pictures....so we 
took our own.  We were supposed to look like locals and we looked the 
part all right!

Our flying suits also had a long zippered pocket intended to hold a long 
slender bottle of oxygen needed if we had to bail out from high 
altitude.  It was constructed of cast iron and the current wisdom was 
that if hit by flack it would explode like a hand grenade.  No one 
carried the oxygen but the space was just right for a carton of 
cigarettes.....much more valuable if shot down than the paper money in 
the escape kit!

After I returned from overseas my father had my map framed and it now 
hangs in the home of my son in Dallas.  I marvel at it each time that I 
see it and the fact that I survived!

Jack N5MFG