[Milsurplus] review: "Time To Get Out" book

[hwhall at compuserve.com]

>
once captured and escaped, they were no longer employed in any
role where they might be recaptured, lest they be treated as spies
>


A major consideration was that having escaped, been recaptured & identified, they would be mercilessly forced to reveal the techniques, people & underground connections that made escape possible, thus closing the doors to future escapes & condemning to death the friends of the fliers & their families.

 

 Wayne
WB4OGM


-----Original Message-----
From: Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com>
To: Military Surplus Mail List <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>; Wireless-Set-No19 <Wireless-Set-No19 at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Feb 15, 2017 6:09 pm
Subject: [Milsurplus] review: "Time To Get Out" book



“Time To Get Out – Recollections of a World War II B-24 radio operator, POW and escapee. “
Robert F. Mundell, as told to David F. Mundell. 
Robert Mundell was not particularly talkative about his war experience and his
son, now a retired airline pilot himself, had to draw out his father’s experiences over the years.
His father was a B-24 crewman and was shot down on his first mission, a bombing run to Foggia,
Italy, from Benghazi, Libya base. On this mission of 25 B-24-D were assigned; 23 actually got into
the air. Seven were destroyed, with a loss of 38 aircrew KIA. An expensive mission. The prediction
of one crewman to the new arrivals at Benghazi proved true: don’t worry about the shortage of
cots; “There’s a raid coming up and there’ll be a plenty of cots available”.
Mundell bailed out and was captured by Italians, but managed to escape the camp. Some of the
Italians he encountered despised Americans; more hid and fed the escapers, at danger of being
shot by Germans, who at this time were even shooting all the Italian soldiers they found.
One thing i find interesting and often provocative is the descriptions of native peoples American
military people encountered. Nowadays such opinions are to be considered so improper; the
catechism is that “we are all the same, and all cultures are equivalent”.
The book is well supplied with supporting material such as crew lists, maps, even telegrams
from the War Department to Mundell’s family, from the very first MIA telegram. I felt one of the
best features of the book is the author’s capturing of the panic and confusion of the last seconds
in a burning, failing aircraft. He drew on the survivors’ accounts to give a very evocative picture
of those frantic moments. Some crewmen were already dead; some wounded, with difficulty
moving; some apparently too shocked or fearful to jump; some exits already on fire; chutes of
some men did not open, or were damaged by fire.
The book is not a long account; Mundell was returned to the States to and finished the war as
an instructor. According to him, once captured and escaped, they were no longer employed in any
role where they might be recaptured, lest they be treated as spies.           
This is a large-format 9 x 11 inch softbound book. Amazon price is a paltry $15 and i will review
it as 5-stars – it is an unpretentious book which delivers what it promises, with a lot of views
into the experience of WW2 bomber crewmen, insights that are mostly missed in higher-level
war histories.
 
A couple of radio-related notes. On the return from Foggia, just before being attacked by German
fighter planes, the pilot asks Mundell to get some music over the radio. Mundell once wants to
listen to the “Command” channel on his interphone switchbox, but as soon as he switches to
the “Command” position, the pilot somehow detects this and orders him off. Mundell also comments
on the trailing antenna, how it was used on trans-Atlantic ferry flights and in the Pacific War, but
not much in the European war, where radio distances to ground stations could be covered by the fixed
antenna, and also the trailing antenna was not usable in formation flying. He says it would be
deployed if an airplane was separated from its flight and in distress – and he says the 500 kHz
distress frequency was to be used over both sea and land.
-H 

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