One More Mission

Editor’s Note: Eddie Jones—former editor of theNashville Banner and longtime president of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce—is also a former World War II pilot. Jones, now a senior consultant for Dye, Van Mol & Lawrence public relations and advertising, recently returned to visit his base of operations during the war and agreed to write about his trip.

Fifty-six years ago my first trip to Grosseta, Italy, took 24 days and four hours’ travel time. My second trip there last month took nine hours via jetliner from New York to Rome, and 90 minutes by car from Rome to Grosseta.

The 1944 trip was to get me delivered to the 64th Fighter Squadron to begin my World War II combat service. Last month, as we cruised along at 34,000 feet after leaving New York, memories of that first trip so many years ago came back with unbelievable clarity.

Under cover of darkness, as World War II raged across Europe and in the South Pacific, five other pilots and I fresh out of P-47 school, along with about 100 ground troops, were loaded onto a Liberty ship and told to stay below decks until told differently. Sometime during the night, we felt the ship’s engines come to life and the vessel began to move.

About midday the next day, we were told that we could now go above and get some fresh air and exercise. A Liberty ship has no portholes, so this was our first peep at our surroundings, and a startling sight it was. Our little ship was in the middle of a convoy that stretched as far as the eye could see, mostly Libertys lumbering along at about 12 mph. There were also a few large troop carriers here and there, as well as several speedy destroyers that darted in and out of our area, frequently dropping depth charges to ward off German subs.

Eighteen days after steaming out of Newport News, Va., we docked at Oran, in what was then the French colony of Algeria. Descending from our Liberty ship, we immediately boarded a giant British troop transport for a three-day jaunt to Naples, Italy. From there, we traveled by GI truck to a massive tent city on the outskirts of Naples to wait for transportation to our final destination. After three days there, we boarded a war-weary C-47 transport plane that made the three-hour flight to Grosseta. When the plane hit the runway and rolled slowly to a stop, I was able to step out and get my first look at the place I would be calling home for a good long while. This was where I would remain until I flew 100 missions or the war was over.

But now, here I was in 2000, deplaning at the monstrous Rome airport and preparing to head back to Grosseta one more time. A splendid driver and translator collected my wife and me at our hotel in Rome, and we zipped down a main highway headed north to the Mediterranean and the home of my old fighter outfit. Outside Rome, we drove alongside olive groves with fruit-laden branches—it’s going to be a good year for martini lovers—and hillsides with orderly rows of grapevines. (It’s also going to be a good year for Chianti lovers.) When the coast came in sight, and I knew we were nearing what had been my combat airstrip, other memories of the landscape bubbled up from so long ago.

I remembered crawling off the C-47 that had brought us from Naples, and I recalled being alarmed by the condition of the control tower, a wooden-framed contraption topped with a tin roof that looked more like an oversized tree house than the concrete and glass towers we were used to back home. I remembered the squadron commander and executive officer taking us into what remained of the Operations building, which had been struck in a bombing raid and had been patched together by engineers to make it barely functional. Obviously, a war was going on.

On this return trip to Grosseta, I began to recognize landmarks: a canal here, a bridge there. My excitement was building as we closed in on my wartime quarters, the place where I and my fellow pilots lived. When we had been shown our living quarters in 1944, all of us knew our luck was running incredibly good. Grosseta di Marina was an Italian summer resort, and scattered along the beach were 20 or so summer holiday homes that had been abandoned for the duration of the war. They were the homes we lived in, just a few steps from the sandy Mediterranean beach.

Now our driver was searching madly through some back roads to find an entry point to the beach. Not being bashful, he pulled the car right up onto the sand, and I jumped out, fully intent on finding my villa and returning to my home during the war.

What a shock!

The sleepy little enclave that the 64th had called home looked like Ft. Lauderdale at spring break. Beach umbrellas stretched as far as you could see, and pleasure boats towed water skiers in the gentle swells of the blue-green waters. The villas that had quartered us were nowhere to be seen, replaced by acres of apartments, townhouses, and condos.