On return to our quarters we got lost. The military had given us a book on conversational Italian. One side of the page was in English and the other side told how to pronounce it in Italian. We hailed a fellow on the street and stumbled through trying to ask him how we could get back to our base. He shrugged his shoulders so we tried again. He finally said:

"I know you guys are trying to get somewhere but I don't know where in the hell it is".

"Oh yeah, I lived in Philly for 17 years and came over here for a visit and couldn't get back when the war started".

On July 24 we went to our outfit near Foggia, Italy. We were assigned to the 49th wing, 451st Bomb Group, 726th Squadron. The base was unfinished as the area had only recently been captured by the Allies. Our quarters were tents and the runway covered by steel hardtop. It had been used for German fighter planes and was pretty short for heavy bombers, however there was a cliff about a hundred feet in height at the end of the runway.

The Pilot and Co-pilot would hold the brakes on the plane, rev up the engines wide open, release the brakes, and pray that we had flying speed by time we reached the end of the runway. The Pilot would literally jerk the plane into the air, drop over the cliff, and hope we could get enough flying speed to stay in the air. Needless to say several B-24 skeletons were at the base of the cliff. The Pilot would sweat through his flying clothes on take-off.