“Thanks for the Memories”
Bob’s address to a 351st Bomb Group reunion
Late in his life, Bob Burns stood before a reunion of the 351st Bomb Group — the men he had served with at Polebrook — and told them the story of their group from its beginnings almost to the end of the war. It is the one place he set down his whole combat career in a single arc, for the only audience who had lived it with him. His daughter Susan transcribed it from the recording, and her note came with it:
“This is a transcribed version of Dad’s speech… By the way, this transcription was easy — Dad is a great speech maker — no uh’s or jumbled words; no editing was necessary.” — Susan Love, transcribing the speech, September 30, 2003
Clint asked me to make some remarks at this gathering and I accepted. Then I was faced with the difficult problem of trying to determine what in the world to talk about, and I remembered that Ollie North, you know, the famous retired Marine, makes quite a living with his war stories, so then I decided that I would regale you with some of our war stories. I intend to tell you about some of the earlier days of the 351st.
Only a few were present at the very beginning. There were a few more, in fact a lot more, added to us as we moved through the various stages of training, and acquired membership down in El Paso; from there, up to Pueblo, and from there we departed on our several legs to the U.K. I want to particularly draw your attention to the original father of this organization, Willie Hatcher. Not too many of you got to know him, but I spent the better part - well, the totality - of his career in the 351st as his deputy, and from him I learned a great deal, because my experience with command up to that point had been at a pretty far distance, but this man showed me the way that, in his view and in mine, a group commander ought to do his business. He selected people for the jobs they had to do and he let them do them, and if they needed to be fired, he fired them; if they deserved a pat on the back, he did that, and we all got along pretty well.
→ More on meeting Willie Hatcher
I now consider this gathering as a family reunion because, certainly all of us who are members of the organization from early to late, truly became a band of brothers. We shared a bond of experiences that were unique to us alone. We have, I'm sure, recounted our experiences to our immediates around us, but the 351st, in my mind, was one of the more outstanding organizations of the entire 8th Air Force, and it was due to the efforts of everyone, here and gone.
I am going to tell you a little of how Col. Hatcher arranged our departure from the U.S. to England. He told me that he would lead the group to England and I would be the Tail End Charlie to take care of any misadventures and/or problems that the air crews might have en route, and to help them clear them up. Well, he was pretty prescient in that he got the group to England with hardly a misstep that I was aware of, while I on the other hand, in my airplane, had to have two engine changes before I got across the ocean, so I was about 10 days late getting to England. There we started flying combat missions almost simultaneously with the arrival of our ground troops, so the first mission was done, airplanes prepared, solely with the aircrew members doing it, and I didn't sleep at all the night before the first mission - not that I was going to fly it, but I thought I needed to help oversee what was going on. Well, the first mission was an abortion from the start, and it came back that Col. Hatcher was pretty put out because we had not been able to take our place in the bomber stream. He announced to one and all that would be the last time that would happen, and it was. The next day things went off well and he flew with them, and from then on, so far as I can recall, our group never missed a spot in the bomber stream, whether we were the lead or wherever our lot fell.
During this stint of my career there, I participated in three missions that stand out in my mind. The first, many of you may well remember, was the first Schweinfurt. It was a memorable occasion in lots of respects. For one thing, we were planning to take off about 7 o'clock in the morning but we took off at noon because of the fog. Normally, the fighter escorts would take us into the continent as far as they could go, but this time they were engaged in mid-channel. Our guns started firing in mid-channel and they fired all the way to Schweinfurt as long as the ammunition held out, but I don't think that there was a single airplane in the group that returned to England with an unspent round of .50-caliber ammunition ammunition. The target was to destroy the ball bearing plants. Well, we didn't destroy them, but we did damage them to some degree, but when I got back to England, I told myself that never again would I go on a mission that would be any more harrowing than this one that we had just completed was.
→ The Schweinfurt mission room — the same day, with the group’s records
The second one that stands out in my mind was one of the most, I'll call it mixed up, missions I ever flew. I was supposed to lead the 1st Air Division down to Nantes, France, to bomb a German battleship. Clark Gable flew with me and it was his last mission. We were briefed to take off from England out of Polebrook and fly individually down to our departure point on the English coast, assemble there, and go on into the target. Supposed to be about six groups as I recall. Two of us showed up - two groups, us and the 91st. Well, I hadn't heard any recall message so I thought "Well, they expect us to go on to war," so I charged on out across the channel with two groups. Weather was coming down - instead of being able to proceed to the target at 24,000 or 25,000 feet, we had to get down to about 18,000 feet to get under it. But we bombed the target, and the flight plan was to come straight back out. On the way back, I could see that the cloud deck had dropped considerably, and I could also see the German fighters boiling up off the ground. It convinced me that to proceed on the flight plan would be a sheer disaster, so I changed it in mid-stream, turning out to go around the Brest peninsula and back to England, which we did. We didn't lose an airplane, for which I was duly thankful. We were about 1 1/2 hours late getting back to base because of this . When we landed, I was met by the wing commander who came out to the airplane, the first time this had ever happened to me. When I got on the ground, he said, "What happened, boy?" and I told him; he was understanding and said no more about it.
→ The Nantes mission room · Combat America (Gable’s film)
The next mission that stands out in my mind was my very last one, which I didn't know was my last one until I'd landed back at Polebrook. This was a mission to Berlin and, I guess, in late March of 1945. But I landed and as I got to the interrogation, the word got to me that Gen. Lacey, our wing commander, wanted me to come up to his office, which I did. He said, "Well, you're going home." I said, "My Lord, man, I don't want to go home now. The war is over. I had planned on doing some flying around Europe without getting shot at, and I had also planned on flying an airplane back to the States!" He said, "Don't argue with me. There's not a thing I can do. There are some colonels who had to sit out the war in the Pentagon, and they're going to send them over to get them what experience they can of what's left of the war." He said "You have been here the longest of any Group Commander of the 8th Air Force, so you're number one to get out." He said "Just go pack your bags." And that's the story of how I went home - in the back seat of a C54. Now if you don't think that's a come down - it really is.
So that, in brief, is the story of the 351st as I saw it, from beginning almost to the end. As I say, I left about three weeks to a month before the war was officially over, and not through my own doing. So to wrap it up, I'm going to steal a line from Bob Hope, and if I had the talent I'd sing it to you, but, lacking that, I'll just repeat it - 'Thanks for the memories.'
“Thanks for the memories.”
Every mission he named has its own place in this archive, built from the records that corroborate his telling: the 25 combat missions cross-checked against his Form 5, the deep-dive Schweinfurt and Nantes rooms, and the daily Morning Reports he wrote the same year as this speech.