· RUEL SK

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At dusk, a B-24 with green tail and white horizontal stripe markings (491 st BG)
landed at Tibenham: the Dewey crew was back home. The RAF had given them another
group's plane. While in Manston, they didn't see any other 44S th BG survivors, even
though the Mercer crew had landed there too. That emergency base was crowded with
planes arriving every few minutes, in bad shape, with wounded and dead on board. In the
confusion, they never made contact. At Tibenham, no one came to meet the Dewey crew,
and they didn't have any interrogation from intelligence that night.
Later that evening, Dewey was visited in his hut by Lt. Keith Frost. They had gone
through crew training together at Tonopah, Nevada. He had made a crash landing at
Manston a few days before, with his decapitated bombardier. He had aborted today's
mission and told Dewey he was resigning from flying, turning in his wings and quitting
combat.
The FRENCH crew
That evening French, Cochran, and Robert Tims were standing the bar of the fighter
base officers' quarters - a handsome French chateau a few miles from Reims.
"I wonder how many planes got back to England," said Tims. "I saw only three
ahead of us and one below us to the right at the end. The group must have lost over half of
them."
French agreed that the other squadrons were hit as hard as they were.
Cochran was glad that Fiske had contacted the base. He was not happy at the
thought that the guys had started picking up his clothes, particularly his precious battlejacket.
"I hope MacGregor was as lucky as we - or had time to bailout anyway."
"Give us three scotch and sodas, please," Tims asked the bartender.
He raised his glass: "Here is to the end of your tour, boys."
In the meantime, it was hard for the enlisted men of the French crew to find some
rest as many of the men stationed at the base came out that evening to ask them questions.
They asked Herbert Schwartz if he had been scared. "All I could say was that 1 had thought
I had to use the latrine after we crashed but when I got there, all 1 did was wipe! Then I
developed a sudden headache and went inside the ship to try to get some rest. However I