In one of the photographs within my service album, there is a picture almost too silly to merit any comment but I have had so many questions regarding it that I will try to explain it! I too was dumbfounded when I first saw it for the very first time in a crewmate's photo album at a reunion in St. Louis in 1986, 33 years after having last seen any of our combat crew members.

About half way through our combat tour someone in the 93rd Bomb Squadron thought it would be a great idea and morale booster to obtain RED (as our 19th Bomb Group Squadron Tail ID color) baseball type caps with the Squadron emblem on the front. And of course from there, there was a great deal of embellishment to these caps, many having crew position wings attached, names of places visited painted on, etc. And since we were not issued the World War II Leather A-2 Jackets upon which AirCrew members had painted their Aircraft Name, Nose Art, and bomb silhoettes symbolizing the number of missions flown, some of us painted small bomb silhoettes on the peak of the cap, one for each combat mission over North Korea.

At some point in our tour, I realized I was the only one on our crew wearing my li'l red hat on combat missions and that all others who had purchased these hats had apparently put them away in foot lockers to be preserved as a momento of their combat tour. I also found out that most of our crew thought I was crazy for wearing that hat on missions in the event of bailout and capture by the Chinese or North Koreans…..something that really hadn't occurred to me! I brushed it off with the thought that that hat would be long gone in the wind in a bailout, if not lost within the scramble to get out of a damaged falling aircraft, with the tearing off of headsets, oxygen masks etc. And that hat was worn only enroute or return anyway, never on a bomb run since we had to wear the old leather helmets with the built in headset and oxygen mask clamps on the sides - always being on oxygen while depressurized. I have since thought that the switching of that hat to helmet and helmet to hat was much like the football players we see today removing their helmet and immediately putting their team colors ball cap on while on the sidelines!

At any rate, after my crewmates raising the doubts about the advisability of having that hat either on, or even stuffed in a pocket, I DID have pause and second thoughts of carrying it again, but my ego, bravado, ,,,,,,and superstitious nature, got the best of me and after having about 15 missions marked on it I could not stop carrying it along on each mission….perhaps like the lucky penny or other artifact that I know each and everyone of us had on each mission! ANY change in routine might jinx us!

Having "whistled in the dark" on so many occasions in the past, I told my crewmates that if I got caught with the hat by the Gooks, I would just act crazy….perhaps like the legend of the American Indian not bothering mentally disturbed people whose spirit or soul they thought was possessed……and I acted out what I was going to do if captured…..thus the broom, the Air Force Issue Winter Overcoat ( the ONLY time I ever had that coat on in my whole Air Force career and this on Okinawa in warm weather), the crossed eyes….and the Li'l Red Hat!

Ironically, after receiving our orders for reassignment from Okinawa to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, a very warm desert climate, I left the overcoat, and all of my GI woolen long johns with the poor Okinawan houseboy that worked in our barracks, knowing I would never have use for these again since I never had before! The first thing that made me aware of the difference between the 19th Bomb Group, and its renegade character, and a disciplined SAC
(Strategic Air Command ) Bomb Wing, was the particularly "chicken shit" nature of the 43rd Air Refueling Squadron under a nonflying First Sergeant . He called a "Class A" Inspection , open Foot Lockers, to see if we had the exact and specific items originally issued to us two years previously….and all of our socks rolled right…..and of course I didn't ( but my socks WERE rolled right)…..and had to go to supply and buy exactly those items which I had given the houseboy…..including another winter overcoat which of course was never ever worn again either! That First Sergeant upped a lot of my other bad memories about the 43rd………I hope I "up his" with this!

As I sit here writing today, " dotting the 'T's ' and crossing the eyes", that li'l red hat hangs by my desk, and is a constant reminder of things both good and bad , but mostly that there ARE brighter sides to nearly everything ……………and humor is a VERY great salve for fear!

-Bud Farrell