THE DAY WAR COMES TO LESKOV YAKANOVICH

September 2, 1944

 

Target - Marshaling Yards

Nis, Yugoslavia

A cold front had passed during the night and washed away the usual haze from the Mediterranean sky. The cool, dry air buoyed my spirits and I felt light and free as if I were able to rise off the ground and soar like a hawk. Danger seemed remote as our heavily-laden bomber struggled to gain altitude over the Adriatic enroute to Yugoslavia and our target, the railroad marshaling yards at Nis. Even before we picked up our fighter escort I knew we were in trouble. Cylinder head temperatures on two of our engines pushed the temperature gauge needles into the red. We were at 18,000 feet and there was another seven thousand feet to climb to reach our bombing altitude. .

It was a great temptation to abort the mission and avoid the German fighters and flak-filled skies which lay ahead. We were authorized to declare an engine emergency and high tail it back to the bomber base. No credit for the mission would be a consequence and one more day would be added to our tour of duty in Italy. Unthinkable! A better alternative was to lighten the plane by jettisoning a bomb and hope that a lighter plane would ease the load on the engines and allow us to keep up with the formation.

Down in the nose of the B-24 I studied the earth sliding by far below. The barren, brown tinged landscape spreading from horizon to horizon seemed no different from the ground I'd flown over countless times while training in Texas. I looked hard for any signs of human activity.

Over the intercom came a command. "Pilot to Bombardier. Jettison a bomb. See if that will let us keep up with the formation." "Roger, Dave. Right away!". The roar of the slip stream sounded loud over the engines when the bomb bay doors slid open. A blast of bitter cold air hit the back of my neck and my face stung where it was peppered by sand and debris the gale force wind stirred up from the floor of the flight deck. I flicked the bomb release switch. "One bomb away!", I sang out. The plane suddenly unburdened by a 500 pound bomb surged and the altimeter jumped twenty feet.

Eagerly, I pressed my head hard against the bomb sight window to better glimpse the tell tail puff of smoke marking where the bomb landed. For the first time I noticed a faint line etched into the barren landscape. It stretched from two o'clock off the right wing of our plane and disappeared beneath our fuselage. Another faint line paralleled our wings from horizon to horizon. Where these faint trails marking roads intersected I could make out two tiny structures. A darker patch of ground showed where the earth had felt the touch of a plow. The seconds ticked by.

Just before the barely visible roads far below slipped beneath our wings I saw the eruption of a huge gray billowing cloud of smoke. It was as if the intersection of the two roads were the bomb sight cross hairs marking the target and the single jettisoned bomb hit dead center. The house and the barn disappeared in the violent explosion. The silence over the intercom told me I was not alone in witnessing this tragedy of war. "Noooooooooo. !", my primordial scream filled the plane. The irony of my act of releasing a bomb at this precise moment in time wasn't lost on myself nor any of the crew. If Leskov Yakonovich's tiny farm had been our target and I’d used the bomb sight, the bomb would have surely landed nearby but even with the accuracy of the Norden bomb sight, the probability of a direct hit on this tiny structure from 18,000 feet was remote at best.

Leskov Yakonovich is the name I chose to give this innocent victim of war. More than fifty years have passed and I still can't forget this tiny farm house on the barren earth leading to the outskirts of Nis. Just the random flick of a switch brought war -and maybe death - to an innocent peasant who sought to eke out a living tilling the soil far below where my bomber happened to be flying at a particular moment in time.

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Epilogue: On March 24, 1999, NATO fighter bombers struck targets in Serbia, Yugoslavia, in a major effort to halt the Serbian Army from its ethnic cleansing of Moslems living in neighboring territories. Soon the evening TV news reports listed Nis as a target and showed smart bombs destroying oil facilities. Suddenly, my efforts in 1944 to help bring about peace to the world seemed meaningless. I can’t rid myself of anger, frustration and despair. I never anticipated I would live to witness bombs fall again on Nis.

 

Walter S. Crowell

745th Squadron

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