"I was scared," Rubin says.
But he adds that I Japanese prisoners-of-warhad to do most of the dangerous work.
Not All Useful
Not all of the knowledge the soldiers gainedduring their service was especially applicableafter the war, however.
Parker D. Wyman "44-'46 was trained in the armyto be vertical control operator for shellingattacks. "I determined what the elevation of ourguns should be," he says.
Wyman's artillery unit went to Europe inFebruary 1945 and took part in the Battle of theRuhr in Germany. Wyman was stationed in the townof Neuss, and helped to fire upon the industrialcity of Dusseldorf.
In early 1946 Wyman was discharged from theArmy in Berlin.
"I arranged it that way because I wanted to gostraight into the Foreign Service, which I coulddo in Berlin because our mission there neededjunior officers immediately," Wyman says.
Ironically, Wyman was later assigned to work atthe U.S. Consulate in Dusseldorf, the very city hehad once attacked.
"It was... a little awkward when some of myGerman friends asked me where I had served duringthe war," Wyman says.
But it they didn't gain knowledge they coulduse later, many veterans at least came out withpermanent friends, bonded buy life-threateningexperiences.
David Benton '44-'47, of Sea Girt, N.J.,enlisted in the Army during Harvard's summer 1942session.
In March, 1944, Benton joined the 401st BombGroup of the Eighth Army Air Force at Sioux City,Iowa, as a Second Lieutenant Bombardier. And aftersome more training, they flew to England in June1944.
Benton's crew took their B-17 bomber on 35daytime missions over Germany in late 1944. Theybombed cities with "oil production facilities orfactories" such as Magdeburg and Schweinfurt, hesays.
"We flew at usually 25 or 26 thousand feet,"Benton says. "We had no heat inside the cabin. Wewore heated suits, because it was 55 degrees belowzero."
"We encountered quite a bit of opposition fromthe Germans, of course," Benton says.
"We encountered a couple of early German jetfighters, which had just been designed," Bentonsays. "They went by us in no time at all," hesays, but "they didn't really do us any harm.
According to Benton, the Eighth Army Air Force,which operated over Germany during daylight hours,had the highest casualty rate of all the Americanunits which served in the war.
"I still see some of my crew members," saysBenton, who will attend a bomb group reunion inEngland this July.