Spring 1944 [Chapter 12]

A Shower of Frogs (WWII memoir)

Chapter 12: The Spring [1944]

[Post note: D-Day approaches, but for Bill Stigall, it was still just waiting, not knowing when or how the invasion would begin. A follow-up post will provide his perspective on the glider in which he would "fly".]

It was the spring, and it did lead to a breath-abated hour. But from early March to June, when my glider was one in a fifty-mile-long flying train across the Channel, the hundred days were a strange
mixture of impatience, serenity, waste, happiness, boredom, and beauty. The times bring to mind the analogy of a man's life being like a tone poem. Various passages of agitation and calm, shifting
moods from vivace to largo, with mucho moderato in the middle. A series of themes, some abandoned, some recurring. Now and then passages of intentional monotony, including several beats of silence. Those hundred days lived at the bottom of the military pile must have been very different from life at SHAPE Headquarters and in the United States. Not knowing the date or place of invasion, making no decisions, seeing no end to repetitive preparations, contrasted with reams of information, boxes of reports, conferences galore, and some generally determined week "to go." Or in America, living under the pressure of newspaper, magazine, and radio coverage hyped by wild guessing, adding up to plain jitters. The tension at the bottom was, on the surface, nil. Subconsciously there was tension, expressed in short tempers, frustration, despair, including a sense of having been forgotten.

...

During the hundred days, I went to Stratford, London, and Derbyshire. I loved and treasured every moment of them. By the first of April my life sank into dull, seemingly senseless action, lacking any quality of expectancy. Only in a rare moment did I give a thought to the true reason for my existence and whereabouts. Life lacked drama; it lacked suspense; it lacked excitement. My main drive was a burning desire to get on with the war and get it over. I hated the army more than ever. Somehow the  seductive presence of civilians made life more difficult than had their absence. The strain of waiting, of watching the sky where men were getting things done while I trained and wasted time in block-long chow lines, was nerve-wracking. Tempers were as short as green grass in the desert.

Life turned sour. I thought we'd never get off the ground-not for real. Mail call, the heartbeat of our life, slowed down to a trickle. It may have been real or it may have been psychological, but we felt
forgotten by those at home.