Bernard Knese was born in Meppen, Illinois near St. Louis, Missouri in May 1924. He grew up in a farming community. They raised apple orchards. About 100 people lived in Meppen. He went to school. He was drafted the war started. He did basic training at Keesler Field [Annotator’s Note: Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi]. He went to radio school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and then went to Fort Benning, Georgia to finish his training. Next, they picked up a plane at Fort Wayne, Indiana. They flew to Tennessee, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, and then flew to North Africa and ended up in England. Basic training was rough. Knese was on KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] or guard duty. It was a brand new base at that time. When Knese was inducted at Jefferson Barracks [Annotator's Note: Jefferson Barracks Military Post in Lemay, Missouri] he got on a troop train to go to Keesler Field. The trip took four days. They all had to shower before they went to bed. After radio school, Knese went to Fort Benning. They trained to fly at night. Knese was the radio operator on the plane. They would fly for a couple of hours and then land. Knese would call the tower for different things. He stayed with the same airplane the whole war. They brought it back when they came back from the war. A lot of men had nicknames for their planes. The C-47 [Annotator’s Note: The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota] was a great airplane. Knese had his equipment on the right side of the plane just outside the cockpit. He had one radio with the code. They could do morse code and leave voice messages. When they went overseas, he would use voicemail to talk to the tower. Knese was drafted on 3 April 1943. Anyone 18 years old to 35 years old had to sign up for the draft.

Bernard Knese found out he was going into the Army Air Force when he went to basic training. Basic training lasted two months. Then he was sent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for radio school. Radio school lasted five months, and then he was sent to Fort Benning [Annotator’s Note: Fort Benning, Georgia] in December [Annotator’s Note: of 1943]. After their training, they went overseas in early 1944. Knese helped drop paratroopers on D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] came up through Italy and liberated France, then moved on to Germany. Knese supplied gasoline to Patton. Patton would make metal landing strips for the planes. A group of black soldiers would unload the gasoline. Then they would go to a field hospital and pick up as many wounded as they could. They made two trips a day for several weeks. Knese’s outfit went in at two o’clock in the morning on 6 June 1944 to drop off paratroopers on Normandy. They also dropped paratroopers in Belgium or Holland. In Normandy, they did not get hit by any tracer bullets. In Belgium and Holland, they were hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] in the wing, but were able to get back to the base. When they were trapped at the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], they had five packs strapped to the bottom of the planes attached to parachutes which they dropped to these men. At the Bulge, they got five direct hits from small arms fire on their plane. When they crossed the Rhine [Annotator’s Note: the Rhine River in Germany] they were hit in the gas tank, but made it back to base safely. Flying with extra fuel on board made Knese nervous. They carried 140 five-gallon cans on each trip.

Bernard Knese moved from England to France in early 1945. Knese served in the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] as well. Knese was on the right wing. Knese enjoyed England. They had their barracks, mess hall, and post office. The nurses would have dances they could go to. Knese received eight Bronze Stars [Annotator's Note: the Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy]. Knese had been a farmhand in Illinois. They grew apples, wheat, and corn. After he got out of the service in 1945, he signed up for three more years during the Korean War. They would fly up to Greenland. They had C-54s [Annotator’s Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster] then, a four-engine transport. From there he was sent by ship to Japan. He made one flight up to Korea, then he returned home.

Bernard Knese took off around midnight and crossed the Channel [Annotator’s Note: the English Channel]. They arrived in Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] at two o’clock in the morning. They dropped the paratroopers and took two hours to get back to base. The firepower on the C-47 [Annotator’s Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain] was each man armed with a 45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol]. He does not think they had parachutes. Knese saw Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] in 1945. Paris was liberated at this point. The C-54 [Annotator’s Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster] was a lot bigger than the C-47. When they returned home, they landed in South Carolina. They did not have a navigator. It was Knese’s job to get position reports. He thinks about his time in the Army Air Force a lot. It was an educational time spent in many different countries. In North Africa, they could hear the natives beating drums. Each culture had their own thing that made them different from the United States. He had never been out of Illinois before. He was stationed at Johnson Air Base in Tokyo, Japan during the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953].

After D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], Bernard Knese had a 30-day convalescent leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], and then he was supposed to go to the South Pacific. While he was home, they dropped the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] and Japan surrendered. Knese asked if he still had to go. He had 85 points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] and was able to get out. After he got out of the service, he went to Chicago [Annotator’s Note: Chicago, Illinois] for electronics school. Then he moved to Florida. He served in the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] and then went back to Florida where he went to work for a window company. He was transferred to New Orleans [Annotator’s Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] in 1952. He had one son and one daughter. He has been married for 53 years. He spent a lot of hours in the air. When they were supplying Patton’s [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Army, they were making two trips a day from England to France. Patton would lay down an airstrip for them to land. They had racks under the plane to carry packs of supplies for the soldiers. They carried ammunition and food. The barracks were great. There were double bunks. When they moved to France they had tents. The planes were sitting outside on pads, there were no hangars. They did have a truck to take them to the planes or they could walk. [Annotator’s Note: Knese discusses some of his photographs].

Bernard Knese remembers that on a mission to Holland or Belgium, one of the planes had to crash land. The pilot and co-pilot rode the plane to the ground. The pilot ended up with a broken leg, but managed to crawl away from the plane before it blew up. Knese never went to any reunions. Flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] hit the wing of the plane. Another time, they landed with only one working engine. They were fortunate to get back. [Annotator’s Note: Knese and the interviewer discuss the photographs]. Knese received eight Bronze Stars [Annotator's Note: the Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy], and two Presidential Citations from President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. He thinks one was for Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He likes to go to the museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. Every few miles there were airstrips in England. Germany had a buzz bomb [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] that they would fire at London [Annotator’s Note: London, England]. A hotel they were in was hit by one the next day and lost five floors.

Bernard Knese asks about the bricks at the museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He enjoyed the documentary. [Annotator’s Note: Knese’s wife talks to the interviewer].