Charles Childs was born in July 1920 in Arnegard, North Dakota. He did not stay home. He went to school and when he got older he would take off. The Great Depression made food hard to come by. Hobos would ride the freight trains trying to get food for their families. He would ride out to the West Coast during the summers. There were a lot of kids riding the trains. The men were dads and had kids, so they looked after them. They would go to the bakery in town. They would clean the bakery and get day-old buns that they would take to the hobo jungle. There was always a pot of something cooking. His father made him stop by putting him in the Civilian Military Training Camp in Bismarck, North Dakota. Childs was a professional drummer, so he joined the military band. A train carnival came to town. He went to the girlie show and heard a band playing. He knew all of them. They called him Leroy. His father allowed him a discharge to travel with the band in the carnival for the summer. He was in Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota] when he got a telegram from his dad saying his mother was dying. He left the carnival and made it to the hospital. His mother was skin and bones. She died one week later, and he went back to school. He was 17.

Charles Childs was lucky to graduate [Annotator's Note: in 1938]. He had some friends going to college and they needed a drummer. He did not have money, so he got a job in the wheat fields. He then hitchhiked across the state and went to college [Annotator's Note: at Mayville State Teachers College, Mayville, North Dakota]. He played in dance bands and traveled with big bands during the summer. He made it home once his whole time in college. His mother was dead, and his family had moved to the West Coast. Money was tight so he joined the 164th Infantry National Guard [Annotator's Note: 164th Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Divisio; part of the North Dakota National Guard] in November 1940. February 1941, the National Guards were nationalized and sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. They left in a big blizzard in heavy uniforms. It took a month to get summer uniforms. They went on maneuvers. He was a light machine gunner. He had a wooden gun because the U nited States was not ready for war. He decided he did not like the infantry, so he joined the band. He put his name in for aviation cadet training and everybody laughed at him. He passed everything and became a cadet. He had seen airplanes flying and thought it looked good. In advanced training, he wrote a letter to his dad and his college girlfriend to meet him at the house. He asked her to marry him after he became a pilot. She was teaching country school and came by bus to Georgia. On 3 July 1942, he received his commission and wings and they married on 4 July. [Annotator's Note: As of this interview they had been married 77 years.]

[Annotator's Note: Charles Childs was in aviation cadet training when he heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] All of the cadets went into a room and listened to Roosevelt [Annotator’s Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] on the radio. Childs had no idea where Pearl Harbor was. They all guessed they were going to war. He graduated as a fighter pilot but instead of going overseas in that role he was made an instructor for British pilots. He flew about every airplane he could fly, including B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s [Annotator’s Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], but he wanted to go to combat. There was a sign on the bulletin board asking for 12 B-24 pilots to go to the South Pacific and he signed up. He went to California. Their orders were lost. They asked for B-17 pilots, which Childs was. He went to Langley Field [Annotator's Note: Newport News, Virginia; now Langley Air Force Base] where they were using radar. His navigator and bombardier were taken away and they gave him a radar navigator making a crew of nine. They got a plane and they voted to name it "Gravel Gertie" out of the Dick Tracy comics [Annotator's Note: American comic strip]. At two o'clock in the morning, they left Langley Field to go overseas. The weather was bad. They flew alone across the Atlantic Ocean. The radio operator turned on some music. "I'll Be Seeing You" [Annotator's Note: song about nostalgia by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal, 1938] played and all of the boys were very quiet. It was quite a feeling. The radio operator and navigator hit the Azores Islands right on the head. They then went to Marrakesh, North Africa, Sicily, and then to Italy and joined the 15th Air Force, 2nd Bombardment Group, 96th Bombardment Squadron. He became a combat pilot [Annotator's Note: in December 1943].

Charles Childs was told he would be leading the Group [Annotator's Note: 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] soon. He led them 22 times and his Squadron [Annotator's Note: 96th Bombardment Squadron] ten times. He was the lead pilot for 32 of his 37 missions. His first mission, he was copilot. He had a camera and was taking pictures of the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] coming up. When he returned, his camera was confiscated. The next mission he was copilot and on his fourth mission, he led the squadron. It was a tough mission. They were told there were no flak guns around. That was wrong. He could see the fire and they really got shot up. They stopped counting the holes at 200. His instrument panel and one engine was shot out. On one mission, he was flying Deputy Lead. On the bomb run, the navigator was not set up, so they turned around to come back. On the first pass, an engine was knocked out. On the second pass, he had another engine knocked out. The formation left them behind. If the fighters see you, they will knock you down. His navigator was new that day and had them heading to Switzerland and not Italy. He told his crew he did not want to go there and would get them to safe territory to bail out. He took his own heading and told the crew he thought he could make it. The guys were coming out of their tents to see them coming in two hours late. Childs lost his third engine and had to land on one. They shut down and nobody said a word. They were very fortunate to get back that day. All of his missions were rough. On one, his 19 year old engineer had his head blown off; his copilot, radio operator, and waist gunner were seriously wounded. Childs came back from 37 combat missions without a scratch. The flak took out an engine and exploded above them. You were lucky if you never got hit and he never did.

Charles Childs did not like the Nazis. He admired the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] pilots, but did not like them when they hit him. There was one mission where an entire squadron was shot down. He came there as a replacement for that. Many planes got shot down. A lone B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] joined up with their B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] for safety, but he was shot down too. They shot down ten planes that day, losing 100 boys. It was rough. They were kids and they lived day by day. Childs lost five lead bombardiers while he was there. He would ask God to help him through each bomb run. He listened to a jazz band and told them they needed a drummer. He played for them. He would play all night and then get told he had a briefing for a mission. The first thing he would do was set his oxygen mask to 100 percent to clear his head. He did that day after day. They would have to clear out the stuff of the men who did not come back. They did not do anything special for the ones who did not make it. They did not get well acquainted with anybody because it just hurt too much.

Charles Childs was sent by boat to the United States. His radar-navigator was sent back with him. Childs was a Captain and his navigator was a First Lieutenant. Childs could get good food due to his rank. They boarded a train in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] to Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota]. Childs was the ranking officer on the train, so he was in charge of the train. He did not make sure the boys behaved themselves or stop them from celebrating. He met a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] pilot and they and their wives stayed in the same hotel and dined together. Both couples had children nine months later. Everything went fine from there on out. Childs decided to stay in the Army Air Corps. He like to fly and had a good job. He was put in the Ferry Command flying planes all over the United States. He flew C-54s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft] out of Washington D.C. flying Very Important Persons around the United States. Flying VIPs was no different. Nobody had to talk to psychologists then. They just went on with their lives. He did not start to talk about combat until about five years ago [Annotator's Note: from the time of this interview]. His wife had no idea of what went on his life in combat until then. That happened in Rapid City, South Dakota, when he was asked to tell his story. He wrote three books then. He flew the VIPs for about two years.

Charles Childs knew the Berlin Airlift [Annotator's Note: Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, Germany, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949] was starting. They needed C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft] pilots, so they reached out and transferred him. It was a very necessary mission. When Germany was divided into three sectors, Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] found out that Stalin [Annotator's Note: Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin] was a different guy. West Berliners did not want anything to do with Communists. Berlin was 150 miles from the American sector. Fortunately, Tempelhof Airport was in the American sector. C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] began the airlift but could not carry enough tonnage. The C-54 could carry much more. Training was set up in Great Falls, Montana. Childs went there in October 1948. The field was set up exactly the same as in Berlin. He trained for a month and then went to Wiesbaden, Germany where he flew out of. The aircraft were heavy, and they hit the runway hard. It was made of steel mat. An airplane landed every three minutes. Crews ran on and off the runway repairing it all day and night. They would not have completed the airlift if the West Berliners had not helped. General Tunner [Annotator's Note: US Air Force Lieutenant General William H. Tunner] had been in charge of the lift in China [Annotator's Note: "The Hump"; name given by Allied pilots to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew to resupply the Chinese war effort] before the war. He flew into Tempelhof one day and the sky was full of planes. He sent everyone back home and then created a new system of instrument flying regulations, IFR. They had to hit everything exactly three minutes apart. It was like a conveyor belt of airplanes going in and coming out. This went on constantly for 13 months. In Berlin, Air Traffic Control would give them their headings and then Ground Control would take over [Annotator's Note: he explains the process in detail]. Stalin thought that winter would kill them, but it did not. It was a fantastic deal.

[Annotator's Note: Charles Childs was a pilot during the Berlin Airlift in Germany.] The first time he landed, the door flew open and there were ten Germans unloading coal. They had a contest to see how fast they could unload the plane. One time, they unloaded ten tons of coal in five minutes. Childs became very well acquainted with the crews. He sold them cigarettes at first, but then he started just giving them to them. They were worth more than gold on the black market. He always had a clean flying suit, but they had a game to see who could rub against him first, covering him with coal dust. He got along fine with them. A big German came up and said "thank you" over and over. Childs knew then he was there to save the Germans from starving and freezing to death. He flew 196 times and made all of the landings. It was the greatest humanitarian act. They saved two and a half million people. The people were living in bombed-out buildings and slept in their clothes. Childs is very proud of flying on the Berlin Airlift. He did not know many of the men who were flying. They were happy when it ended. On Easter Sunday [Annotator's Note: noon 15 April to noon 16 April 1949], General Tunner [Annotator's Note: US Air Force Lieutenant General William H. Tunner] said that they were going to show Stalin something. Instead of three minutes, they landed every minute for 24 hours. Stalin lifted it. His wife raised his four children because he was gone a lot.

Three years after the Berlin Airlift [Annotator's Note: Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949], Charles Childs was flying in the Korean War. He flew from Japan on a C-119 [Annotator's Note: Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo aircraft] carrying paratroopers. They were just young kids and he hated it. He would also drop equipment. Korea was full of mountains and the weather had to be watched. He really hated that. Dropping those kids just really hurt him. It was tough. He was the old man when he was in Europe in World War 2 because he was 24. The Korean War was tough and forgotten. The Vietnam War got more publicity. It was also not a necessary war. We should not have been there. We lost a lot of young men. Childs' son was in the Vietnam War and died of Agent Orange [Annotator's Note: herbicide and defoliant used in Vietnam by the United States]. Duty is duty and in the service you do what they tell you to do. He went into the Strategic Air Command after the Korean War. It was not a nice place to be. There was a lot of backstabbing. His last assignment there was in Greenland for a year. It was 45 below zero weather and that is when he retired.

Charles Childs feels that if we had not had a nuclear weapon, we would be speaking Japanese. During the Berlin Airlift [Annotator's Note: Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949], we were very close to World War 3. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] brought some B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] and fighter planes to England. Stalin [Annotator's Note: Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin] did not know if we had the bomb on them or not, so he backed up. We only had 9,000 troops in Berlin, and they had about a million and half. Flying down the corridor during good weather, they would have incidents from the Russians trying to interrupt the flights. Harassing them all the time. Had any of our planes been shot down, it would have been World War 3. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Childs about what is was like to drop relief as opposed to bombs on the Germans.] The West Berliners needed them, and they became friends. Every year, they celebrate the Berlin Airlift in Berlin. He brought 52 guys over [Annotator's Note: to the United States] and they gave him a hat that says, "friends forever". He liked the West Berliners.

Charles Childs felt it was his duty to serve. When he saw how they [Annotator's Note: the Germans in West Berlin, Germany during the Berlin Airlift] were starving and freezing to death, he was motivated to keep flying. They worked with them. They built a new runway in three months. 7,000 West Berliners built a new runway out of the rubble of the bombed-out buildings. They did not want Communism. We gave them their freedom. There was a German club where Americans were not allowed. Childs was a drummer and was allowed inside to play with the band. Childs had played and then saw he had a flight. He was not concerned because he had a good copilot. The copilot had had a rough night too. The weather was bad. He had ten tons of dog food. He struggled back to base and then was told he had another flight. He turned it down. The pilots were dead tired all the time. They only had 15 minutes on the ground between landing and taking off. They flew 12 to 13 hours per day. There were 300 pilots and they slept in anything they could. Childs went to an old German barracks that was all open bay and he had a cot. He put big screens around him to make a bedroom. He is very proud of having flown in the Berlin Airlift. They put the first knife in the coffin of Communism. The experience made him think of other people and what they go through. Helping them was a great feeling. There was not a day that he was not happy to do it. He came back from World War 2 and stayed in the service. He never had bad dreams or anything. Future generations need to know what the veterans went through to give them freedom. Thousands are never coming home. The kids do not know anything about World War 2 or the Berlin Airlift. It should be taught, what went on and why.