Charles Poston was born in October 1921 in Austin, Arkansas but was raised in Many, Louisiana with two younger brothers. His childhood was pretty uneventful, until he was around 11 years old when the Great Depression had an effect on him [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. His father, who had served in World War 1, worked as a telegraph operator for the Kansas City Southern Railroad, lost this job in 1932, but was able to purchase a 200-acre farm in Sabine Parish, Louisiana. Poston lived there until he left for LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge]. Going to school was a privilege. On the farm, their nearest neighbors were a quarter of a mile away. Church was an integral part of his upbringing, and a big part of their social life. People in his community were very self-sufficient, but all helped each other out when needed. Poston was 20 years old, home from his senior year at LSU, when he learned about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] from President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] on the radio. He was a lieutenant in the engineer regiment of ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] at LSU, which he liked. LSU, as a land grant college, was required by law to offer an ROTC program, and able-bodied male students were required to take ROTC their first two years of college. Initially he had no choice but continued in the program his junior and senior year because his family needed the money. Poston was the first in his family to go to college.

After Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Charles Poston knew what was coming, and that the chances of being called to active duty after graduation were very high. He graduated in June 1942, and three days later received a telegram ordering him to active duty shortly thereafter. He reported to Fort DuPont [Annotator's Note: now Fort DuPont State Park in Delaware City, Delaware], stopping on his way in Columbus, Georgia to bid farewell to his girlfriend. He became a company officer assigned to the 70th Engineer Company LP [Annotator's Note: 70th Engineer Light Pontoon Company], building floating bridges for the Army. Even as a second lieutenant, Poston was not really commanding anything. He was assigned to operate a research project, using a Leica [Annotator's Note: Leica Camera AG, camera company] camera to take pictures of the company building bridges and to write the procedures from beginning to end. He was not a combat or command officer. He learned quickly that the senior non-coms [Annotator's Note: noncommissioned officer] were the ones who really knew what was going on. He depended very heavily on them and has the utmost respect for them. He was at Fort DuPont for three months, then sent to upstate New York, Madison Barracks [Annotator's Note: in Sackets Harbor, New York], from July [Annotator's Note: July 1942] to October [Annotator's Note: October 1942], in order to form a new company. A friend of Poston's had flunked out of flight school because of less than perfect vision, and his curiosity was piqued. Flight school was for him. He requested a transfer and was accepted by the Army Air Corps for pilot training, frozen in grade, or could not be promoted, until he finished his training.

Charles Poston went to Montgomery, Alabama for ground school. He was already familiar with ham radio [Annotator's Note: amateur radio], so easily passed the Morse Code [Annotator's Note: a method of telecommunication encoding characters in a system of dots and dashes] test, and as an engineer had no trouble with the math test either. He was accepted as a student officer into Air Corps pilot training. He received instructor training for around 11 hours of flying time. If your instructor "solos" you, lets you fly the plane by yourself, within that period of time, you were on the road to becoming a pilot. A good percentage of his class did not solo and were washed out. They were flying Stearman biplanes [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Kaydet or PT-13 primary trainer aircraft] for two months with a total of 80 hours of flying time. Poston was then able to rank which aircrafts he wanted to fly. He opted for a single-engine fighter as his first choice, twin-engine fighter as the second, and a light bomber as his last choice. Poston was 21 years old at the time, most of the other students were cadets around 18 years old, and not officers like he was. His instructor told him he was too old, but Poston was determined. He was then sent to Gunter Field [Annotator's Note: now Gunter Annex, part of Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama] for basic flying training for another two months, and then to advanced flying school in Dothan, Alabama. In his second month there, the Army Air Corps decided to try out Poston's class to see if they could learn to fly fighters while still in training. A dozen brand new P-40's [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] arrived, and Poston was delighted to be the first man in the air. He got his wings in August 1943, with 13 hour and ten minutes of fighter time under his belt.

Charles Poston had 13 hours and ten minutes of flying time when there was a call for volunteers to go to test pilot school in Pennsylvania. Poston was the first man to volunteer but was told that with the number of hours he had flown, he would be going into combat. He was assigned to a fighter training school in Venice, Florida. When Poston graduated from flight school in August 1943, rationing was in place, so it was difficult to find tires, shoes, meat, sugar, etc. The fact that his parents, who were not well off, yet drove to attend his graduation under these circumstances told Poston a lot about how much his parents cared. Poston had been given leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in July to attend the birth of his first son, and the flight director even had him flown out. Poston felt that the Air Corps was where he belonged, and where he could serve his country the very best. Poston was assigned to the 5th Fighter Training Squadron [Annotator's Note: unable to verify] in Venice [Annotator's Note: Venice Army Airfield in Venice, Florida], and endured six to eight weeks of intense formation, gunnery, and cross-country training in a P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft]. During training, Poston fired expert and was made a gunnery instructor, a role which he enjoyed very much. Part of training included shooting skeet, or clay pigeons, where they learned to aim ahead of the moving target. He already had some experience from his years on his family's farm in Louisiana. In April 1944, Poston was promoted to First Lieutenant. He and a friend, John Egan [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], volunteered to go overseas.

Charles Poston was shipped overseas, departing from Miami in a C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft] to Casablanca [Annotator's Note: Casablanca, Morocco], then via C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft] to Tripoli [Annotator's Note: Tripoli, Libya], Benghazi [Annotator's Note: Benghazi, Libya], Cairo [Annotator's Note: Cairo, Egypt], and then on a C-46 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft] to Karachi, India [Annotator's Note: in modern-day Pakistan]. In Karachi, Chinese pilots were being trained on P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft]. A friend of Poston's wanted to join the Flying Tigers [Annotator's Note: the First American Volunteer Group of the Republic of China Air Force composed of American airmen and ground crew] in China, but Poston was not interested. Poston learned there was need for just one more P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] pilot to complete the 1st Air Commando Group and to transition the pilots from old P-51As to brand new P-47s. Poston volunteered. He joined the Group in the Bengal province of India, on the outskirts of a town called Asansol. He began training P-51 pilots to fly the P-47. Their first combat mission consisted of two squadrons of 20 fighters each escorting 20 B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] from the coast of the Indian Ocean to Rangoon [Annotator's Note: Rangoon, or Yangon, Burma, now Myanmar], more than 1,000 miles roundtrip. Poston was at the tail end, strafing a Japanese airfield when a Japanese fighter approached his tail. A fellow pilot took down the Japanese plane. Poston's plane was damaged unbeknownst to him until after landing. There were holes, two feet in diameter, under each wing from Japanese 20-millimeter explosive cannon. God was on Poston's side and nothing the plane required to fly correctly was damaged. The plane was patched overnight and ready to fly the next day.

Charles Poston [Annotator's Note: a US Army Air Corps pilot with the 1st Air Commando Group based in Asansol, India] did not name his plane [Annotator's Note: a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft], but had an artist paint Porky Pig [Annotator's Note: animated cartoon character] on the side. When he was first shot at, Poston thought it might be a very short war for him. It was both a good and bad experience. On the one hand, it scared the hell out of him, but then it also galvanized him into action to save himself and his plane. It showed him that he could be shot at, hit, and survive, which he would experience again later in combat. He ultimately flew 78 combat missions. In February 1945, Allied infantry were attacking the Japanese Eighth Army south of Mandalay [Annotator's Note: Mandalay, Burma, now Myanmar] to surround the enemy and drive them out of Rangoon [Annotator's Note: Rangoon, Burma, now Yangon, Myanmar]. Poston led a flight of four planes at 10,000 feet over the front lines. There were also British Spitfires [Annotator's Note: Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft] in the air. Dealing with friendlies [Annotator's Note: allied troops] was difficult, as you were prepared to shoot at them until positive identification. A fellow pilot reported another group of Spitfires approaching, but Poston saw "meatballs" [Annotator's Note: slang term for the red circle insignia on Japanese aircraft] and it turned out to be four Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero]. Poston's three other planes went out of view, chased by the Japanese fighters, and Poston thought he had lost three men. He saw three Zeros circling and fired at them. One of them turned and made a head-on pass at Poston, who was able to shoot the plane down. It turned out his three men had not been lost, and the element leader had also taken down a plane. Their wingmen joined back up with them, after having gotten spooked and flown away, not what a wingman was supposed to do.

Charles Poston [Annotator's Note: a pilot with the 1st Air Commando Group based in Asansol, India] was stationed in the CBI [Annotator's Note: China Burma India Theater of Operations] from July 1944 until July of 1945, although active flying ended in May 1945 because Japanese forces were beyond their range of operations at that point. The British had driven the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] out of Rangoon [Annotator's Note: Rangoon, Burma, now Yangon, Myanmar] to Bangkok [Annotator's Note: Bangkok, Thailand]. On base, they lived in a thatched bamboo hut, without screens or doors, in the jungle. The floor was also bamboo, with millipedes and other vermin beneath it. Poston proposed having a cookout one day on a gasoline-operated camp stove. They found cans of baked beans, bacon, and even molasses. Poston bought some chickens from the nearest town, killed and plucked them, as he knew how to do having grown up on a farm. They used their mess kits as frying pans and had a wonderful meal of chicken and baked beans. They did not clean up very well, leaving chicken bones around, and in the middle of the night they heard godawful screeching, and something pushing against Poston's cot. It turned out to be civet cats from the jungle attracted by the leftover chicken bones. After Poston's first combat mission, he learned that there was a British custom to give each pilot a two-ounce shot of 100 proof Bourbon [Annotator's Note: type of alcohol] before being interrogated. He proposed that instead, they collect those shots until after completing 16 missions, when they would have a quart and could really have a party. There was no officers' club as they could not be properly supplied, they were fully supplied by air, and it was too difficult.

Missions began to ramp down in May [Annotator's Note: May 1945, when the Japanese were pushed too far out of range of their base in India]. Charles Poston's [Annotator's Note: a pilot with the 1st Air Commando Group based in Asansol, India] outfit commander, a Lieutenant Colonel, had decided to combine the two fighter squadrons of the 1st and 2nd Air Commando Groups into one large four-squadron fighter group under Colonel Cane [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. They were going to fly brand new P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft], going into China to prepare for the attack on Japan. Poston's commanding officer [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Younger Arnold Pitts, Junior] said that with Poston's engineering background, he had a good chance at a Regular Army [Annotator's Note: Regular Army of the United States, now a component of the United States Army] commission, and encouraged him to apply, but Poston just wanted to be a civilian. Having completed 78 missions, he was eligible to go home. He had a wife and child to go back to and did not find it hard to transition back to civilian life. He had been recruited by a large electric equipment manufacturing company before he graduated from LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana], but was called to active duty before he could accept. The company held the position for him until he returned. Poston continued flying until August 1951, after separating from the service in December 1945. He accepted a position in the Army Air Force Reserve and the New York Air National Guard where he served as Fighter Group Operations Officer for the 127th Fighter Group. He was still flying P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft]. He only stopped flying when it became apparent that he had vision problems and resigned his commission.

Charles Poston had been working with Westinghouse [Annotator's Note: Westinghouse Electric Corporation] for six years, then took a job in direct sales for Electric Motors in Cook County, Illinois, then was promoted and moved to Dayton, Ohio. He ended up not liking that job and looked for another. He was then hired by A. O. Smith Corporation, also based in Ohio. He became the sales manager there for 21 years. After a divorce, Poston moved to California where he met his second wife, Carole. He retired in 1986 and they moved to Arizona. Poston and his wife attended classes at Scottsdale Community College [Annotator's Note: in Scottsdale, Arizona], where he became the oldest member of the Honor Society. He attended 1st Air Commando Group reunions.

War was the greatest adventure of Charles Poston's young life. He was privileged to fly airplanes with the highest horsepower engines that existed and got paid for it. It was a privilege to serve his country, and he also had some fun doing it. The war was a lesson in ideals. America will do whatever it takes to defend its freedom.