Colin Joseph Mayne was born in March 1925 in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana], where he also grew up. Life was pretty simple. His father was an interior decorator and painter, and his mother was a housewife. He had four sisters and a brother. Mayne wanted to be an architect when he grew up, but became a draftsman instead. He attended Fortier High School [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans] and graduated in 1943. He was working in an ice house when he heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was a sophomore in high school at the time. He hoped to get into the Army engineers, but was drafted into the Air Force in August 1943. He did basic training at Camp Beauregard [Annotator's Note: in Pineville, Louisiana] and then to Amarillo, Texas. He went to OCS [Annotator's Note: Officer Candidate School] for a while, but as the war was winding down, he was sent to gunnery school in Yuma, Arizona [Annotator's Note: Yuma Army Airfield in Yuma, Arizona] instead. He trained on B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] shooting at tow targets. He then went to Lincoln, Nebraska [Annotator's Note: Lincoln Army Airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska] where he was assigned to a crew which was then transferred to Mountain Home, Idaho [Annotator's Note: Mountain Home Army Airfield in Mountain Home, Idaho] for combat crew training. They took off once, and at about 400 feet in the air two engines cut out and they had to land on the plane’s belly. After they got out of the plane, the ammunition began exploding. Mayne was assigned to the 309th Bomb Group, 564th Squadron [Annotator’s Note: 564th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group] flying B-24 Liberators [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] as a waist gunner. He was too tall to be a tail gunner.

Colin Joseph Mayne went overseas on a troop carrier ship, the Malvern [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to conform vessel]. The voyage to England took about a week. They played a lot of cards during the trip. He had never been overseas before, it was something else. They were sent to the 389th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 564th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] base Wymondham, England just outside of Norwich and began flying missions. They flew to France and then to Magdeburg, Germany, encountering a lot of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], but encountered no enemy fighters. They had P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] and P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] escorts. Mayne was responsible for throwing out tin foil to distract enemy radar [Annotator's Note: chaff, a radar countermeasure generally made of aluminum]. In February 1945, Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] was their target. It was long a mission, taking about ten hours of flying. He encountered a German fighter plane once. They hit Magdeberg three times, and Berlin twice. Their last mission was over Salzburg, Austria on 21 April 1945. Once, when taking off with a full bomb load, and the pilot lifted the landing gears too fast and they came down on the runway. Mayne jumped out of the plane, right out of his boots and ran down the runway in his socks. His crew's pilot was actually a fighter pilot who had to keep flying to get enough missions to go home. He flew the B-24 like a fighter plane. [Annotator's Note: Mayne laughs.] He was scared all the time while flying. When not flying missions, they played cards and watched movies. The farthest he ever went was Norwich. He was a loner. His crew flew different planes, they did not always fly the same one. He did not like anything about the B-24. [Annotator's Note: Mayne laughs.] He was responsible for pulling the pins out of the bombs. They mostly targeted rail yards. They once flew a low-level mission at 400 feet to drop supplies, possibly during the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. They could see the troops on the ground.

Colin Joseph Mayne [Annotator's Note: a waist gunner on a Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, with the 564th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was happy the war ended. They did not really celebrate, they were just looking forward to going home. When he got back to the United States, he went to Miami, Florida [Annotator's Note: Miami Army Airfield in Miami, Florida]. He knew he might have to participate in the invasion of Japan. He was sent to Monroe, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: Selman Army Airfield near Monroe, Louisiana] then Barksdale Field in Shreveport [Annotator's Note: Shreveport, Louisiana]. When he got home, he got the news that his mother had passed away. He was shocked. He did not get to attend her funeral. He returned home in June 1945, and was discharged in October. He had no thoughts of staying in the service, he wanted to get out as fast as he could. He corresponded with his now wife while overseas. They got married soon after he got out of the service. He went to work for his cousin in a structural steel shop, and then took up drafting. He worked for himself until he was 83 years old. He did not talk about the war much with his family, he did not want them to worry about anything. In the 1960s, his son went to Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] and crashed twice in a helicopter. His son played taps on the bugle and traveled with a chaplain. He and his wife worried about their son. Vietnam was a different war altogether. Visiting the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] brought back a lot of memories, and brought tears to his eyes. He did not keep in touch with his crewmates after the war. One of his pilots wrote him a letter, but he never responded because he just wanted to forget about all of it.