Harley Bridger was born in November 1923 in Searcy, Arkansas. He grew up in White County and his early days were great, dirt streets and they were all barefooted. His father was a railroader, a telegrapher. They moved to Pangburn, Arkansas. The Great Depression did not affect his father that much and they lived fairly comfortably. His schooling was inadequate. He had fun growing up and had a lot of friends. He remembers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] very well. He and a friend had hitchhiked to the movie Boom Town [Annotator's Note: 1940 American adventure film] at a Sunday matinee. On the ride back, he heard the news on the radio. He thought the Japanese were stupid and thought it would end right away. Eventually it affected everyone one way or another. The National Youth Administration set up a training center for machine operators and Bridger signed up for that. He went to school to learn while being paid. He then went by train to Hartford, Connecticut for a week and then to Cushman Chuck Company and ran a milling machine. He stayed there a year and he and his roommate decided to enlist at Christmas [Annotator's Note: 1942]. Around November, the Army Air Corps froze enlistments which upset their plans, as there were not enough facilities to train new enlistees. After Christmas, Bridger went to the draft board and said he was ready. He was called up in June 1943 to the US Army Air Corps. It was exactly what he wanted.

Harley Bridger entered the Army Air Corps in June 1943 at Camp Robinson in Little Rock [Annotator's Note: Little Rock, Arkansas] and then went to Amarillo, Texas for basic training and some tests. He went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for radio school in September 1943. He had a hard time learning Morse Code. When he would set up his radio in the airplane, he would warm up by sending "Arkansas." There was rhythm and when you learned it, you had it. They did not do a lot of sending in actual application. The training lasted about six months. He also learned mechanics. He went to gunnery school in Yuma, Arizona. The primary gun was the .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun]. That was a lot of fun. They started out on the skeet range with shotguns. They had an oval track and they would be in a truck with shotguns to practice shooting while moving. He enjoyed that and got pretty efficient at it. That ended in May 1944. He then went by train to Westover Field, Springfield, Massachusetts for overseas flight training and forming crews. He was fortunate to get an older pilot. They started training right then. They lived together in a barracks and the officers were in a separate barracks. They flew training missions. After the war, he would attend reunions and say that the radio operators were there to help the navigators when they got lost. The navigators had very little to work with except compasses and maps. On one night flight, the navigator was confused and asked Bridger for a bearing which he could get on the radio. In July 1944, they finished training and received a ten day furlough.

Harley Bridger's crew was sent to Mitchell Field on Long Island, New York. They were assigned a new airplane and they flew three or four missions around there. They were loaded with K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] which they were hauling overseas. They flew to Presque Isle, Maine and spent the night then went to Gander Field, Newfoundland. They stayed a week in Gander Bay and then went to the Azores [Annotator's Note: Autonomous region of Portugal]. That got him keyed up a little as it was the point of no return, you either hit it or swim. Landing on the steel mat runway made a horrible noise. They then went to Marrakesh [Annotator's Note: Marrakesh, Morocco] for one night. The locals were wearing all kinds of US Army material. They flew to Tunis, Tunisia and spent the night. There was a large contingent of Italian prisoners of war there. They took off over the Mediterranean Sea the next day. The copilot raised all the flaps at once and they almost skimmed the water. Bridger remembers looking out the window at Mount Etna on Sicily [Annotator's Note: Italy]. They landed at Gioia [Annotator's Note: Gioia, Italy] and stayed in the airplane for a couple of days. They were brought orange marmalade and bread to eat. A B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] wheeled up beside them from the 465th Bombardment Group, 782nd Bombardment Squadron. Robert Scanlon [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major Robert E. Scanlon] was flying it. The crew transferred to this plane. Bridger started putting on his parachute and the engineer told him they will never get high enough to jump. They then went to Pantanella [Annotator's Note: Airfield, Italy; Foggia Airfield Complex] and Scanlon gave them quite a ride.

Harley Bridger and his crew lived in tents with six men each. They were fortunate with their engineer. Bridger felt the engineer should have been a flight officer. Art Feldhauser [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Arthur Feldhauser] from Michigan was a good engineer. The cots had a canvas bag that fit the cot. They would fill it with straw, but they got bugs and had to delouse it. That was when he found out that good people could have different ideas about things. If you do not get along, that is your fault. There is nowhere to go in those tents. They did not have any serious disagreements. There was real diversity and that was one thing he enjoyed very much. Before World War 2, no one had ever been anywhere. People did not take vacations back then other than to see relatives. Bridger flew 35 missions and that was the required tour. They flew their first missions over Bari [Annotator's Note: Bari, Italy] just to fly. The new crews got the oldest airplanes. On 17 September 1944, they flew to Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary] to an oil refinery. They had their hydraulics shot out and had some electrical problems but their pilot got them back. They had hit the target. The 15th Air Force said that certain targets counted as doubles. In November 1944, that was changed to make every mission just one mission. Bridger had 20 missions at that time, and it was reverted back to 12. Then they said that everybody had to fly 35 and that was a tour. The Air Force had figured out about how many hours of mission flying a person could take. Bridger thinks that is about right.

Harley Bridger recalls a mission on 13 October, Friday the 13th, 1944 to Blechhammer, Germany. It was a synthetic oil refinery. The Germans had probably the best cannon in the war, the "88" [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery]. They were retreating from the Russian front and the oil refineries were surrounded by guns. It would get hairy. Bridger had a good buddy, Brown [Annotator's Note: likely US Army Air Forces Sergeant Earl Brown], who he had trained with. Brown was in the 781st [Annotator's Note: 781st Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 55th Bombardment Wing, 15th Air Force] and already had ten missions in. He was shot down on the mission. He survived, was captured by the Germans, liberated by the Russians, and then showed up at the base in February 1945 when he was shipped out. Bridger hated flying over the Alps [Annotator's Note: mountain range in Europe]. They have very narrow valleys and he did not want to bail out over them. They came in over the Alps to go to Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany], which was heavily fortified. It was a nice clear day but there was a heavy smoke cloud from the 88s. Bridger wondered how they were going to fly through it. They did, but had a lot of holes when they got back. Rozkowski [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Stanley Rozkowski], the nose gunner, had a chunk of shrapnel in the nose turret that he kept. Bridger did not like Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria] at all. They concentrated on oil and marshaling yards. Bridger liked bombing the freight yards because it made sense and they were not as reinforced as the oil refineries. The ball turret gunner and Bridger correspond often now.

Harley Bridger was a radio operator. He learned to use a lead ball to help with his radio transmitter. The B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] was cold and noisy. They would normally fly between 20,000 and 27,000 feet which gets pretty cold. The coldest flight on record was 65 degrees below zero. He was on that mission. The pilots had a hard time seeing and some of the guns froze. It was normally about 50 below zero. This was to Linz, Austria. They just had to endure it. They began with heavy, English sheep-lined, jackets. Later they got heated flying suits. If it did not work, they got pretty cold. The airplane was open to the outside air.

It was normal to lose two or three airplanes on any mission over a good target like Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria]. Harley Bridger got to know Lieutenant Johns' [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant William Johns] crew pretty well. They crash landed in Yugoslavia. They made it back and then bailed out again. Bob Young [Annotator's Note: likely US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant John Young] and Kirby [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant William Kirby] were shot down on their first mission. Bodycombe's [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant Richard Bodycombe] crew bailed out over Yugoslavia. Vienna was a tough mission. They had thousands of guns that would shoot at them for nine minutes in the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] area. A lot of boys were shot down and crashed over Yugoslavia. Bridger and his crew made a forced landing in Yugoslavia. They were returning from a mission and were having trouble transferring fuel. There was an emergency airstrip there where they landed and got fuel. They had a little island called Vis [Annotator's Note: Vis, Yugoslavia; now Croatia]. McGovern [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant George S. McGovern; American politician] landed on Vis. If you were shot up really bad, you would land there. The airplane would just be pushed into the Adriatic Sea to get it out of the way. Bridger's crew was fortunate and very lucky. Bridger and the men in his tent did not get to know many of the other men. Johns' crew was right next to them, so they got to know them. If a crew did not show up, it was presumed they were shot down and their GI [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] stuff was considered open to everyone. Bridger slept in their tent to protect their stuff. The Germans controlled Yugoslavia but did not have enough manpower to keep the countryside. The partisans rescued hundreds of crews.

Harley Bridger's original crew stayed together the entire war except for the bombardier. He was a young, Jewish boy from Brooklyn, New York. He had his thumb shot off. Bridger hates to say it but they never knew if it was shot off or he stuck it in a fan. He was just scared. Bridger could understand why and did not hold it against him. Their pilot was a better pilot than most of them. Their crew became a squadron and group leader. [Annotator's Note: Bridger was a member of the 782nd Bombardment Squadron, 465th Bombardment Group, 55th Bombardment Wing, 15th Air Force.] When they flew group lead, the group bombardier and group navigator would join their crew. Their copilot became a full pilot later on. They did not like to fly with him. They stuck together. Bridger finished his tour and the war was over. It was kind of anti-climactic to hear of the Germans surrender. They knew it was inevitable because they had run out of targets. Bridger was at a replacement depot near Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy] when the war ended. You wake up one day and they say it is over. He cannot remember any big hurrah. Most got a 30 day leave when their tour ended. He went back home. After the 30 days was up, he reported to Camp Chaffee [Annotator's Note: now the Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center, Fort Smith, Arkansas]. He was in line and heard the men being asked if they were married or single. The men who were single were sent to San Antonio, Texas; the married men to Miami Beach, Florida. Bridger told them he was married. The Army Air Force had taken over several hotels along the beach. They had set up a big building with a buffet of food. It was a pretty good life. The sergeant in charge of them was trying to send him close to his home. Bridger asked him to send him to Westover Field in Massachusetts. He told him he could not send him there and sent him to Madison, Wisconsin. It was a beautiful place and he enjoyed it. He was discharged at Battle Creek, Michigan. Bridger thinks his war experience was the biggest thing that ever happened to him. It is hard to put his finger on anything in particular. He asked his gunner how in the world did they do what they did. He replied that it was because everyone else did. It was a great experience. Nothing else compares. All the flag waving and patriotism boils down to you coping with the situation. He does not feel like any of them felt like John Wayne [Annotator's Note: Marian Michael Morrison, known as John Wayne or the Duke, American actor]. At times it got hard, and some guys did not cope as well as others. He was fortunate. He was very fortunate.