John Caudle was born in January 1926 in a farmhouse in Farmington [Annotator's Note: Farmington, North Carolina]. It was tough. He went to Farmington High School and finished in May 1943. He wanted to fly if he was going in the service. On 5 November 1943 he went to Charlotte, North Carolina and entered into the Aviation Cadet Program. He was only 17 so he could not go on active duty. On 31 January [Annotator's Note: 31 January 1944] he was inducted at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. [Annotator's Note: People can be heard talking in the background throughout this clip.] Everybody was having it tough in the late 1920s and early 1930s [Annotator's Note: during The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. They barely scraped by. You could count on your neighbors. Caudle was well aware of what was going on [Annotator's Note: in world affairs]. He was thinking that he wanted to get in the middle of the action. He was not really aware of the consequences of war. He was ready to fly. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Caudle if he recalls where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Caudle does not recall where he was. He got full information at school after they were called together in the gymnasium. It was a shock and a sad day. There were chapel programs in school. They sang patriotic songs and made packages to send to soldiers for moral support. Things were limited as to what could be done. Communication and travel were not as easy as it is today. Caudle was so mad at the Japanese that that was his main focus.

John Caudle did not have a lot of notice when he was called to active duty. He came home after work one Friday and had a letter telling him to report to Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] Monday morning. He arrived by bus and started getting shots. They boarded a train for Miami Beach [Annotator's Note: Miami Beach, Florida] for their training. They stayed in hotels with four men to a room with one bathroom. They spent three months there training. They took different kinds of tests to determine what they would be. They were beginning to need more gunners than pilots due to losing so many in Germany and France. The Army would place you where you were needed. He was transferred out to gunnery positions. He went to Harlingen, Texas [Annotator's Note: Harlingen Aerial Gunnery School at Harlingen Army Airfield in Harlingen, Texas] for gunnery school for another three months. They flew in the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] using handheld .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun] while standing. The range was over the Gulf of Mexico. His first day, the pilot told him he could stand up and fire when he wagged his wings. Caudle had just fired a few bursts when the pilot banked the plane. Caudle fell out and was held against the belly of the plane by his parachute strap. He pulled himself back into the plane. It was hot there in the Spring. The jackrabbits were out there in the fields and they did target practice on them. He then transferred into the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. He did not like the plane. The wingspan would fluctuate about 12 feet up and down. He did not like the tail end either. It had two .50 caliber machine guns in the tail that were controlled by a joystick. He was then sent to Herington, Kansas [Annotator's Note: to Herington Army Airfield] to pick up a B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. When he first saw it, he thought it would never get off the ground. It was a beautiful aircraft. It used a lot of oil and had engine problems for a good while, but it flew well. He went to Wendover, Utah [Annotator's Note: Wendover Army Airfield; later Wendover Air Force Base] where the beginning of the atomic bomb flying squadron [Annotator's Note: the 509th Composite Group] was. The base was completely empty other than them. They were told that what they saw and heard there did not leave there. Two days later, a soldier was picked up in Salt Lake City [Annotator's Note: Salt Lake City, Utah], mostly for asking questions about their mission. Back then, a secret was really a military secret. Even when they went overseas, they did not know. Caudle thinks Tibbets [Annotator's Note: later US Air Force Brigadier General Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr.; pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945] was the only one who really knew. Caudle was on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Mariana Islands] when that group came over. He had not stayed with them.

John Caudle became very close friends with his crew. It was a lot like family. He went to Clovis, New Mexico and was assigned to Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Mariana Islands]. They started out from California and headed to Tinian. They got a few hundred miles offshore and lost an engine. They had to return for a new one and that took a week. They went to Hawaii and got some recreation for one day. They went to Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands], then Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands]. They watched the planes take off from Tinian that night and saw a crash on take-off. He knew the men were dying and that was his first contact with death. It was new to him and close to his heart. The next day they went to Tinian which was their home base. They lived in tents. There were five gunner crews, totaling about 15 men, in one big tent. They had outdoor movies at night. It rained daily and it was very hot. Cool water was hard to come by. Their food was hash and powdered eggs. Caudle's first mission [Annotator's Note: with the 768th Bombardment Squadron, 462nd Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force] was two days after he got there. They took off one afternoon and got to the target the next morning. His shortest mission was 14 hours and 40 minutes to Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan]. He was scared. Anybody who says they were not scared is either a liar or a fool. The B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] was pressurized so they could stay cool or warm until they got close to Japan when the pressurization was turned off. Caudle's first combat situation was seeing black puffs of smoke in the air. The Japanese were very good at anti-aircraft fire. In the tail section, he heard a loud bang above his head. When he got back to base there was a hole about two feet above his head. That made him talk to the Lord.

The Air Force had a habit of giving flyers a shot of whiskey before they went into a debriefing. John Caudle went through that line three times after his first mission. [Annotator's Note: Caudle laughs.] He flew three missions [Annotator's Note: with the 768th Bombardment Squadron, 462nd Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force] in one week. That was enough. You see things you did not want to see. It made it hard to believe. Some of the towns had Japanese structures made of bamboo and wood that burned easily. They used incendiary bombs. Sendai [Annotator's Note: Sendai, Japan] had a population of 250,000 people. They burned over 50 percent of that town. His plane went over that target at 6,000 feet at night. The fire was a solid mass. Something that you see in California now [Annotator's Note: California wildfires during the time of this interview]. No matter what you thought, you had to realize that people were dying. [Annotator's Note: Caudle slows his speech due to getting emotional.] Innocent life. Women and children in those situations. It is hard to accept that it is happening. They were trained to do a job and they did their best to do it. [Annotator's Note: Caudle grows quiet, and the interviewer changes the subject.] Caudle knew some of the gunners in the 393rd Squadron, 504th Group [Annotator's Note: the 393rd Bombardment Squadron became the 509th Composite Group]. They had no idea of what was going to happen. His crew was called into headquarters and were told they were being sent home for a special assignment. To this day he has no idea what that assignment was. They went to the sand flats of California and flew bombing runs on the salt flats using bags of flour. They did maneuvers for about 30 days. They were supposed to go back to Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Mariana Islands]. They finished one afternoon, and they knew the war was practically over. They were given a pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to into Pasadena [Annotator's Note: Pasadena, California]. They got there and the streets were filled. A G.I. [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] was king of the world that night. Caudle wishes he had asked questions back then. Within two weeks, they were shipped to Greensboro, North Carolina to an overseas redistribution center [Annotator's Note: Greensboro Overseas Replacement Depot]. He was going to go back to California and thought that was foolish since he was close to his home. His Captain was reasonable and assigned him there for the last two or three months of his service. That enabled him to go home every weekend.

John Caudle has had a lot of thoughts over the years. Especially when he came home out of the service and did not have some good nights. Regardless of how hard-hearted you are, you have to have compassion for little kids and women in war. Caudle was assigned to the 768th Squadron [Annotator's Note: 768th Bombardment Squadron, 462nd Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force] while on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Mariana Islands]. His plane was named "Gravel Gertie." They picked up the plane in the United States and flew it over. It was packed with goodies like whiskey and bourbon [Annotator's Note: alcoholic beverages]. When they got to Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands], the night crew emptied the plane. A bottle of bourbon was worth 125 dollars. Caudle was discharged as a Corporal. Curtis LeMay [Annotator's Note: Curtis Emerson LeMay; US Army Air Forces then US Air Force General; Fifth Chief of Staff of the US Air Force] believed in getting by on the cheap side. Most of the gunners were corporals. In Europe they were staff sergeants. Another cause for concern was when they started cutting back on fuel in order to carry more bombs. They had a hard time getting back to land. They had to make an emergency landing on Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan] due to running out of fuel. They did everything they could to win the war. He was discharged 31 January 1946 from Greensboro ORD [Annotator's Note: Greensboro Overseas Replacement Depot in Greensboro, North Carolina].

John Caudle returned to work at the company he worked at before the war. It was a department store. He then went into a plumbing and heating business for 15 years. Ingersoll Rand [Annotator's Note: part of Trane Technologies plc, Swords, Ireland] moved to Mocksville [Annotator's Note: Mocksville, North Carolina] and he worked for them for 22 years. He retired at age 60. He and his wife traveled all 48 states. Our [Annotator's Note: American] national parks are jewels. Caudle had no troubles adjusting to life, but nights were sometimes not good. He went to work shortly after his discharge. His most memorable experience was his first time out [Annotator's Note: his first bombing mission]. The effect of knowing he was involved in killing somebody was not expected. He is glad he had the military experience but would not want to go through it again. He fought for love of country and the life he had. He believes it [Annotator's Note: America] is the greatest country in the world. It has lots of faults, but it is still one of the best in the world. The war made him realize life is precious and meaningful. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Caudle what his service means to him today.] He says that is tough to answer. It makes him feel that everybody in the country has a responsibility to the country. Serve if necessary and protect a way of life. He wonders what World War 2 means to America today. He wonders if there would be a do-over, would we do alright. Caudle thinks people should know and understand the responsibility we have. Freedom is not free. It has to be nurtured and worked with. Get people to agree from time to time. Above all, believe in God. [Annotator's Note: Caudle apologizes to the interviewer for having rushed him off the day before the interview.] Caudle would love to return to the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and stay about three days.