Joseph Geary was born in Dallas, Texas in February 1924. He was an only child and was pampered by his parents. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a bookkeeper. He finished high school at 16. He attended SMU [Annotator's Note: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas] starting in September 1940. He played baseball there. On 7 December 1941, he was at a pharmacy and heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He did not enlist until he was 18 in November 1942. He went on active duty as an aviation cadet. He was not aware of the war brewing while in college. He had limited travel experience and no idea of the problems. He tried to enlist right away but the Marine Corps decided they did not want him. A number of people at SMU went into the Marine Corps. Geary went to Sheppard Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: then Sheppard Field] in Wichita Falls [Annotator's Note: Wichita Falls, Texas] for basic training. The college program [Annotator's Note: College Training Detachment] was open for training and he got sent to East Central State College in Ada, Oklahoma for six weeks. He then went to Randolph Field [Annotator's Note: now Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas] for classification. His depth perception was off, and he did not qualify for pilot. He was told he could be a navigator or bombardier or go to gunnery school. He decided on navigation school at Ellington Field in Houston [Annotator's Note: Houston, Texas]. After training there, he went to Tucson, Arizona, to Davis-Monthan Field [Annotator's Note: now Davis-Monthan Air Force Base] and was assigned to a crew. At Ellington Field, he learned celestial navigation and map-reading. Geary did not like the celestial part of it. He was in good physical shape then.

[Annotator's Note: Joseph Geary finished navigation school and was assigned to a crew at Davis-Monthan Field, now Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Tucson, Arizona.] The officers were 20 years old and the enlisted men were 18 or 19. His crew hit it off well. His pilot, Warren Moss, was calm and easy-going; he got them out of a lot of messes over time. The copilot, Cliff Cadis [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Clifford H. Cadis], was a good pilot. The bombardier, Bob Hasbrook [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Second Lieutenant Robert P. Hasbrook], was the comedian and was fun. The enlisted men and he were reasonably close, but they were separated from the officers for a lot of things. Previous to this, he was flying C-47s [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] for navigation training. They would be given coordinates to find and try to calculate how airspeed and weight would change their direction. They also learned dead reckoning [Annotator's Note: a method of navigation]. It was an interesting process. At Davis-Monthan, they flew gunnery and learned how to know where he was going. They went on an exercise from Davis-Monthan to pick up a new B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] in Lincoln, Nebraska. They flew that to Grenier Field in Manchester, New Hampshire. They were to depart to go overseas. When they started to take-off, the plane lost two engines and they hit a truck at the end of the runway. The crew in the back had to go out the camera hatch. The rest of them went out the copilot's window.

John Geary thought the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] was a great plane that could take a lot of hits. It had a wing that was narrow and not as good as the wing on a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber], but it got them to where they were going. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him about the plane's nickname of the "Flying Coffin".] He does not know about that. One plane he flew, they called "Bottom's Up" [Annotator's Note: B-24 bureau number 42-64448], and it lasted a long time. They were sent to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and went overseas as passengers to North Africa. Geary was nervous and scared. None of them wanted to admit it. They were all pretty green [Annotator's Note: slang term for untested]. He did not really get to see his family before he left. They only passed through Africa. They went to their base in Manduria, Italy during the day. They asked where they were going to stay, and the clerk told them they would not know until they saw who did not come back that day. That was the first real realization that things can happen. He did not get off the base a lot and there was not much to do in that part of Italy. He was assigned to the 450th [Annotator's Note: 721st Bombardment Squadron, 450th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force], one of the first groups transferred to Italy from Africa. It had been hit by fighters before he got there. There was a protocol that if you were hit and dropped the landing gear and flaps, the Germans would guide you where to land. One plane did that, but then the engines came on and they shot the Germans down. After that, Axis Sally [Annotator's Note: Rita Luisa Zucca] said they were going to get the Cottontails [Annotator's Note: nickname of the 450th Bombardment Group]. Geary had no idea about that history but that is what they got into.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks John Geary to take him through the day of a bombing mission.] It is not as tough as the guys on the ground. It is more of a job that you have; each person [Annotator's Note: each crewman aboard the aircraft] has their particular function to perform. He was only thinking about trying to miss the fighters and hit the target. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him to start over.] You do not know where you are going the night before a mission. You get up, have breakfast, and go into a room where the wall is covered. They only drop the cover when everyone is in and that is when you see where you are going. All missions are not that bad. Geary is lucky and people wanted to go with him. After you get your plane, you get yourself ready to do your assigned part. The idea of what harm or damage you will be inflicting is based more on the target and not people. On the mission, the concern is being able to miss the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and being hopeful you do not run into fighters. Everyone gets into their assigned positions and the planes take-off. Italy was different than in England for assembling. They would form over the Adriatic [Annotator's Note: Adriatic Sea] and go over the Alps [Annotator's Note: Alps Mountains]. He was nervous on all of his missions.

Joseph Geary's baptism by fire was by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. He realized that the bursts meant he could get hurt. He did not ever want to have a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy] or be a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war]. Whether you got hit or not, was a matter of luck. Some targets were more heavily defended than others. He made three Ploesti [Annotator's Note: Ploesti, Romania] raids that were tough. On 7 October 1944, he was flying lead into Vienna, Austria to the oil refineries. They lost five of seven planes on the bomb run. His pilot was superior. They lost an engine and the hydraulics. The copilot was severely injured. They were by themselves and were lucky they did not encounter fighters on the way back. They were out of fuel and got to Yugoslavia where the pilot said that they could not all bail out and could not ditch. He said that anybody who wanted to could bail out and that he was going to try to land on the island of Vis [Annotator's Note: Vis Island, Croatia] on an emergency strip. The crew decided to stay together. They were able to get the plane stopped. General Mihailović [Annotator's Note: Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army General Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović], Tito's [Annotator's Note: Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman; Former President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] opposition, took them in for a couple of days and then they got out. The copilot lived. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Geary what was like to see other planes go down.] When they got back, they were trying to figure out who was missing. The fact that people you knew were not there; you did not have any information of who survived or not. He saw one plane blow up and did not know if anyone survived. It made you grow up.

When Joseph Geary would return from a mission, he and his crew would meet with a staff person and tell them what they saw and what happened with regards to fighter opposition. Once, he was on a different model B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. Their bombardier was a character. He would go to sleep on a mission until they got close to the bomb run. This B-24 had a toggle switch to release the bombs that was different from their usual planes. Geary hid it from as a joke. That got back to the other crews by the debrief and that made them laugh. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Geary if it was strange to fly a mission and then sleep in a nice bed at night.] You re-fly the mission to try and improve. There was not anyone on his crew that did not want to improve and do the best they could. They did have some fighter escort. They were fortunate. He got there in July 1944 and the tide was turning for fighter support. They had the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] which were equal to, or superior than, the Me-109s [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter aircraft] and Fw-190s [Annotator's Note: German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft] that had been the basis of German opposition. They were great help. They called them "little friends". On one occasion going to Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria], they helped out a great deal. Wiener Neustadt [Annotator's Note: Wiener Neustadt, Austria] was a German fighter base close to Vienna. They had been decimated and had lost a lot of their good pilots. They also were low on fuel. They did come up and chase them a little bit.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Joseph Geary what he and the men did on their downtime.] The best thing they had over the men on the ground was the fact that when they got back, they had a dry bed and a hot meal. They could shoot dice, play cards, and play football. He went into Rome [Annotator's Note: Rome, Italy] after liberation and that was nice. In Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy], they got some time off. There was not much to do in Manduria [Annotator's Note: Manduria, Italy] and some other places. On one leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], a guy from Dallas [Annotator's Note: Dallas, Texas] who he had known in high school, had been shot down and made it out of Yugoslavia. He could not go back into combat, because he would be classified as a spy. They visited a little. Italy was a lot of rock and bad land. They had a lot of grapes. They did sense the war winding down a bit. The people in his grade [Annotator's Note: pay grade or rank], First Lieutenant, did not get much information. Geary came home after the German counteroffensive in Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. He had finished his 50 [Annotator's Note: 50 mission tour of duty] in early 1945. He knew that when they opened the point system [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home], everybody in the Air Force had a lot of points. He was early to get discharged in June 1945. He knew it was close to over then. He hit his quota and decided to stick around. Geary was more concerned about getting his 50 in and getting home. They had lost a lot of navigators and he was able to fly with more than one crew. He was one of the first of his ten-man crew to finish his missions and go home.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Joseph Geary if there any stories from Italy that he is missing.] Some may be true, and some may be made up but there are all sorts of stories that he could tell. It was an interesting time. He was fortunate to be with great people. The rules of engagement were different than what the guys today face. They were fortunate in that the people they were fighting wore uniforms and were identifiable. He does not know how he would survive in today's world of the Army with their limited rights; they have to almost be put to death before they can respond. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if there was any mission that his navigation skills were a big help.] One mission tested the best efforts he could put out [Annotator's Note: the 7 October 1944 mission to Ploesti, Romania where his aircraft was badly damaged; see clip titled "Baptism by Fire"]. Knowing the detail of the terrain and location of known flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] installations and where fighter cover might be, to chart that path of evasion and avoidance with limited resources, he had to make a bunch of calls and they had to be the right calls. Ploesti was a very challenging target. He only recalls two ways of entry. One was over land and they had a railroad train with flak cars with German 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] that were accurate. The other was over the Black Sea. When you are over water, it is a timing problem to make the turn. It is hard to calculate that over water. He was not on the first mission to Ploesti out of Africa [Annotator's Note: Operation Tidal Wave on 1 August 1943] which had a schedule of two formations, one high and one low. The low missed their initial point to turn and were under the high formation when they dropped their bombs. Axis Sally [Annotator's Note: Rita Luisa Zucca] was surprising about the number of times they could tell you details about the mission. They were accurate. Geary finished his missions somewhere around February or March [Annotator's Note: February or March 1945]. He thought the Germans fell into a variety of areas. The German soldiers and Air Force were excellent. The ones manning the flak installations at Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria] and Regensburg [Annotator's Note: Regensburg, Germany] were great at what they were doing. He did not have the kind of contact with them to have an intelligent comment. He heard the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] was a horrible group of people. Rommel [Annotator's Note: German Army Generalfeldmarschall, or Field Marshal, Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel] was deemed to be a smart general. Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] took care of him. It was not like the Japanese in the Pacific; the people on the ground faced a different kind of enemy. He thought some bombing was accurate and some was not. They did pattern bombing from around 25,000 feet. They made some great hits and some misses. The cloud cover made a difference in the accuracy.

Joseph Geary returned to the United States in June 1945. It was great to come home. He left a few letters for his friends to mail for him at home. He did not tell his parents he was on his way. He came back to Miami [Annotator's Note: Miami, Florida], where he called his mother. Geary was awarded the DFC [Annotator's Note: Distinguished Flying Cross; US Armed Forces award for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight] for the 7 October flight. [Annotator's Note: On 7 October 1944, Geary took part in a mission to Ploesti, Romania during which his aircraft was heavily damaged. See clip titled "Baptism by Fire".] The narrative recited that he did his job getting them there and the plane down. He saw his family and it was great. He was on leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and then sent to California. The point system [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] opened, and he got out. He does not mind thinking about his service. He believes it was a help for him in maturing, accepting responsibility, and making decisions. He would do it again if he had to. He wishes he could be more definitive and have more things where he did something worthwhile, but he feels he is run-of-the-mill. He found out the war was over by the newspaper and he put on his uniform to celebrate VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945]. He does not remember it being crazy and wild. There was a lot of enthusiasm, but it was somber as well; the shooting match was not over that day. Geary went back to SMU [Annotator's Note: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas] and finished law school in January 1948. He had passed the bar [Annotator's Note: final law exam to get his license] in 1947. He went into the Dallas District Attorney's office [Annotator's Note: Dallas, Texas] for about four years. He got recalled for Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953] but did not have to go. He got married and had a family. The best thing that ever happened to him was his wife. They were married almost 57 years before she died. His service helped him in his business life. He likes to practice law. He wears his DFC pin. It has helped him in organizations and has opened doors that might not have opened. He was active in Dallas politics.

Joseph Geary believes that history repeats itself and it is important for young people to understand what has happened and why it happened. He was lucky and did not have issues assimilating back to civilian life. The war made him grow up. When he went back to SMU [Annotator's Note: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas], he was a pledge of a fraternity and was older and had done things that others had not. One snotty-nosed little guy gave him some trouble, so Geary popped him. Geary went to the 70th D-Day [Annotator's Note: 70th Anniversary of D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] celebration and there were a number of men and women in the military from all types of units. He feels that the American people can be proud of the people in the service now. They have to face a different kind of enemy and under different rules. A future message would be to never leave a comrade behind. That is a universal trait.