Robert Leese was born in February 1923 in Manheim, Pennsylvania, one of six siblings. When he was four years old, the family moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where his father was an ice cream maker during the Great Depression, and although times were tough, he was never out of work. Leese graduated from high school in 1941 and got a job in an asbestos factory. He clearly remembers the day, later that year, that the Japanese raided Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was coming out of a movie theater with his girlfriend, and everybody on the street was talking about the bombings. He knew the political situation, and wanted to determine for himself what he would be doing in the war, so he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Leese was immediately shipped to Mississippi then went to armament school in Denver, Colorado. While there, he volunteered for aerial gunnery, and after completing training at Tyndall Field in Florida, he was sent to Greenville, South Carolina where he was assigned to a six man B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] crew as top turret gunner. The crew consisted of three officers and three enlisted men, and they all traveled congenially by train to Hamilton Field in San Francisco, California to await deployment.

Once word came that they were shipping out, Robert Leese flew with his crew as a passenger, stopping for fuel in Fiji, Christmas Island and New Caledonia, and finally arriving in a tent city outside of Brisbane, Australia. There he saw his first kangaroos, and was amazed at how tall they were. He was also surprised to be paid in Australian currency. The men were moved on old trains to Townsville, Australia where they were assigned to a newly formed Fifth Air Force squadron, the 822nd Bomb Squadron [Annotator's Note: 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. They also learned they would be flying an untried B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] plane that had a 75mm French cannon and four .50 caliber machine guns mounted in its nose, as well as .50 caliber machine guns on each side of the bomb bay. The plane was intended for low-flying, strafing missions; Leese described how the aircraft's armament was later modified.

From Townsville, Australia, Robert Leese went to Port Moresby, New Guinea, which was still occupied in the north by the Japanese Air Force and Army. The Australian and American troops formed a front line in the Owen Stanley Mountains to stop the enemy's southward advance. Leese flew 50 combat missions, all daytime strafing and low level bombing details. He also flew several other official missions, as well as a few nighttime weather missions. Many of his aerial adventures still stand out in Leese's memory, and he recalled one in which they were transporting a colonel across the mountains, and an engine went out. Happily, the pilot got them safely back to base. On another occasion, while flying through heavy ground fire over Madang, the pilot dropped his bombs, flew out over the ocean, and took a sharp turn to escape the barrage. Leese swears he saw the wing tip touch the ocean; he also noted that half the plane's tail had been shot off. Another time, a bullet came through the turret and just missed Leese's face, but he was never hit. He did, however, witness a hit on his wingman's plane that sent a bullet into the fuselage, hitting the pilot in the crotch and coming out of his back; the copilot assumed control and averted a catastrophe.

Robert Leese was based on New Guinea [Annotator's Note: with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force], but not all of the missions were on that island; some of the missions called for flights to Rabaul and Cape Gloucester on New Britain. The Japanese had three air bases at Rabaul, and the Japanese navy moved supplies through the harbor there. The biggest mission Leese ever flew was to attack ships in Rabaul's harbor. The 5th Air Force had B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] flying high and B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] flying low and the Navy sent planes from aircraft carriers nearby. Air strikes were time slot coordinated, so the enemy could never organize its antiaircraft fire. Because the B-25s flew at altitudes as low as 50 feet, their bombs were rigged with parachutes that slowed their decent and prevented them bouncing back into planes flying later in the formation. While strafing airfields and plantations at such low altitudes, Leese could actually see the Japanese on the ground. He noted that the attacks were so quick and such a surprise, the enemy rarely time to put up ground or air defense. Leese did mention, however, an occasion when four Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, known to the Allies as the Zeke or Zero] dropped phosphorous bombs that left "streamers" he had to fly through.

By the time the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Leese had completed his required missions and was back home. He never thought he would make it through more than ten combat missions, and when he reached 25, he "made a pact with the Lord." Once he completed his tour, he was true to his promise and never flew again. He mentioned that after 40 missions, Army doctors started examining aircraft personnel to check for combat fatigue; according to Leese, they found that after 50 missions, airmen "wiped out." As the Army gained territory, the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] would build new airstrips and the 822nd Squadron [Annotator's Note: 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] would move to a new base, constantly moving northwest on New Guinea. Leese started at Port Moresby and migrated to Nadzab, a big airbase out of which he flew most of his missions. In this clip, Leese goes on to describe certain of those missions, some of them as long as seven and a half hours, to targets such as Wewak and Hollandia. Next, the Army took an island west of New Guinea called Biak, and the squadron moved there, with the Japanese army still there in caves. Leese remembers dropping delayed action bombs at the mouths of the caves to wipe out the enemy within. Once they were beaten, the Allies had control of all of New Guinea. Leese flew five missions out of Biak, and was not aware when he embarked on his final assignment that it would be his last. The squadron moved up to Morotai in the southern part of the Philippines, where the squadron lived on a plantation, which he said he was the nicest billet he had during the 14 months he had been in the south Pacific. On his way to breakfast one morning, a clerk approached and gave him his traveling orders.

With his orders in hand, Robert Leese left New Guinea by way of Nadzab and Finschhafen, and sailed on a transport ship to Angel Island outside of San Francisco, California. He was sent by train to Fort Dix, New Jersey and given R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation] in Richmond, Virginia where the food was great and the beer was plentiful. He went home [Annotator's Note: Manheim, Pennsylvania] for a week, then reported to Denver, Colorado where he worked in commissary supplies. It was there he heard the news of the atomic bombs, and thought it was a very good thing that saved a lot of lives. His girlfriend traveled by train to Denver, and the two were married in a chapel on the base. He was discharged from there, and returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When Leese thinks about the war today, he said he is "very sorry"; he thought when the war ended, things would straighten out, but feels they are worse now. On receiving his papers to go home in 1944, he determined that he would think no more about the war. More recently, since he was asked to tell his stories, he said he has "been flying missions continuously."