Robert Sweatt was born in May 1922 in Lovington, New Mexico, one of six children of a county commissioner. He came up on a ranch during the Great Depression and although the family ate well, finding a paying job was difficult. He was 20 years old and feeding steers in Pecos, Texas for a dollar a day when he was drafted. After testing in Kerns, Utah, Sweatt found himself in the Army Air Corps. He went for basic training at Las Vegas, Nevada. There he heard an officer speaking about how the United States was "getting the [blank] kicked out of us all over the world" and that the Army needed volunteers for the job of "aerial gunner," which came with quick promotion and flying pay and Sweatt said, "put me down." He went to advanced training for almost a year in the United States before flying to Iceland and then France.

Scheduled to take part in the bombing of German held oil fields in Romania, Robert Sweatt left Portreath, England on a beautiful day and flew along the coast of France into bad weather. The formation split up and Sweatt's plane flew into the sights of an English ship that "catapulted a couple of Beaufighters" [Annotator's Note: British Bristol type 156 multi-role combat aircraft] at them. Somehow, the pilot evaded them and was almost out of gas when they realized they were over the bay of Lisbon, Portugal. Although Portugal was supposed to be a neutral country, there were two German transport planes on the runway when they landed. The airport authorities called the American embassy and Sweatt said within an hour they were in civilian clothes and being entertained in the Lisbon nightspots. After several adventures in Portugal, the crew regrouped in Marrakesh, Morocco and flew to Benghazi, Libya. Sweatt remembers making five trips over Italy before going back to a base about a hundred miles north of London, England for a few more missions. On a second detached service to Africa, his squadron [Annotator's Note: 566th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] bombed Saint-Nazaire [Annotator's Note: Saint-Nazaire, France]. Sweatt noted that when returning from missions where they couldn't make their target over Belgium or France, they held their bombs and dropped them in the English Channel; if they couldn't make their target on missions in Germany, they would just salvo their bombs anywhere in that country. He recalled landing in a beet patch and the ball turret gunner chatting up a pretty girl who asked to wear his Mae West [Annotator’s Note: pneumatically inflatable life vest].

On his seventeenth mission, Robert Sweatt was returning from Ludwigshafen, Germany when Jimmy Stewart [Annotator's Note: US Air Force Brigadier General James M. Stewart; famous American actor], whose squadron [Annotator's Note: 703rd Bombardment Squadron, 445th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was also in the air, broke protocol to let Sweatt's squadron [Annotator's Note: 566th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] know that they were off course. Suddenly, an Fw 190 [Annotator's Note: German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft] dove out of the sun on the attack. Sweatt said the plane felt like it just stopped. At his feet were his parachute, gun, and escape kit with all his money. When he reached down to get his gear, he realized he couldn't use his left arm; shrapnel had hit between his wrist and elbow, tearing a big piece out of his flight suit. His arm wasn't broken, but he had an open wound through which he could see the white bone. The hext thing he knew, he was out in the slipstream, still trying to snap on his parachute. Sweatt said he could barely breathe, and only knew that he was moving because his pants were flapping in the wind. He heard the great explosion that disintegrated the plane, and Sweatt said the trees were coming up fast. With difficulty, he pulled the ripcord and within a few swings he was on ground in a wheat field about a quarter of a mile from the crash site. He noticed blood squirting from his neck and plugged the wound with dirt. He then tried to hide himself in a manure pile. A young boy came along and gave him pieces of his own clothes and a beret to wear. Not long afterward, a German soldier showed up and waved a machine gun in Sweatt's face; he ordered him and the boy to find the flyer that just landed. The boy led Sweatt to a depression in the ground, where he laid, covered with leaves and snow, while Germans searched the nearby trees. That night a farmer rescued him, brought him home and tended his wounds. It was the farmer's daughter who told him that the rest of his crew was dead. He passed through the hands of several French underground operatives, until he finally traveled with a farm couple on a train to Paris.

When he arrived in Paris, France, Robert Sweatt's escorts introduced him to three young men of the French Resistance who took over the next leg of his flight from the Germans. In this clip, Sweatt recounts some of his close calls while in occupied Paris. He stayed in a hotel with the three boys and a girl and went to picture shows and prize fights. At one point, he got separated from his hosts and roamed the streets of Paris in fear until one of the boys found him. On another occasion, he got up during the night to go down the hall to the restroom, and heard German soldiers searching the rooms for fugitives. Sweatt hid in a closet for the rest of the night. He was also spirited away from the hotel and interviewed, and luckily answered the interrogator's questions correctly. Soon afterward, he was brought to a train station, but it had been bombed overnight, and he and his escorts were stopped by the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS]. Sweatt showed them his false identification papers and was allowed to go on his way. After the train tracks were repaired, Sweatt and several other men were led through complex maneuvers into a train compartment and told to sit quietly. During the night journey, word reached them that Germans soldiers were checking papers. The men prepared to kill the soldiers, but there was no confrontation. When they got to the coast, a young woman led them through a minefield to the shore. They waded out to rowboats, then boarded gunboats, and eventually made it out to the open English Channel. There, for the first time in months, Sweatt could speak English. He said it was a wonderful feeling to be speeding toward friendly shores.

Along with his fellow refugees, Robert Sweatt was taken under guard to London, England. A bombardier from his squadron [Annotator's Note: 566th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] came to identify and accompany him back to his air base near Norwich. He underwent a debriefing on his plane's disaster, and Sweatt said he was able to shed light on some of the aspects of the attack that were until then unknown. He mentioned that the airmen had been trained to count the parachutes when they had to abandon the plane, so that there was some idea of possible survivors. Asked if the memories of that time ever bother him, Sweatt said, "Yes." He still sees the plane's left waist gunner falling through the air with no parachute and being helpless to come to his aid. Sweatt still has two bean sized pieces of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] lodged in his chest just above his lungs. He noted that some of the fatalities of the attack were buried in American cemeteries in Belgium and some in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]. He has visited both sites and said it was an "odd feeling" to be in such a beautiful setting dedicated to the victims of war. Sweatt returned to the United States and was sent to Florida to begin B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] gunnery school. While at a dance, he was introduced to the prettiest girl he had ever seen and she later consented to be his wife. Sweatt interjected a flashback from when he was in Africa. There, he met man who had a monkey dressed like a GI that would jump up and salute on command. He laughed when he said the monkey looked a little like the crew's ball turret gunner.

On reflection, Robert Sweatt said it seemed like his life was "a mess." He never went to the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] gunnery school, but was discharged as a tech sergeant and used the G.I. Bill to go to college. He majored in geology and worked in that profession for ten years. Then he went back to school to get a teachers' certification and he taught chemistry in Pasadena, Texas for about 22 years. He retired in 1961, and has been a horse rancher since. When he looks back on his military career, he thanks the good Lord for letting him live. Long after the war, when he visited the Dupont family that saved his life after his plane crashed, he learned that the whole right wing of the plane came off. The young man who first came to his aid told him that he had watched the explosion and Sweatt's parachute descend. He remarked that the war taught him to "see both sides of a question." He learned a lot about England and France that he hadn't read about in books. Although he appreciated the experience, and even enjoyed some of it. He found out that war was serious.