Thomas Creekmore was born in 1923 [Annotator's Note: December 1923] in Portsmouth, Virginia and grew up during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. For 13 years it was a terrible life. People all over the country had very little money. They did not think they were poor because everyone was poor. His father lost everything during the Depression and moved the family to Arlington, Virginia. Creekmore finished his last three years of high school there. They went from poverty to living as an average family again. He had a paper route and earned money. They had a cottage at the beach and lived there for seven years. He went barefoot for 11 months of the year and started first grade with no shoes. The principal of the school started a contest for the boys without shoes because she did not want them to feel bad. The competition was to see who could go the longest without wearing shoes and the boy that did would get a silver dollar. He went all the way to December with no shoes and won the silver dollar. When he took it home and showed his mom, she bought him a pair of sneakers with it. That is how poor they were. He had a good life in Arlington. Creekmore met a brunette named Barbara Jean [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] from Mississippi. He dated her his senior year in high school. He finished school early at 17 years old. Barbara Jean had another year to go. He got a job at a bank. He rode the streetcars all over Washington, DC with black satchels full of money going from bank to bank. Then he started seeing stories about a new airport [Annotator's Note: National Airport, now Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C.] and thought it would be interesting to work there. Pennsylvania Center Airlines [Annotator's Note: later called Capital Airlines] was going to move there. Creekmore wanted to work in accounting and got the job at 18 years old. He was the first one to get the job there when they moved from Pittsburg [Annotator's Note: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania]. He worked there while Barbara Jean finished high school. They got married in 1942 and had three children. Before Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], he only heard a little about Germany, but they did not pay attention to it until the Japanese attacked. He turned 21 years old that day. They were having a birthday party in his hospital room at the Georgetown Hospital where he waiting to get his appendix removed. He was listening to the Washington [Annotator's Note: now the Washington Commanders professional football team] and Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia Eagles professional football team] football game when he heard the announcement. They heard very little about the game after that. They heard announcements that all military personnel had to report to work on Monday morning. There were military officers that had been going to work in civilian clothes for years. There were three military uniform stores were opening on a Sunday for officers to get fitted for a uniform. Creekmore's brother was drafted in the first year. An announcement was made for all military personnel to report back to their bases. The people at the football game were the last people to know Pearl Harbor had been attacked because the owner would not let the announcer tell them. He was afraid everyone would get up and leave. The people there thought something was going on because military officers were being told to call home or to report to their office. They did not know until they left the game and got out on the streets. The boys were selling extra papers. They were almost the last people in the world to hear about the attack. He did not give a thought about being in the war. He was married in October 1942. In January 1943, he got a letter [Annotator's Note: a draft notice] from Uncle Sam [Annotator's Note: Uncle Sam; a common national personification of the federal government of the United States] saying they needed him.

Thomas Creekmore did what they told him [Annotator's Note: when Creekmore was drafted January 1943]. He told his wife he had to go with the Army. His wife was a telephone operator for the Pentagon [Annotator's Note: the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, located in Washington D.C.]. She moved back in with her family while he was in the Army. He ended up in Camp Polk [Annotator's Note: Camp Polk in Vernon Parish, Louisiana] in the Tank Corps. He was not happy being in the Tank Corps in the swamps in Louisiana and volunteered for the Army Air Corps. Eventually, he was transferred to the Air Corps in Miami Beach [Annotator's Note: Miami Beach, Florida]. The only people that flew volunteered to fly. No one went in a submarine unless they volunteered. The training was good. The Army had taken over most of the hotels in the Miami area. They needed two pilots, a bombardier, a navigator, an engineer, a radio operator, and four gunners. After all his tests he was picked to go to radio school to be a radio operator. Radio work was more along his line of work. The radio operators had their own room in the plane. He was asleep in his radio room once on a mission [Annotator's Note: with the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. He got orders to go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where they had a big radio school. He went in the winter. His wife got leave from her job and went to live with him and got a job as a phone operator. She was telling people if their sons were missing in action or got killed. It did not bother her. Later on, when the plane next to him went down and he knew ten guys died, he moved on and hoped he would make it back to England. It hit him after going back to the barracks. At about nine o'clock some sergeant took out the clothing and personal belongings of the guys who were gone. In a few days, there would be new guys in their beds. He wonders why he is still here. He was an eager beaver. One of his brothers had been in the Pacific with the Marines. His other brother was with anti-aircraft in the Army. They trained out of Tampa, Florida. They flew training missions for three months over the Gulf of Mexico. He had furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and told his wife he would be home in 90 days, or he was not coming home. He knew if he went overseas and flew 30 missions he would get to come home.

Thomas Creekmore went overseas [Annotator's Note: in 1945], and he was an eager beaver. His pilot [Annotator's Note: in 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] had to fly with an experienced crew before he could take his crew on a mission. When he was getting that experience, Creekmore volunteered to fly a couple of missions as an extra radioman. Eager to get in his 30 missions, he flew 19 missions in 42 days. All heavy bombing ended, and he did not get any more missions. The Russian and American lines were getting too close together and they might risk hitting their own guys from 25 thousand feet. They stopped a month before Germany surrendered. One day their pilot told them they got selected to go on a special trip [Annotator's Note: in 1943 before Creekmore was in Europe]. They went to a memorial for Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] at West Point, New York. They wanted some B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber], B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], and a couple of fighters there for the show. His crew was picked to represent the B-17s. He was there for his 21st birthday. They then sent him to Hunter Field in Savannah [Annotator's Note: Savannah, Georgia] to prepare to go overseas. They then headed for England in the middle of the winter. Some crews went to Brazil and then on to Africa. Most crews went up to Bangor, Maine then went over to Greenland, then to Iceland, then on to Wales. It was a short day in the winter. One night after three days in Goose Bay, Labrador they saw a movie made from the nose of an airplane showing how to fly into Greenland. It was so difficult they could not do it without seeing a plane do it in the film. They would fly in at 10 thousand feet. There were three fjords [Annotator's Note: a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier] where they were supposed to land on the runway. The fjords all came together before the runway. They had to follow them and dropdown. On either side of them were sheer walls. There was not enough room for them to turn around. If they overshot the runway, it looked clear, but it was another fjord. If they kept going, they would not make it. They had a brand-new B-17 but had to leave it behind and take a train to the new airbase. They had to fly a clunker [Annotator's Note: at the airbase]. There were 33 bomber bases in England and some fighter bases assigned to the 8th Air Force. Two-thirds of them were B-17s and the others were B-24s. He was happy he went to a 17 base. They could get shot up by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], get damaged pretty badly, and still make it back to England. It was because all their controls were cables. The B-24s were hydraulic planes, and if they got hit in their hydraulic system, they could not fly back. The crew would get awakened at four o'clock in the morning and be told they would be flying that day. They would get up and go shave. He did not do that. He did not shave until after the war when he went home. They had to shave because if they had any stubble of hair the oxygen masks, they wore would make them itch. Then they would go to breakfast. Then they would go to a building where all their clothing was drying from the mission before. The early boys had heavy wool clothing and they still froze because at 25 thousand feet it could be 40 degrees below zero and there was no heat on the plane. A lot of them got frostbite. When he got there, they had heated suits waiting for them. They connected the trousers to the coat and then put on heated boots and connected them to the trousers. There gloves could hook to the jacket. They had a thermostat next to them. They could turn it up to be cozy. A mission would be six to eight hours. It was quite a way to Germany and back.

Thomas Creekmore [Annotator's Note: in the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] stayed in his radio room [Annotator's Note: during a mission]. He would communicate with the base back in England. The pilots' radios were only good for about 10 miles. They could talk to the planes in the squadron and that was it. He could put out a trailing antenna that was 150 feet hanging out the back of the plane with a weight on it. One day he was tuning his radio and he picked up the Armed Forces radio station. When they got back, he went to the radio shop and asked if he could put it on to the rest of the airplane. The guy gave him a link with connections he could plug into his radio and into the intercoms. After that, they had music on their airplane. It did not interfere with anything, and they could still communicate fine. On a mission to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany], the disc jockey came on at 12 o'clock and he tuned them in on their bomb run. The music came on and all hell was breaking loose. There were fighters coming in. The flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was bad. They did not hear much of the music that day. Tommy Dorsey's [Annotator's Note: Thomas Francis Dorsey Junior, American jazz musician] "Sunny Side of the Street" [Annotator's Note: "On the Sunny Side of the Street", 1930 song] became the theme song of the crew. They did not hear that song that day because of all the activity on the intercoms. He thought as long as the plane was still flying, he would stay. He never had to use his parachute. 50 thousand young men flew missions for the 8th Air Force and did not make it home. That was more than the entire Marine Corps during World War 2. 25 thousand were able to parachute safely and 25 thousand died. They had engines hit and they had holes. Their worst mission was their ninth mission in Germany over the Rhine River [Annotator's Note: 23 March 1945]. They had one engine out and the other was not working well, but they were still flying. They could not keep up with the other planes, but they made it back to base. When they got back, he counted 80 holes just in his radio room where flak had gone through. He had one window in his radio room that he could look out of, and all he ever saw was blue sky. The only time he saw anything else was when fighters flew over. The P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] were their little friends. They loved to see them glide across the top of them. He looked out his window on this mission and after an explosion, the wing on his side looked like it had been opened up by a can opener. No one on the plane was hit. Their plane was out of service for three or four weeks being repaired. When they first got their plane, he asked one of the mechanics about a patch next to his head in the radio room. The mechanic told him some flak went through there, hit the last radioman in the head and killed him. He had to fly his missions looking at that patch. When they returned from a mission, they would go to briefing. They would tell an intelligence officer where they saw the fighters, the flak, and what the mission was. They would be given whiskey to calm them down. The planes had toggliers [Annotator's Note: crew member responsible for arming and dropping bombs in lieu of a bombardier]. When he saw the first bomb drop out of the first plane, he would then drop his bombs. All the planes would drop their bombs at the same time. The lead plane had a good bombardier. One day the togglier said bombs away over the intercom. It was his job to lean over and open the door to the bomb bay and he would repeat bombs away. He opened the door, and the wind was wild. A 500-pound bomb did not release. The pilot told them to close the doors because he did not need the drag on his way back to England. When they got over the English Channel, they had to call the base. The base told them if it was hanging alright to just bring it back and told the pilot to make a good landing. Creekmore was getting his stuff together when he heard a loud noise. He saw three planes that had already arrived, and men running across the field. He grabbed his bag and took off running. When his pilot had turned off the plane, he activated the hanger that held the bomb. The bomb dropped and crashed through the bomb bay doors, landed on the ramp and was rocking. That is why everyone ran. It turned out that the bomb would not go off anyway. There is a little propellor on the front of the bombs that have to turn 200 times in order for the bomb to be activated. The bomb falling 10 feet did not let the propellor turn enough times. No one went near it until the bomb guys came and took it away.

Thomas Creekmore [Annotator's Note: a radio operator in the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] would be asked on the radio if they were bringing any bombs home. On 19 April 1945, they took off and they tried to get 36 airplanes off the field in 30 minutes. The first plane was the lead plane. They flew 10 miles climbing to 10 thousand feet. When they would get to the buncher [Annotator's Note: this was near one of the radio towers] where the radio signal was, the planes would be getting into formation. The lead plane would shoot red and yellow flares from the top of the plane. They would get into their spots in the 12-plane squadron. There were three squadrons doing this at the same time. The one in the middle was the lead squadron. The high squadron was above them 500 feet and the low squadron was below them 500 feet. There were 36 planes from their bomb group. This was happening with 32 other bomb groups in England. The 8th Air Force was putting up one thousand bombers to leave the English Channel at a certain time. They had a bomber column with 36 planes flying together. When they flew over Germany, they were at 25 thousand feet. Each bomb group had four fighters with them. They would chase out the German fighters. The weather was bad, but they formed their 36-plane formation. Creekmore was in the radio room with nothing to do. He was half asleep. Suddenly, he hit the top of the radio room. His pilot had encountered other planes on another squadron and was on a collision course. His pilot dove the airplane and he hit the ceiling of the radio room. When he pulled out of the dive, he hit the floor. He dove again and he hit the top again. The next time he hit the floor he grabbed something to hold on to. He did not know what was going on until someone went over the intercom and explained there were 24 planes running into each other and they had to get out of it. Luckily no planes were lost, and no crews were killed. The two squadrons had to pull out and reassemble. For years he tried to find out what the other squadron was. The 398th Air Group [Annotator's Note: 398th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] was in their area. He knew someone in that air group who knew about the collision course day. That person had an aviation artist paint a picture of that day with both of their planes in it. The painting was titled "Wake Up Call." That was the last maximum effort of the Air Force. There was a mission after that to go to Czechoslovakia, but he did not fly on that one. This was his 19th and last mission.

Thomas Creekmore [Annotator's Note: a radio operator in the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] had a mission after Germany surrendered [Annotator's Note: 8 May 1945]. It was his favorite mission. They were playing baseball and eating three meals a day. It was a Saturday. Germany had surrendered five days before that. They went to the briefing and found out they were going to fly 200 B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] to the Baltic Sea. They went to a small town, Barth, Germany. Germany had two Stalag Prison camps of Air Force men. Stalag Luft 1 had 7,000 men. The Russians had overrun the camp [Annotator's Note: 1 May 1945]. The Russians wanted to march the men back to Russia and put them on ships. One of the Air Force commanders did not like that and went to go get them. They went there like they were going on a mission. The first 20 planes landed at a fighter runway. It was grass with metal on top. General Gross [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Brigadier General William Milton Gross], with some of the radio people, went in on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, they brought in hospital ships for the guys that were ill. They started at seven o'clock Sunday morning. They had all the guys walking to the airfield. When they landed, they would open the doors and not shut off the engines. They would load 30 guys and take off. 20 planes landed every hour. His group was scheduled to land at noon and leave at one, but by the time they got there, things were backing up. 200 B-17s brought six thousand men home. He remembers that day over any other mission he flew. To balance the plane they had to 20 guys in the bomb bay, four up in the nose, and six in the radio room. One of the officers asked him where the parachutes were. They did not have any. They flew them down to Reims, France and to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France]. They did not lose any crew members or POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. On their flight, Creekmore shut the radio off and had a two-hour conversation with the men. Later on, he learned everything they had gone through. That is the mission he remembers the most. They did not get credit for it because they did not drop bombs. The Air Forces POWs were treated well because they were under the control of the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German air force]. They had to rely on Red Cross parcels to eat. They were treated better than the camps the ground soldiers were in. Creekmore thought the Russians would be their next enemy. The Germans knew the Russians would treat them badly. The German officers that were guarding the prison camp told Colonel Zemke [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Hubert "Hub" Zemke] told him they were heading east away from the Russians. Zemke knew the Russians were coming. By the next day, the colonel of the Russian Army went in. Zemke dealt with them until they showed up. The Russians gave them three days to get out of there. They gave them a three-mile radius to fly over Russian territory, or they would shoot them down. There were a couple of girls that worked in the office, and they asked to get out on the planes. They gave them men's clothing to get out of there. They dressed them like they were nurses. They were able to get in and get out. The Germans were going east toward the British and American lines. They did not want to get captured by the Russians.

Thomas Creekmore [Annotator's Note: a radio operator in the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] and his crew flew their plane back to their base in England [Annotator's Note: after rescuing American prisoners of war. Creekmore describes that mission in Segment 06-Liberating Prisoners of this interview series]. Their colonel reported that they sent 20 planes, picked up 600 prisoners, and delivered 599 to France. A colonel from a fighter base who had been a prisoner wanted to go to his airbase in England. They took him there and then took the other 29 men to Reims [Annotator's Note: Reims, France]. They thought someone had fallen out of the airplanes. After about another month Doolittle [Annotator's Note: then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle] had command of the 8th Air Force. He told them to put as many men as they could into the bombers and head back to the States [Annotator's Note: United States]. They were going to train to go to the Pacific and be on B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. He notified the 305th [Annotator's Note: 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] and the 306th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] that they were not going home. They were to map all of Europe. It was supposed to take a year. They were happy they did not have to go to the Pacific. Creekmore was the only one on his crew who had enough points to go home [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. When he got orders to go home, he had to wait around for a ship in Liverpool [Annotator's Note: Liverpool, England]. He waited over a month. Most of the ships were Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] that took 10 or 12 days to cross [Annotator's Note: the Atlantic Ocean]. 200 of the Air Force guys were supposed to go on the Queen Mary [Annotator's Note: the RMS Queen Mary]. There were infantrymen on there and they did not like the Air Force guys. They got on the ship on 5 September [Annotator's Note: 5 September 1945]. The Queen Mary went across in five days. They were walking around in their suntan flight suits and the infantry did not like that. The other thing they did not like was they had to sleep half their men inside and the other half on the deck. It was a wonderful feeling to see the Statue of Liberty [Annotator's Note: in New York Harbor in New York, New York]. The Japanese surrendered so he knew he was about to have a normal life again. Then he traveled to his wife's mother's home. The cab driver did not charge him because he fought in the war. He and his wife bought a house in Arlington [Annotator's Note: Arlington, Virginia] and raised their family. During his 30 days of liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], he talked to people where he used to work. They told him he could start anytime he wanted. He waited two weeks and then started work again. He is thankful both of his brothers survived the war. He never had any nightmares, but never talked about it. He worked in the office in the airlines and knew the pilots. One day he saw a pilot in uniform, his name was Clark Luther, he graduated with him in high school. He flew for Capital Airlines. He was a smart guy. He went to Maryland and got his master's degree. In 1959, Creekmore ran into Luther, and they were talking about Luther being offered the chief pilot's job for the airline. They merged with United Airlines in 1961. A couple of years later Luther went to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] and became the chief pilot for United Airlines. Creekmore retired in 1981. They were good friends. They would talk on the phone. Creekmore was flying with him one day and he asked Luther if he flew in the war. He flew with the 8th Air Force. Luther flew his 20 missions and then went home, and he was only 20 years old. They never talked about the war.

Thomas Creekmore [Annotator's Note: a radio operator with the 365th Bombardment Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] remembers the Schweinfurt [Annotator's Note: Schweinfurt, Germany] flag. The war had ended for the bombing. The Rainbow Infantry Division [Annotator's Note: 42nd Infantry Division] was still taking towns. General Collins [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Harry John Collins] was in charge of the Rainbow Division. They took the town of Schweinfurt. There were ball bearing plants around the town. The 8th Air Force had lost a lot of men bombing those plants. One they called Black Thursday, when they lost 60 airplanes and 600 men [Annotator's Note: 14 October 1943]. When they brought the Nazi flag from the town hall General Collins told them the flag belonged to the 8th Air Force. He made arrangements to send it to England. They did research to see which group lost the most men presented to that commander. That is how the 305th ended up with the flag. The flag has never been seen again. Creekmore wrote a story about it hoping to find it. No one knows where it is. Creekmore was on a mission to Barth, Germany to pick up prisoners of war [Annotator's Note: Creekmore describes this mission in Segment 06 – Liberating Prisoners of this interview series]. That day means more to him than any of his other missions. He decided to serve when he got the letter [Annotator's Note: a draft notice] from Uncle Sam [Annotator's Note: Uncle Sam; a common national personification of the federal government of the United States]. Some guys volunteered, but he was married and never thought about volunteering. When he got home [Annotator's Note: after the war ended] after his furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] he got orders to go to Greensborough, North Carolina to be discharged. He did not join the Reserves. The guys that did sign up went flying missions in Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. During the war, Creekmore went from a boy to a man. He got out of high school when he was 17 years old. He played a small part in saving our freedom and what we stood for. The country is at a crossroads again. Back then, the people back home were turning out airplanes every 30 minutes. They fought two major wars at the same time. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] made the mistake of attacking Russia. It is important to have museums like the one in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and the 8th Air Force Museum in Savannah, Georgia [Annotator's Note: The National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia]. The young people go there and see it and it must have some effect on them. He thinks about his sons and he thinks they would do it and do it better because they are better educated and could handle the education that was necessary to lead. All history should be taught to future generations. They have to learn history as far back as they can go because you cannot face the future without knowing what happened in the past.