If Pennies could talk

[Carianna]

P.S. I tried to put this in the Tales from the Road section but it wouldn't let me post there.. *shrugs*

If pennies could talk…

So there I was yesterday, noticing that my Penny envelope was getting really full and so I decided to take them into King Soopers and use the coin machine there to cash in all the pennies to get a few extra bucks to spend on dinner for the next few nights. So I went to the break room, grabbed a couple of paper coffee cups and a lid and proceeded to pour all the pennies into the cup and lid them. I let the cup full of pennies stay on top of my desk for a couple of hours, and the workday started to wind down. As things were quiet at times, and I got bored, I started to play with the cup full of pennies, noticing how heavy it was and just moving the cup around to do something. At one point, I don’t know why, I took the top off and stared down into the cup brimming with pennies, incase your wondering, it was almost $7 worth in there, and for some reason, one of the pennies caught my eye. So I picked it out of the pile and looked at the date. Right above President Lincoln’s heart and to the right was the date stamp of 1940. My first reaction to seeing the date was “Wow! This is probably one of the oldest pennies that I have ever had.” Then after spending a few minutes looking at the penny, turning it over and over, and running my fingers over the worn edges, and thinking about the date, it sunk in. I realized that this penny was struck, created, between 1 to 2 years, as they don’t place a month on coins it is hard to tell when in 1940 it was made, before the America entered World War II. And to top it off, there is no “Mint” mark on the penny, which tells me that it was created at the nations first mint in Philadelphia. I don’t know what events or powers made me want to take that cup lid off and almost immediately pick this penny out of the near 700 that were in the cup, but since I have “rescued” this penny, my thoughts have been on the date and life of this penny. I have to admit, I don’t know why, since I have seen lots of coins that date back to around 1972 and a few even earlier, but this one has made me stop and think, and really feel that I have a piece of important history in my hand. One of the things that have been going though my mind today is, “If pennies could talk, what stories would this penny tell?” This has inspired me to write the following short story. I hope that if you take the time to read though my explanation above and take the time to read what follows, that you enjoy what I have written and maybe even bring home a little bit of history with you.

The noise was deafening. It was so loud in the US Mint located in the little town of Philadelphia, that the overall covered workers wore large earmuffs to help keep the noise down. Large machines though out the plant were punching out little copper and silver disks. These disks would then be fed into another machine that would then be squeezed between two dies, leaving an impression upon the disk. This was how I was born. I am a United States of America Lincoln penny.

After I was born I was placed in a little paper tube along with forty-nine of my siblings and then placed in a box. The box was then packed with other boxes of pennies, nickels, quarters and other forms of U.S. currency. We were then placed in a storehouse for about 3 months. We were delivered to a bank located at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during the summer months of 1940. On October 15, 1940, I was placed in the hands of a seaman by the name of Greg Smith. It was at this point that the adventure began.

Seaman Smith was stationed aboard the battleship U.S.S. Arizona. During the late part of 1940 and the early part of 1941, we traveled though the Pacific Ocean. Tensions were high, as the war was raging in Europe, Adolf Hittler was striking fear and terror into many of the lands in Europe, including our allies in England.

After we returned to port, in October of 1941, Greg was placed on shore duty for the next 6 months. He worked on the broilers of the large battleships and they felt that they needed his skills to help repair the broilers on the ships coming into port. Plus, every sailor only spends part of their enlistment on ships and out to sea. It was Greg’s turn to spend some time in the homeland.

How I was never spent and always slipped though his fingers when he would go to buy something, I will never know. But in some ways, I am glad it worked out that way, or I would not have been around to tell the stories I now tell.

Life changed for Greg and I, on that morning. I will never forget it. It was a nice morning, December 7, 1941. Greg had woken up at 5am, as he does every morning. After taking a shower and getting dressed, he placed me in his pocket, like he always did and then we were off to go get some breakfast at the mess hall. We got in line and waited our turn when a fight broke out between a Marine and a Navy sailor up ahead of us. Looking back, I am glad it did. Food, dishes and trays sprawled across the floor before a officer made his way though the crowd and broke up the fight. Once the fight was cleared up, Greg got his meal and ate while talking with some friends at a table. Just before Greg got up to leave, the officer that broke up the fight came over and asked Greg to follow him to his office to fill out a report of what happened in the mess hall.

The report was a pain to fill out and it wasn’t until 7:45am that Greg was released to go to duty and complete the job he was working on so the Arizona could sail later that day. As Greg moved across the compound, and to the warehouse where he would pick up his gear, we heard it. At first it was faint, but it steadily got louder. The noise was coming from the southeast. Greg looked up into the sky and saw a sight he thought he would never see. Hundreds of planes filled the sky, heading for battleship row. As the planes flew overhead, he looked up and saw the bright red circles located under each wing. We were under attack.

Greg dropped what was in his hands and ran off toward the first gun battery he could find. The pitch in the engine noise of the planes changed as their noses pointed down and the planes started to dive toward the ships in the harbor.

Japanese torpedoes splashed into the water, bombs fell from wings, guns sent up reports as they were fired, and all hell broke lose. Greg had reached a gun battery and found it manned. He started helping the gunners, handing them ammunition as the anti-aircraft gun let loose, doing its best to tear into the fighters and bombers that dared attack American soil. Then he saw it. A single Japanese dive-bomber called a Val. It pushed it’s nose down and started toward his ship, the Arizona.

Greg dropped the ammunition that he was holding and took off running across the island, toward his home away from home. The Val’s engine and propeller gave off a mighty roar, and the wind streaming over its broad wings and though the dive breaks gave off a hair curling scream though the air, the there was the click. Greg watched as the armor-piercing bomb released from the belly of the Val and fell toward the Arizona.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The bomb fell though the sky, hit the ship and then disappeared. The next thing Greg knew he was flying backwards and landed on the ground hard. The bomb had hit the powder magazine in the Arizona, causing a giant fireball and sending debris everywhere. The concussion from the blast was what sent Greg and me flying back.

Then there was silence. Greg got up, and looked around. All the plans were gone. There was a surreal silence to the aftermath of the attack that shocked Greg, then it all came back in a rush. The sights and sounds of fires burning out of control, debris lay on the ground everywhere he looked, and the bodies of his fallen comrades. Then there was the Arizona. She sat at the bottom of the bay, listing to one side, burning as if the fires from hell herself. Greg took off for the ship, joining a crew with water hoses and spent the rest of his day trying to put out the fire.

An hour later, we were attacked again that day, and more ships were destroyed, but Greg and I made it though the battle, this time. That day Five Battleships, two Light Cruisers, three, Destroyers, and one hundred and eighty aircraft were destroyed, and we only brought down twenty-nine Japanese planes. But the most dishearten information that day was two thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine service men lost their lives that day. Over one thousand, one hundred were lost on Greg’s home ship, the Arizona.

Greg spent the next week helping to clean up the results of the attack. One day, Greg was tired and wanted to have a cigarette, but did not have any. He found a young Air Corp Captain by the name of John Miller, who offered to sell Greg one for four cents. It was at this time that left Greg and found my way into John Millers pocket….

To be continued….
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[IddinLunasglory]

Very cool story Cari !! never thought about that

[Carianna]

Although the plane and crewmembers in the following story are fictional, the 303rd Bomb Group did exist and flew over 364 missions in World War II. If you would like to learn more about them, please follow this link to their website. http://www.303rdbga.com/index.shtml


John and I stayed in Pearl Harbor for two months, helping deal with the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We spent time cleaning and repairing the destroyed buildings and vehicles on Ford Island and around the harbor.

John flew the P-40 Tomahawk at this time and we flew several patrol missions while still stationed at Pearl, but we never saw any further action. In late March of 1942, we were transferred to Nevada where we trained to fly the new Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress.

This plane was a pilots dream, unless you want to talk about the fighter aircraft. The B-17 had four big radial piston engines, two on each wing, giving it enough power to carry four thousand pounds of bombs at over two hundred miles per hour. She got her name because she was bristling with defensive guns everywhere you looked. The B-17F had two guns in the tail, one gun in each side, or waist of the plane, just behind the wings. Down in the belly, there were two more guns in a “ball” that someone would sit in and spin around. Another gun could be found poking out the back at the top of the plane, where the radio operator sat. Two more guns could be found in a torrent at the top of the aircraft. Then there were two “cheek” guns located on either side of the nose of the plane, manned by the navigator and the bombardier.

She was a site to look at. But most of all, she was a dream to fly. She responded to every request with the slightest of touches. And when something did go wrong, she would do her best to bring you back home, alive.

John kept me in his breast pocket every time he flew. Why he chose me, I will never know, but that is how it started. We trained until the fall of 1942, before we were to report to the front. We joined the 303rd Bomb Group, later known as the Hells Angels. In October of 1942, we landed at our new home, RAF Molesworth airfield in Huntingshire, England.

England is a beautiful country, even during the time of war. I was amazed at how green the fields were around the base. It was nothing like what I experienced at Pearl Harbor, even in the times of peace there.

The 303rd started to do their work in November of 1942, though our first mission was not until December 30th, over Lorient, France. On that first mission, John took me out of his breast pocket and, using a piece of tape, stuck me to the instrument panel, just to the left of the altimeter. After the mission was over, the crew had a meeting and named the plane. The Lucky Penny flew for the first time under the name on January 13th, 1943.

We flew a total of 34 missions before October 14th, 1943. Some of them were easy targets, and we got little if no resistance. Others, well, some of them attest to how stalwart and rugged the B-17 really is. There were a few times I was sure we would not make it back. But the Penny always brought us home.

The plane ground crews were up all night working on the planes. There was a rumor going around that we would be bombing Berlin in the morning. So attention to detail was done with everything that the ground crew did. It was their plane that was going to face the guns and German fighters. They wanted to give their plane the best chance they could of coming back.

The morning broke clear and cool. It would have been a great morning to take off in a old bi-plane and just fly around for fun for a few hours. But we did not have that luxury. The armament crew started loading five hundred pound bombs into the belly of the Lucky Penny and it was not much longer before the enlisted part of the crew showed up. They spent the morning, working off nervous energy by checking and double-checking their equipment and guns.

It wasn’t long before a jeep rolled up to plane. John and four other men got out and walked over to the plane. John looked to the crew and announced their target, “Ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt, Germany.” We were going into the very heart of enemy held territory and then had to make it back home.

Now, at first thought, this sounds kind of silly. Why go drop bombs and destroy a factory that makes little steel balls and then places them into a couple of rings? Well, ball bearings are used in almost everywhere in the production of vehicles, ground or air. They are used inside the engines that provide power. They are used in the wheels that roll across the ground, and even used to make the guns that sent their deadly message.

When we destroy ball bearings, we in a sense, remove the wood from a forest. If the wood isn’t there, a fire cannot start. So when we destroyed the ball bearings and factories that made them, the Germans could no longer make any new fighter or bombers planes, tanks and the such, nor could they repair what was damaged.

The crew all loaded up in the plane and started to do the preflight of The Lucky Penny, all with thoughts about the coming mission. After a few minutes, a loud bang could be heard from outside the cockpit window and a red glow could be seen shinning in the air above the base. The signal to start engines. John and Charlie started the engine start sequence. The power of the four engines shook the plane as if trying to tear it apart.

John and Charlie started though the rest of the checklist, as the rest of the crew completed their own individual preflight tasks. Slowly the plan began to shake some more as John pushed the throttles forward to start the plane easing forward and taxi it into position for take off and the start of the mission. John stopped The Lucky Penny at the edge of the runway and waited.

Again a loud bang could be heard outside the window. A bright green light could be seen high in the sky. The signal to go. The plane in front of us, Mr. Five by Five started down the runway. As the tail came up we moved into position on the runway for our turn. Once Mr. Five my Five’s main wheels left the run way and lumbered into the air, it was our turn. John told the crew to get ready for take off.

John and Charlie placed their hands on the throttle controls and, together, pushed the throttles all the way forward. The plane started to shake and rattle, but started to slowly move down the runway. Soon the planes tail came off the ground as we moved faster and faster. We could feel each bump in the runway, causing Charlie to about fly out of the seat if he wasn’t strapped in.

Slowly John pulled back on the control column and The Lucky Lady rose in to the air. The ride smoothed out as the wheels came off the ground. Charlie reached over to the center control panel and move the landing gear switch to the retract position. The whine of electrical hydraulic pumps could be heard has they raised the B-17’s landing gear to the up and locked position. We were on our way.

To Be Continued…
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[Carianna]

I will have the next part of this story posted in the next couple of days. Sorryabout the delay for those waiting for the next update. Work has been either busy, or annoyed me to the point that what writting I have done was not very good.
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