Our airmen had been dishing it out to the Germans; on the other hand, they had been taking it too.  Our ratio of losses was vastly lower than that of the enemy, yet our boys had to fly constantly against terrible opposition.  It made quick veterans out of them.  They went through more in Africa than they ever did on missions to Europe from English bases.

It was generally agreed among the airmen that the bombing runup over Bizerte was one of the hottest spots in the world to fly through.  It lasted less than a minute, but they had to fly straight and steady through an absolute cloudburst of noise and black smoke puffs—little black puffs of death everywhere they looked—and after a few of those something began to jump inside them.

There was no lack of bravery among our bomber and fighter pilots.  But they were also human beings, and I doubt if there was one amonng them who wouldn’t have liked to be sent home.  The English had long had a system of resting aircrewman after a certain number of missions over enemy territory.  This consisted of transferring such men to noncombatant flying for several months, after which they went back for another tour of combat duty.  Rumors were rampant among our fliers that we would soon have such a system.

Many of our pilots had executed as many as twenty-five missions, and were certainly deu for a rest of some kind soon.  They banked all their hope in a belief that they would be transferred back to America.  Wishfulness became almost fact, and I heard pilot gunners say, “I’ve got half enough trips now to go home” or “I’ve got two-thirds enough.”

[. . .]

It was unlikely that our air crews would ever have a system whereby a certain number of missions would earn a one-way ticket home.  It would have been wonderful for them to know they could quit the front forever after thirty missions and spend the rest of the war working at home, but airmen were needed too badly to permit that.  It was more likely that some crews would be sent home just for a while and that others would take their rest periods in Africa.