Sardinia

	My first crew;  Lieutenant's McMurray, Johnson, Pocan, Round & Private Hyte.

From Algiers we flew to our base in Sardinia. When we landed, a truck picked up our crew and headed up a muddy road and turned into an olive grove to the 444th Squadron Headquarters where we signed in. We were in luck because the base had a bombing alert on Christmas day and no Christmas dinner. They were now having Christmas dinner so we had another Christmas dinner.

I was assigned a tent with the squadron Intelligence Officer for the night. The Intelligence Officer said all crew officers would have a briefing as soon as possible. The Intelligence Officer wanted to talk about what he did for all four squadrons. He told me he briefed all new officers and then about once a week had a briefing for anyone that wanted to come. He then wanted to know a little about me as well as the trip from Morrison Field, Florida, the southern route through South America, and then the ocean crossing to Ascension Island. I told him about the airplane we lost at Ascension Island. He told me they had lost a lot of airplanes on the Northern route through Greenland to England because of bad weather, wrecks, and some pilots getting lost over the ocean.

The next day I was assigned a tent with:

1. Arthur Johnson - a former Newspaper photographer from San Diego

2. Robert Pocan, our Bombardier from San Francisco and who had worked in a shoe store.

3. Lt. Burke from Washington State, who had joined the Canadian Air force then, transferred to the U.S. Air Force

4. Gasser from Oklahoma

5. And me, from Washington State

	Lt. Round, Lt. Glasser, and Capt. Johnson on a trip in Sardinia.

We all seemed to get along well. We were all 2nd lieutenants except for Arthur Johnson who was a 1st lieutenant. We attended the new pilot briefing. The intelligence officer showed us maps of everything including the Russian Front. He told us about the types of missions that we might fly. We were told to respect the local people, their religion, and to stay out of their way when they were having their parades. Coffee and bread was available at the mess hall at all time. Each tent would have to censor the enlisted men's mail at some time. We got a jeep from the transportation officer and went to go see the damage done by 320th bomb group to the city of Cagliari, Sardinia. The 320th Bomb Group was stationed in North Africa at that time.(Continued)