<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=313762.msg15335591#msg15335591">Quote from: Metraxa on 28-03-2020, 02:57:23</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote"><strong>Name:</strong> Gordon Briggs<br/><br/>"Have you been with the 213th since you joined up? Apologies for prodding, but I was on the Italy front myself. Operation Torch and Operation Olive, specifically. I'm just curious to know where the unit's been."</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div>"Me sir? No. No I was in Italy too. Maybe we flew over you."<br/><br/>He pulls out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes and shakes the pack until a cigarette emerges, grabs it with his lips and lights a match off a thick thumb-nail. He takes a long draw, but his hand is shaking.<br/><br/>"817 Bomber Squadron, 483rd, 15th Air Force. Waist gunner. By the end of the war we were crossing the Alps and hitting Bavaria without escorts, 'cause they couldn't make it. That's when they got us. The shadows. They got into our plane. They got into us. Me and the co-pilot were the only ones that bailed out." His hand is shaking so hard he struggles to get the cigarette to his mouth.<br/><br/>"He shot me in the back, twice. But he put a bullet in his own brain before he could finish the job."<br/><br/>"I spent the last three months of the war in a hospital bed in Stalag VII-A." He drops the half-smoked cigarette and grinds it under the toe of his boot.<br/><br/>"So now I write numbers on chalk boards."<br/><br/>"I'll go wait at the jeep, sir."<br/>