"On December 9, 1943 I reported for active duty to Fort George Meade, Maryland. At Ft. Meade I was subjected to the usual new recruit routine - hair cut, uniforms and the like. I was impressed with how much time they spent measuring and fitting shoes. Everything else was more or less thrown at you. They did not care how you looked but they wanted to keep you on your feet."

   "I passed the Air Cadet test and was sent to a classification center in Miami Beach, Florida. After this evaluation, on a scale of 10, I was rated 9 for pilot, 7 for bombardier and 5 for navigator."

Tom with wife, Barbara, at Peabody He looks like he's ready to whip the Nazis single-handed. Go get 'em, tiger!

Left: The Lareado
gunnery school patch.
Below: School news-
paper, The Gunners
Target.

   "When I completed gunnery school I was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska. This is where the aircrews were put together from students arriving from various training assignments around the country. The crews were assembled from ten separate groups of pilots, copilots, navigators, bombardiers, engineers, radio operators and four groups of gunners in a large hangar. A name was called from each of the ten groups. That person went to the center of the building where he met the others who would be the crew that he would be living with and flying with for the remainder of his tour. My crew was sent to an Overseas Training Unit at Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo is where our crew flew together and trained together in a B-24 Liberator Bomber, trying to simulate some of the experiences that we may encounter when deployed." - Tom