Art Kramer

ART KRAMER'S WWII STORIES

God Bless St. Trond

St. Trond was an emergency airstrip, one of many strategically placed to take care of returning heavies in need of fuel and or repairs.. But when we think of an emergency strip, we think of a levelled cowpasture with a single runway of steel matting and that's about it. But these fields were something special unto themselves. They were small cities. We were returning from a mission, I now forget from where, and it was clear that we were low on fuel. We thought we could make it back, but as time went on it was clear that we would have to land somewhere for fuel. We were in Belgium and St Trond was the field nearest our route. What we saw when we arrived, was quite a surprise. There wasn't just a runway, there were three parallel runways; concrete, black top and steel matting. A pilot could choose any one of the three .If he was afraaid of fire, he would stay off the conrete runway and set it down on the black top. If the runways were wet he would avoid the steel matting and go for the concrete. If his gear jammed he could set it fown in a dirt crash strip. Once down we found out that this field was jammed with spoare parts, mechanics, hangers, machine shops and all the comforts of home. You could come in low on gas with an engine out, and get filled up and the engine repaired and be off again in time for diner at your own base. Now all we needed was gas. Piece of cake?. Not quite. after landing we discovered the awful truth. They had no gas trucks available for us. We could get all the gas we needed but we had to get it and load it ourselves. We were pointed to a 6x6 truck, told to take it to the gas dump and load up with all the 5 gallon jerrycans of gas we needed. That's right, Willie would be gassed up 5 gallons at a time by a bucket brigade made up of our crew. We would pull the 6x6 up to Willie and hand up the jerry cans one at a time and pour it into the wing tanks using a funnel and a cloth filter. I don't know how many jerrycans we dumped into Wlilie, but it seemed like hundreds. In the process we all got soaked in 100 octane, and it wasn't long before our skin began to itch and burn. It was a no smoking flight back to Pontoise. To this day my skin itches when I think of that day. But we were lucky St. Trond existed. But we would have been luckier if they had a gas truck to do that sloppy job for us. God bess St. Trond, with or without gas trucks.

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