Nice story - vet appreciated by kids

[dieseltaylor]

Nice to have a good news type feature:

Moviegoers got a big-screen look at Hollywood's tale of America's first African-American military aviators, but Litchfield students got something better: They met a real "Red Tail."

Dr. Thurston Gaines, 89, doesn't have visible burns, missing limbs or battle wounds. The Goodyear resident doesn't look like a man who survived a plane crash when the enemy shot him down.

He speaks fondly and with pride of his days as one of several men enlisted in the 332nd Fighter Group. Red Tails are remembered as the first operational unit of all-Black bomber escorts. They received the nickname because they painted the tails of their aircraft red. The unit fought for their country at a time when the U.S. segregated colored and White servicemen.

Gaines is a friend of Susan McGraw, whose daughter, an eighth-grader, attends L. Thomas Heck Middle School and was learning about Black History Month and African-Americans in World War II.

McGraw and eighth-grade teacher Mel Otten saw an opportunity for students to hear firsthand about the discrimination Red Tails faced and their adventures while deployed to Europe.

Gaines was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943 and traveled by train to Mississippi. He didn't mind serving his country but soon learned that others did. "I found what it meant to have coloration on one's skin almost as soon as I got off the train," Gaines said.

Gaines said he didn't want to hold a gun so he chose to fly. In those days, African-American pilots were a novelty; they hadn't flown planes before.

"They said we did not have the intelligence to fly complicated aircraft and that we were cowards at heart," Gaines said of military attitudes he encountered.

Still, the U.S. finally consented to begin training Black pilots, and Gaines was assigned to the Cadet Corps at the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama.

He graduated as a flight officer and was deployed to Europe in January 1945.

"All the missions were from Italy over the Alps into Germany," Gaines recalled. On his 25th mission while he accompanied a bomber, his plane took a hit.

Though he tried to stay with the plane as long as it would fly, it broke in two as it flew at more than 300 miles per hour, Gaines said. He said he recalls being suddenly airborne. His parachute deployed, and next came a stabbing pain in his back.Gaines was now injured and in enemy territory: Germany.

Gaines stumbled through the woods, parachute in hands, and came upon a group of teenagers at a picnic. They told him to hide and later pointed him out to two German soldiers.

A soldier asked if he was alone.

"I answered in German, nd he looked surprised. They thought of us as monkeys with tails," said Gaines, who had studied German in college.

Gaines was taken to a POW camp. There he lost 20 pounds in one month; he remembers that the Germans gave prisoners only one meal.

"We survived because the Red Cross sent food parcels. The chocolate was the best," Gaines said.

Gaines was liberated a month after his capture and repatriated in June 1945. His military decorations include the Purple Heart, the Presidential Unit Citation, an Air Medal with two oak-leaf clusters and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal.

Students said hearing experiences from the mouth of a Red Tail made the discrimination they faced more real.

"I learned a lot about how they were treated," said Ayannah Peterson, 14, who said her favorite part of the story was when Gaines described how he was suspended briefly in midair before crashing to the ground.

Gaines finished his story saying he enlisted never expecting his plane to be shot down or thinking he would see his classmates die.

The eighth-graders clapped and cheered. Some crowded around for a group hug; others shook hands and thanked him for his service.

"I enjoyed hearing that even though the country didn't respect them, they respected and fought for their country," said Shiloh Rotiz, 14.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/03/12/20120312goodyear-resident-brings-wwii-pilots-movie-life.html