Interview by Daniel Jackson, December 29, 2007

Cecil Simons: I was—Beg your pardon?

Mrs. Simons: He didn’t say anything.

Cecil Simons: Oh okay. Well, I’m hard of hearing, okay?

Daniel Jackson: That’s fine.

Cecil Simons: Yeah. I got bomb blasted over there, okay?

Daniel Jackson: Oh wow.

Cecil Simons: In my old outfit.

Daniel Jackson: So, you were there during the Salween Campaign then?

Cecil Simons: Beg your pardon? I kind of woke you up, didn’t I?

Daniel Jackson: No, I’ve got a bit of a cold, I’m sorry.

Cecil Simons: Oh, well, you’re in Denver, that area.

Daniel Jackson: Right.

Cecil Simons: Let me get out of the way, I get feedback. Okay, go ahead.

Daniel Jackson: I was just asking if you were there, then, during the Salween Campaign at Yunnanyi?

Cecil Simons: Can you speak more clearly, please?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I’m sorry. I was wondering if you remember much about the Salween Campaign at Yunnanyi.

Cecil Simons: What I remember about the Salween Campaign was that I was a staff sergeant on the flight line with the 25th Fighter Squadron, and they did a lot of sorties out of there, okay? On the Salween Front there, what we called it in those days. That was back in ’43.

Daniel Jackson: And what was your job in supporting the squadron?

Cecil Simons: I was a staff sergeant in charge of the line down there. I was the second, probably, in charge. We had two tech sergeants there, and I was a staff sergeant down there. Evidently, I was put in charge so they could stay in the bunk and play solitaire.

Daniel Jackson: So you were in charge of preparing airplanes to take off then? Or getting them ready with weapons? Or what, exactly?

Cecil Simons: Well, there on the flight line, we could load 500-pound bombs or such, not many, but a 500-pound underneath the P-40s, and they flew out and bombed these different Japanese strongholds. And we also set them off the strafe when they could catch them out in the open someplace.

Mrs. Simons: He wants to know what you were.

Cecil Simons: Huh?

Mrs. Simons: He wants to know what you were.

Cecil Simons: I was an electronic technician in charge of the flight line and the radios on the P-40 aircraft.

Daniel Jackson: I had heard from some other people that the radios that they used were called command sets, which weren’t very powerful and required a lot of maintenance. Would you be able to describe those a little bit?

Cecil Simons: What did he say? Were called what?

Mrs. Simons: I didn’t get it either.

Daniel Jackson: I’ll try again, sorry. Yeah.

Cecil Simons: What’d you say again? What do you recall they told you?

Daniel Jackson: I heard that the radios on the P-40s were called command sets, and weren’t very reliable. I was wondering if you would speak to that?

Mrs. Simons: Okay.

Daniel Jackson: The radios on the P-40s. I heard that they were not very reliable.

Cecil Simons: Let me get away. I got to get away from the phone. I’m getting feedback off it. Can you still hear me all right?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Cecil Simons: I’m having a hard time with you.

Daniel Jackson: Hm. We might be getting bad reception here.

Cecil Simons: You’ve got one of them battery jobs, okay? The situation is, all I know is I was with the 89th Fighter Squadron of the United States, was a P-47 Thunderbolt outfit, okay? And I was supposed to go to England and I never got to England. They sent me to China because Chiang Kai-shek’s wife come over here, pleaded in Congress, and got us sent over there, okay?

Daniel Jackson: Okay.

Cecil Simons: And so they sent us to China, the 89th Fighter Squadron. There was the 88th, the 89th, and the 90th, and the 80th headquarters, which it was under. And all of it was in New York, up there in Long Island, where we were located, the 89th.

Well anyway, I was sent to Selfridge Field, Michigan. Where I was sent to the original outfit called the pursuit group, the 60th Pursuit Group down there in Michigan someplace, out by Detroit. I can’t think of that field outside of Detroit. But anyway, from that point, originally like the 80th Fighter headquarters, 59th Wing in New York. That’s where it all started from back in 1942.

Daniel Jackson: Now the 80th, did they fight then in India?

Cecil Simons: India—I was in the area, but they sent the 80th to Assam, India, up to Karachi, India—you know where all the fighting is going on now?

Daniel Jackson: Right, yeah. It’s now in Pakistan.

Cecil Simons: Yeah. Well, they sent us to Karachi, India, and I was out there for about six weeks. They sent us out there to the Eighth Army—British Eighth Army—barracks were out there, which were deserted at the time. And they sent us out there. I was there for six weeks, then they sent us all the way up—took us quite a time to get up there—to Assam. And I was there exactly three days and then they sent me over to China. I was transferred from the 89th Fighter Squadron to the 25th Fighter Squadron in China. And half the 89th radio, the communications people, were taken out of the 89th and sent to the 25th, because the 25th fighter people had been sent to China in 1942. That outfit got caught in that battle there, and they were supposed to go to Australia. They never got to Australia, they sent them to India, okay?

From there, in China, I stayed at Yunnanyi all the time. I was in the 25th Fighter Squadron from—I talked to Major Herrick there one time. He said, “We got over there about September the 6th or 7th.” To Yunnanyi in 1943, okay?

And then from there on, I stayed in Yunnanyi in that fighter squadron. First, I was supposed to go down to Paoshan. I refused to go down there. I lost a buddy down there. He got run over by an airplane.

Then I was with the 25th Fighter Squadron until November the 15th, 1944. And I was transferred then by [unintelligible] as radio operators 2756 for flying status by order of General Chennault for the 27th Troop Carrier because they were short people, okay?

But anyway, I was there until about June the 28th. I flew out of China and went to India. And I was over in India for about twenty-seven days, and I caught malaria in India coming home, okay?

Daniel Jackson: And so then you ended up leaving about when? What happened after you got back from India?

Cecil Simons: Well, after India, I caught malaria and then I went to the hospital. Then I got on a C-46 about twenty days later, taking off to go to Cairo, Egypt. Which was on the way home, you know?

And while taking off from there, I caught malaria in mid-air, okay?

And I was very miserable there until I landed in Cairo, Egypt. Well, I stayed in Cairo, Egypt for ten days until I got over the malaria. There was some camp nine miles outside of Cairo, where they had a lot of people that were what you call shellshocked and everything like that.

There were mental hospitals out there. Maybe they thought I was a mental case, I don’t know. But anyhow, I thought they were a mental case. But anyway, I was there for ten days and then I caught a C-47 out of there and went up to Libya, to a prisoner of war camp Italians were in, okay?

And then I was there three days before I finally had to find a master sergeant and ask why the hell I was there for three days because all my friends were passing me while I was down in camp. They all wanted to know why I was having to stay there, okay? And I didn’t move. So they flew me out on a C-54 all the way to the Azores, okay?

I stayed for about three or four hours in the Azores. And in the Azores, I went to a store there and bought some gifts, like an old cuckoo clock and some Chinese dishes. And then from there on, I flew up to Boston. I was sent to a naval base up there, in Boston, in that area.

Daniel Jackson: From there, did you stay in, or did you receive a discharge and go home, or what happened?

Cecil Simons: Well, after the base for three days, I was sent over to the Chicago, Illinois, area. And sent up to home. I used to live in a place called Amboy, Illinois, okay, out in the country.

My dad was a railroad guy, okay? He retired from the railroad, my father did.

Anyway, I was there. And then when they sent you home for thirty-day leave, that was in August the 3rd. I took a thirty-day leave, and then they sent me down to San Antonio, Texas, you know?

And then I left the training outfit down there and then from San Antonio, Texas—I was there for about a week and a half—they sent me all the way up there where you are at in Denver out there. I was in Denver three days and on October the 15th, 1945, I was discharged from Denver, Colorado, at what that’s base out there near you?

Daniel Jackson: It was probably Lowry when you were here.

Cecil Simons: Denver, Colorado. While I was up there, that’s where I got my discharge papers, okay? October the 15th, 1945. So I was in the service—let’s see—I enlisted January the 2nd, 1942, right out of high school. Okay?

I was twenty years old. I was an old-time student at the high school. Couldn’t play football or anything after that, I was too old. Then from January the 2nd, 1942 until October the 15th, 1945, I was in World War II, okay?

Daniel Jackson: Wow, that’s impressive.

Cecil Simons: Yep. If you want to know anything else, you better send me some papers and I’ll fill them out for you.

Daniel Jackson: That would be outstanding. If I could send you a questionnaire or something, that would be great.

Cecil Simons: Can I ask you something?

Daniel Jackson: Go ahead.

Cecil Simons: I’ve got a friend here, he used to be a captain in a B-25 outfit over there. Are you going to write him a letter?

Daniel Jackson: What’s his name?

Cecil Simons: Lyle Palmer. He used to be a first lieutenant over in China, and he flew B-25s. He flew in China and Burma and India, and over China flew quite a few bombing runs.

Daniel Jackson: Right, yeah. I sent a lot of letters to some B-25 pilots already, so I was wondering what his name was. Just in case I’d already mailed him.

Cecil Simons: Well, do you want to know how the C-47s operated a drop? Do you want to know how that happened?

Daniel Jackson: That’d be outstanding actually, if I could know.

Cecil Simons: Because you seem to be interested in that. Well, this is what happened. You take off with a loaded C-47, usually overloaded, okay? You got it?

And you make sure everything is balanced and everything, so you don’t crack up. Set the engines out so you’re sure you lift when you take off it doesn’t kill you. When you take off, you go out—it’s usually about two and a half, two hours and 20 minutes, for each run. You follow me?

What they call contact runs. What I call take the ammunition off, you’re definitely trying to—when you’d get over the target area, they usually had a big target out there. And usually, the Japanese were on one side and the Chinese were on the other side, okay?

And we had to fly over both the Japanese and the Chinese in a real tight circle with our wings cocked up at a low level. We would flew over with our left wing down all the time and kicked all this ammunition and stuff off, okay?

That’s what we did. There was a lot of hollering and shouting and stuff like that going on, okay? Then we do that, until we make about two runs like that. Then we take off, fly real low, so the Japanese wouldn’t knock us off down there, all right?

What else do you want to know?

Daniel Jackson: How did they mark the drop zones? How did the Chinese mark the drop zones for airdrops?

Mrs. Simons: Mark the drop zones. How did they mark the drop zones?

Cecil Simons: I told you they had a big marker down there.

Daniel Jackson: Right, but how was it distinguished?

Cecil Simons: They would set up some kind of like a big white cross or something like that—some kind of a marker we could it so we could zero in onto it and fly so we could drop it right on there, you know? And then some of the stuff we dropped, like rice, we’d drop it right out of the bags directly to them, okay? And we got as low as we could. In fact, we got so low that some of the Chinese dummies would run out there and try to catch them, okay?

It would knock them down, all right.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I would imagine so.

Cecil Simons: We would get very low. And it was very hilly out there, pretty dangerous. I’d say about three or four runs like that, pilots would [inaudible] another mission.