Raymond “Eboo” Bienvenu: Jason Theriot
(Eboo means swamp owl in French)

-Bienvenu was getting ready to graduate from high school at age 17 and decided to cut classes to go to Lafayette to sign up as a volunteer for pilot training in the Army Air Corps
-They decided to take Bienvenu but he was under age and unless his father signed a minor release he had to wait till he turned 18
-took the form and had Borden’s ice cream (near UL/SLI campus) before forging his father’s name on the form
-Once graduated Bienvenu was sent to Denver, Colorado for basic training; but there was already too many pilots for assignments
-They told him that if he wanted to fly he should try for bombardier or navigator; chose bombardier and went to Madison, Wisconsin
-Had a crash program on electrical, mathematics and astrology; became a navigator instead, a crude way without radar
-Got on a converted luxury ship in New York with 7,000 men, double loaded—half day above other half in beds
-No convoy or escort; headed up towards Iceland where they were hit by a big storm and German intelligence reported that their ship had sunk
-What really happened: they left New York on the “USS Washington” and while at sea some sailors repainted the name to “Mount Vernon” to confuse the Germans (which it did)
-Most of the British men were fighting in North Africa or the Pacific trying to save their Empire; no men but Americans in England

Troop Carrier Group (6:30)
-Bienvenu had joined as a replacement of a troop transport squadron, the 75th Squadron of the 313th Troop Carrier Group; hauled paratroopers and gliders
-When attacking, they never went far back into the enemy lines; always left in the dark
-Left England at night and at day break hit their targets and then tried to get to the English Channel; everything wide open
-All the good navigators were in the Pacific; if they lost an island then they’d run out of fuel and crash—had to find your own way there
-Bienvenu dealt with dead reckoning, triangulation and crude radar from the British
-Flew mostly C-47s and gliders; 3 missions on B-25s
-Had to wear sheepskin suits and a leather helmet

D-Day (11:17)
-On D-Day Bienvenu flew a diversion; dropped paratroopers that night before in Belgium to trick the Germans on where they were trying to land; most probably were captured or killed
-Dropped the 101st and the 82nd Airborne that night
-Never did get the results of the diversion

-Gliders were suicidal
-When the war ended the gliders were discontinued altogether
-Gliders were assembled in about a half-hour
-Cloth over aluminum tubing; fuselage had only 6 bolts

Rhine River (17:11)
-Really took a beating at the Rhine River near Wessell, Germany
-Germans were holding them off so they couldn’t cross the river
-Flew C-47s to the front, small enough to land in a pasture, and pick up the wounded and went back to England
-Germans would pick them off in counter attacks when they came in
-Poorly equipped in defending themselves; they (Bienvenu) were given very little to use to fight with

-They were at an old German airfield that they had bombed before
-Took cover in a shell hole and Bienvenu only had a .45 pistol; just best thing to do was stay quiet
-An older British soldier came up to them to help them; several incidents like that where they would get caught in the fighting and had to defend themselves

-Once flying over Wessell, they were hit and went into a bank and plowed into a potato field; had a busted nose but no deaths
-Troops found them and pulled them out and gave them rifles to defend themselves as they went back

German Airfields (21:40)
-Another time they left England was to go to an abandoned German airfield in France
-They were just going to take over this little field; it was rough
-They knew how far the Germans could fly before doubling back to the base to refuel; figured that the nearest base was too far for the Germans to come out to them
-So no one was watching and a FW 190 comes out and takes a few of their planes down
-They had no clue where that plane came from, figured there was a secret base somewhere but never did find it
-Later on they noticed that the Germans would use a JU 88 to haul a FW 190 and then cut it loose so it could fly father out but still have enough fuel to make the trip back to the base later

-What really beat the Germans were the Russians; all the best German fighters were on the Russian front
-Towards the end of the war, they began running into young soldiers that had just been drafted
-In the Pacific the Japanese were suicidal in their attacks which made it harder, at least these young Germans were cowards and did not want to die any more than they did

France and Speaking French (25:14)
-The French hated the Americans
-When the Germans took over they hardly killed anyone; Americans probably killed more French people than the Germans did
-Eisenhower told them to not come back with their bombs; had to unload them somewhere
-Flying over little towns, they’d just drop the bombs; “we killed a lot of Frenchmen”
-Spoke a little bit of French, just enough to get by

-In Mons near the Belgium border, wounded men and troops went by train back to Paris to recover or have time off
-Bienvenu went there a few times to fix antennas on the Eiffel Tower for navigational purposes; hated it as it would move with the wind the further up you went
-On one trip back it was cold and they had stopped at this one station and there was 3 Frenchmen and a potbelly stove in the station house
-The commanding officer asked if anyone could speak French so they could ask the Frenchmen in the troops could go in single file to warm themselves up for a bit;
-Bienvenu went in and asked and they told him no
-The officer sprayed the building with a Thomas machine gun and burned the train station to ground
-“Eisenhower said, “If you need something, then take it. If somebody gets in your way, then shoot’ um.” There might have been better moments, but from what I saw it was bad.”

Coming Home (33:40)
-Went over as a replacement for a squadron in North Africa
-They had orders if you could not make it back (to England or Africa) then land in Zurich, Switzerland
-The Swiss were neutral but they were pro-German until the end of the war when it became clear that the Allied forces were winning
-The Swiss at the end of the war said they’d take so many old combat troops as guests of the Swiss government; Bienvenu’s squadron had been there for a while and so they picked him
-They were put up in a fancy hotel and they could eat whatever they wanted for 6 weeks
-They were given the choices of touring the castles of Switzerland or go up into the mountains
-Bienvenu went to Omnimount to take up skiing lessons; could see 4 countries from the top

-After the 6 weeks Bienvenu had enough combat points and came home
-Got back to New York and sent on a troop train to Camp Shelby in Mississippi where he was discharged
-On the GI Bill he went to LSU and graduated in electrical engineering; got married
-First job was in upstate New York for 6 years; it was the pits
-Came back home but never did work in St. Martinville, always out of town
-Fought in the war for almost 4 years and toured 11 countries

Transcription:

Raymond “Eboo” Bienvenu (“Eboo” is a French name for a swamp owl)
St. Martinville, LA
Born: October 22, 1925
Navigator, ETO
75th Squadron/313th Troop Carrier Group

When I was seventeen-and-a-half getting ready to graduate from high school, I needed a way to get out of this part of the country. I had never been anywhere before. So about a month before graduation, I cut classes and went to Lafayette to volunteer for the pilot training with the Army Air Corps. I went down and took all the test: physicals, IQ’s and all of that. I remember being in a room where they had given us a bunch of numbers to add up. So I was concentrating on my numbers when somebody from in back of the room fired off a shotgun with a blank in it. Everybody else jumped; I kept on adding. It scared the hell out of me, but I kept concentrating on my numbers.

They decided to take me, but they said, “Well you’re only seventeen-and-a-half, so you have to wait until you turn 18, unless your father signs a minor release.” I said, “Well give me the form because my dad is working in Lafayette.” I remember going by the UL—SLI back then—campus and Borden’s had an ice cream place right near there. I knew that so I went by and got myself a banana split. I waited just a little while then I forged my daddy’s name and went back and said that my daddy had signed it.

As soon as I graduated, they took me. I was seventeen-and-a-half.

I got on a train in New Orleans and they sent me to Denver, Colorado for basic. We went through basic, but when they started getting towards our assignments, they told me that I had signed up to be a pilot, but they had more pilots than they knew what do with. They said if you want to fly you’d better try for navigator or bombardier. I thought, Bombardier? Well, what would you do with that after the war, assuming that you make it? So I decided to train for navigator (3:46). They sent me to Madison, Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin. They had a crash program on electrical, mathematics, and astrology. Anyway, I became a navigator. But it was crude; they didn’t have much radar in those days. It was a crude way of navigating, but you could get to where you were going.

I ended up getting on a ship in New York in the early part of ‘44. It was a converted luxury ship and there were seven thousand of us on it. We were doubled loaded—half the day you were on the deck, the other half you could to the bunks below. That was a mess. We took off without convoy escort and zigzagged across the north Atlantic toward Iceland. When we got off of Iceland there was big storm and the German intelligence reported that our ship had sunk with all the troops aboard. Anyway, we left New York City on the USS Washington. But while at sea, to fool the Germans to think that we had sunk, some sailors climbed over the side and painted the name out and they called the ship the Mount Vernon. So we left from New York on the Washington and landed in Liverpool, England on the Mount Vernon.

Most of the British were fighting in North Africa against Rommell or fighting in the Pacific trying to save the British Empire, so there were no men. We were it! They had so many of us in England we almost sank that damn island.

I went over as a replacement with a squadron that had been in North Africa. I was part of a troop transport squadron: the 75th Squadron of the 313th Troop Carrier Group. We hauled gliders and paratroops. That was something. We had C-47s that could land anywhere. Each one would pull two gliders. They’d send them in crates and we’d assemble them. The pilots who trained to fly those hardly had any experience at all. They’d carry seven men plus equipment in each glider. They had skids that landed on the ground then the nose would pop up and everybody would run out. Oh Lord man, to get off the ground, we couldn’t afford to get a jerk. We had to get them all in a line and some of us in the last plane would have to get out and push the gliders, like pushing a car to start it. That’s how crude it was. That was rough getting up there pulling two gliders fully loaded. Then again, they couldn’t swing so they insisted that we use brand new nylon rope, about an inch, and it would stretch. So the pilot of the glider could disconnect if something went wrong or the C-47 pilot could let them both go. Then they were on their own. It was rough. But once you got airborne, with one in back of the other, one a little longer than the other, so if they criss-crossed they wouldn’t hit each other.

When we’d hit a target we never went far back behind enemy lines, but enough to do the job. We hauled paratroopers and gliders. Paratroopers were okay; they’d bail out then they were on their own and we’d head back. We always left in the dark. We had a free ride into the target area, but at daybreak we caught hell and fought our way back to the English Channel to get back to England. We left at night and hit our target at daybreak. The planes weren’t pressurized and everything was just wide open.

All of the good navigators were in the Pacific where you had to find your way. If you lose an island, you gonna run out of fuel and crash in the sea. They needed somebody who could really navigate to those islands. Our navigation was with dead reckoning, triangulation, and crude radar from the British.

I flew three missions on B-25s and several on gliders. We used to have to wear sheepskin suites that fit over your shoes. We wore a leather helmet.

On D-Day we flew a diversion. The night before we dropped some paratroopers in Belgium to trick the Germans into thinking that we were landing further north. Those paratroopers probably got captured or shot or something. We dropped 82nd Airborne that night. The gliders were suicidal. The Germans had built these posts in the ground and we couldn’t see them from the air. Man, when the gliders hit, it was a blood bath. Many of them were whipped out.

The gliders would come in on crates. We’d assemble one in about a half-hour. They were nothing, really, just cloth cover and aluminum tubing. There were control cables or pulleys that were used to tow the gliders. When you pulled out the fuselage all they had were six bolts. It was crude.

We flew three planes abreast, low, each towing two glides, with seven men and equipment in each glider. They were peppering us with ground fire and we didn’t have anything to protect ourselves. There were bullet holes in the planes, and it look like a pencil hole. All of our planes took on small arms fire from the ground. Once in awhile they’d get lucky and hit somebody in the plane.

The Germans had good anti-aircraft. And once we got higher, the German airplanes, the Meshersmit 109, would attack us. That was a good one. It was comparable to our P-51 Mustang. They also had a stub-nosed plane, called the FW 190. That was a gun platform with a plane built around it. They used that for strafing; they could hit a truck and turn it over.

They were all mostly low level missions. Get in and get your ass out!

We really took a beating later on when we were caught at the Rhine River near Wessell, Germany. The Germans were holding off so we couldn’t cross the Rhine. We had a stand off and couldn’t get across for a while. There was a lot of artillery up there. See, in a C-47 we used to fly right up to the front, land, and pick up wounded to bring them back to England. We’d land and stay there for a while. You could land a C-47 in a pasture. That was a mule.

Often times we’d land on a captured German airfield and a few times these Germans counterattacked. This one time over Wessell we got hit flying over the area. We couldn’t bail out because we were too low. We just went into a bank and we landed back on our side and plowed up a potato field. I was holding on to my chair and hit a bulkhead in front of me behind the co-pilot and busted up my nose. We were all banged up and we were all right. Our soldiers pulled us out of the plane and we were given rifles. We defended ourselves as best we could. We got some help and our troops finally pushed the Germans back. But for a while it was touch-n-go, those Germans attacked and man they were tough.

We were a bunch of us together and those Germans were all over, bullets flying all over. We had bombed that place before. It was a German airfield, so these Germans knew where it was, because they had built it. Six of us jumped in a shell hole where we had dropped a bomb. All I had was .45-caliber pistol. I told them that the best thing to do was to keep quiet. All the Germans had to do was drop a grenade in that hole and we are all gone. So we heard some running and this ole timer, an old British soldier—he looked like hell—came running up to us. He looked around at us and said, “Hey Yank. You guys look scared.” We said, “You damn right we scared!” He said, “Not to worry lads. When it gets too rough for you, Mother England will take you back into the fold.” I thought that I’d remember that for the rest of my life. Those British soldiers were something else. They were some brave son of a guns.

There were three separate incidents like that, at least, were we caught in the fighting and had to defend ourselves. But our infantry came up and pushed the Germans back each time. One time there was a German pillbox, which was probably a field headquarters. The Germans had left, I guess, and when I went inside there was souverniers all over the place. There were flags and guns and all kind of stuff and I took a few. I lost them all before I came home.

One time we left England and were going to this deserted German airfield. We knew about how far their airplanes were from us and how far their planes could fly. So here comes this one FW 190 and it made a strafing run, knocking out a couple of our planes. There was this old Frenchman who had been picking up our garbage and he had an old
jackass. He used him to pull his cart around. Well when this FW 190 made a pass that jackass was on the ground kicking and our cooks went out and cut the back legs off. They made steaks out it. That was the toughest damn meat I ever had; like chewing on rubber.

But the whole damn thing is that we were worried about where in the hell that FW 190 came from. We didn’t know if there was a secret base or what, but they never found it. Later on we took over this one place and the Germans had a plane called a JU 88, a Junkers 88. It was a three-engine bomber: one on the nose and one on each side. They found one on the ground that had a FW190 strapped on top. The JU 88 would get airborne with a FW 190 strapped on it, fly to an area, then cut itself loose, and then the FW 190 had enough fuel to get back. They were pretty smart people.

What beat those Germans most were the Russians. They were all tied up on the Russian front. Germany’s best people were tied up on that front and the Russians ate their lunch. What we ran into when we got towards the end were young soldiers who had just been drafted. But we were all just children on both sides. They didn’t want to die anymore than we did.

It must have been a bitch in the Pacific with those Japanese suicidal attacks. If I’m in a war, I’d much rather face a coward than a religious fanatic.

The French hated our guts. When the Germans invaded France they went around the Maginot Line and France surrendered. I don’t think the Germans hardly killed any French people at all. But we did. We killed more Frenchmen than the Germans did. Eisenhower said don’t come back with your bombs. Bombs don’t discriminate. That got to me later on because I flew a few missions on a B-25 and I’d look down at the little towns, as we’d bomb them. We killed a lot of Frenchmen.

When the Germans took over France they sent a lot of the men off to labor camps and had all the women for themselves. Then, when we got there we had all the French women. By the time the war ended, I doubt that there was virgin in France over 13. That’s how bad it was.

Towards the end of the war, we were in this little village in France and there was like a town square where everybody would meet. Well there was a platform and these older women would bring up one of the younger girls who had been with a German. They would sit her down in a chair and in front of everybody they would shave her head bald, strip her down buck naked, make her walk out of town and tell her not to come back. That was a sight.

We were in a town called Mons, right on the Belgian border. They were sending troops on a troop train to Paris to rest and sending fresh troops back to the line. I had gone a couple of times for different reasons. I used to go up the Elfle Tower to fix antennas for navigation purposes. I hated climbing that tower because it would move in the wind. Anyhow, I got on this troop train headed to Paris with a rough bunch of soldiers. Man they had been through hell. Well we got side tracked. So we stopped at this train station. It was cold as hell; I’ll remember that. We went inside this train station and there was a big potbelly stove with three Frenchmen manning the train station. That stove was red hot, but it was cold, cold. This major with his Thompson machine gun asked if any of us spoke French. I said that I did and he told me to go in there and ask the Frenchmen if his men could come in there, single file, and warm their hands up on that stove. So I went in and they said “no.” I went back and told that major, “They said no.” He said, “What?” I said, “They said ‘no.’” He sprayed the building with his machine gun and boy those Frenchmen took off running. He turned to his troops and said, “Burn it!” We set the building on fire, burned it to the ground, and the Frenchmen were screaming at us. Those boys weren’t take shit from nobody. They had had enough.

Eisenhower said, “If you need something, then take it. If somebody gets in your way, then shoot’ um.” There might have been better moments, but from what I saw it was bad.

We had orders that if our plane was shot up and couldn’t make it back we should land in Zurich, Switzerland. The Swiss were pro-German. The Germans had been putting all their money and gold in the Swiss banks. But towards the end they switched sides because they knew that we were going to win the war. At the end of the war, the Swiss said that they would take so many old combat troops as guest of the Swiss government. My squadron had been there a along time so they picked us.

We went to the big fancy hotel in Zurich where the kings and queens used to go. They said we could order anything that we wanted to eat. The menu was in German. I recognized one thing: beef steak bijarskie. I thought, That couldn’t be bad. It was stewed meatballs. Everybody was getting good steaks and I had stewed meatballs.

Anyhow, I went up to Omnimount to take up skiing lessons. Can you image that, a boy from Louisiana? We went to the top of this mountain where there was a restaurant and you could see four countries with the naked eye. We skied back down. That was something. The thing that got me the most was after living in tents and what not we slept in goose-down mattresses and blankets. Damn that was nice. Comfortable and warm. I never slept so good in all my life in that little town. That was six weeks.

I got back to New York. And when we landed we went to this big mess hall where they gave us a little coupon where we could get fresh milk, fresh eggs, and steaks, anything you wanted. I took a troop train to Camp Shelby to be discharged. I went to LSU on the GI Bill and graduated in electrical engineering and married a coonass from back home.