Memories of a World War II Air Corpsman

After a light, but satisfying, lunch of tuna salad on wheat toast (no mayonnaise; mustard on the side; water with lemon, please) at Oak Hammock, William Glenn Ebersole slipped 66 years back into time. His eyes lit up.

He became a just-18-year-old freshman at the University of Florida, a country boy from Arcadia who had graduated from DeSoto High School in 1942 and was entering the vast world of academia in Gainesville.

He wanted a profession that kept him outdoors. A slim but strapping 125 pounds, he had earned high school letters in football, baseball and softball. He describes himself as being “fair at a lot of things, but not excellent in any. I spent a great deal of time camping, hunting, fishing.” He was an Eagle Scout.

So with this outdoor yen, and an affinity for math and science, he was aiming for a degree in civil engineering.

But this was fall of 1942. The United States had gotten involved in World War II, a 20-year unresolved festering of World War I.

According to one timeline of That Second War, German troops were in Stalingrad; aircraft deployed from a submarine off the coast of Oregon flew over forests inland to drop incendiary bombs (These were the only bombing raids made on the United States).

Brazil, of all places, declared war on Axis powers Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; Russian bombers raided on Berlin and other German cities (something that was repeated many times).

The U.S. Armed Forces were everywhere around the globe — some places more conspicuously than others.

For many (or most), Iwo Jima was an island somewhere south of Imperial Japan. But this became a pivotal piece of real estate in the Pacific Theater.

So here was Bill Ebersole, freshly installed in his dormitory. As many young men of that period, he wanted to serve his country but still save his hide.

“With the possibility of being drafted into service with the U.S. direct involvement about nine months old,” he and four dorm comrades went to downtown Gainesville and signed up for the U.S. Air Corps Reserve. It did not, at that time, seem that risky.

He had hoped to get in at least two years of college and by then, “the war probably would be over,” he said.

An official letter sent to his parents’ home in Arcadia a few months later changed all that. In February 1943, he reported for basic training/active duty in Miami Beach. In current geography, this was an unlikely spot. Ebersole remembers staying at the Blackstone Hotel (with a number of other UF compatriots), marching down Collins Avenue singing Air Corps songs at the top of his lungs, and doing close-order drills at a nearby golf course.

After a shift to Nashville, Tenn., and eventually Clemson University in South Carolina, he embarked on a military career of flying airplanes.

Not just any airplanes. These were rough, tough fighters that could outmaneuver and outgun most anything else in the sky.

His indoctrination into flying while at Clemson was aborted; this actually became a positive thing. Initially, the trainees were to receive about three months of college training and some elementary flight instruction in training planes for one month. After a month there, he was advanced and missed the flight-training portion.

Through some string-pulling by a friend of his father’s, he was shipped to a flight school near his hometown. Flying a 200-horsepower Stearman PT-17 used in training “was especially easy for me for several reasons,” he said. “I couldn’t have possibly gotten lost because I was flying over the same country where I had been hunting and fishing all my life. And the trainers the other cadets used [at Clemson] were totally different planes, and I would have had to unlearn those lessons.”

He was a quick study. His first ride in a PT-17 was Oct. 5, 1943; 8 1⁄2 hours of instruction later, on Oct. 19, he took his first solo flight.

After 30 more hours of flight time, he successfully passed the more advanced 40-hour check and moved into acrobatics, a stage normally reserved for pilots with 50 or more flight hours. He then progressed to the 450-hoursepower BT-13, then — in succession — to larger, more agile and powerful planes, eventually ending up with the P-51 after 523 hours of training.

Ebersole graduated from flying school in April of 1944 as a second lieutenant single-engine fighter pilot. He became first lieutenant August of 1945.

His expertise at maneuvering and acrobatics came in handy when his squadron was assigned to Iwo Jima. Over the course of several months, while airstrips were being built, he participated in several escort missions and finally some combat missions. Some of his airborne missions were quite lengthy and demanded a bit of dive-bombing and avoiding being hit from the enemy in the air and on the ground.

Some of his flights were tests of endurance.

“My first long-range mission to Japan was a 7-hour, 45-minute escort mission accompanying B-29s on a bombing run to Osala,” Ebersole said. “I made another dive-bombing raid on Chichi Jima four days later, and had to abort a mission to Osaka after five hours in the air.”

Other long-range flights were seven and eight hours long.

Some of his targets were airfields, ships — one a 100-foot-long freighter — and trains.

Ebersole’s final mission came on Aug. 5, 1945, the day before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. His last flight on a P-51 was Dec. 4, 1945, when he led four planes from Guam to a field in Saipan. From there they boarded a ship to head back to the states.

His return over the Christmas/New Year’s holidays in California was marked not by rabble-rousing.

“When we landed, several of us headed into town as soon as we could get away and each bought — and drank — a quart of fresh milk, a commodity we hadn’t had in almost a year,” he said.

His military years earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross; an Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters; and Distinguished Unit and Asiatic and American Campaign citations.

He enrolled back at the University of Florida the following February. There he met his future (and current) wife Wanda, one of just a handful of coeds on campus.

“There was a lot of competition for the girls,” he recalled.

The couple has been married for 58 years.

In July of 1949, Ebersole earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, followed by his Master’s degree. In 1957 he went to work for the Gainesville Sun, becoming general manager in 1966, a position he held until 1971.

“I became publisher in ‘71 when the New York Times bought it,” he said.

Ebersole retired in 1985, but began a second career in real estate in 1986, a career that lasted until 2005.

“It was totally different, and I had to learn different things,” Ebersole said of his real estate days.

He also had a two-year stint as adjunct professor of journalism at UF.

After living in huge homes in Florida Park and the Hermitage — both with pools where he routinely swam 40-50 laps a day — the Ebersoles downsized and are enjoying the ambiance and amenities of Oak Hammock. Bill Ebersole now plays golf every day and is able to visit Wanda, who has Alzheimer’s, for four hours every evening in her quarters in the assisted living portion of the complex. Their two-bedroom apartment is also home to a huge fluffy cat and a diminutive — yet equally fluffy — dog.

“I like it here. I can cook for myself if I want to, or go to the dining room,” Ebersole said. “There’s plenty of room to walk.” §

Marina Blomberg is a freelance writer who has lived and gardened in Gainesville since 1972. She may be contacted through the editor: editor@towerpublications.com