Eddie Picardo doesn’t dwell on sad stories. He’ll tell you he swapped his ration of cigarettes for candy. He’ll say he flirted with the British girls. He’ll even reveal he suffered a “frozen butt,” the result of 11 hours spent in the gun turret of a B-24 bomber.
He won’t say much about war’s horror. But listen. You’ll hear about that, too.
“Guys would be playing a poker game. The next week, we’d go to play poker again, and a couple of guys wouldn’t be there anymore. Their shoes and possessions would be stacked on their bunks. They’d be gone,” he said.
Stationed in Shipton, England, during World War II, Picardo was a tail gunner on a B-24 Liberator. He flew 33 missions, some deep into Germany, as part of a crew sent to blow up oil refineries.
The sting of loss remains nearly 60 years after his last mission. Sitting in the south Everett retirement center that’s now home, Picardo, 82, sorted through recollections of war and of life in Seattle, where he ran a produce delivery business for 50 years.
“Certain things were very sad,” he said quietly. “Me, I always like to think of the funny things.”
That range of experience – from the terror of flying through a hail of German antiaircraft fire to his Italian family’s homestead in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle – is simply told in “Tales of a Tail Gunner,” a book Picardo wrote and had published in 1996.
On www.amazon.com, a reviewer identified only as “a reader” wrote, “I felt like I was listening to somebody’s dad do a good job of telling about their experiences in the big war.”
Time spent with Picardo is just that, a wonderful conversation with a World War II veteran whose stories should not be forgotten.
Over and over, he spoke of “Spence,” or Edgar Spencer, the pilot in his crew. “He was the greatest,” said Picardo, making a thumbs-up gesture with both hands.
For half a century, Picardo lost track of the man he credited with repeatedly saving all the lives aboard the B-24 Spencer had dubbed “St. Christopher.”
After all those cigarette-for-candy trades, Picardo feared the pilot had died from smoking. When he finally used the Internet to locate Spencer’s number in San Diego, the pilot’s wife answered the phone.
“I said, ‘I’m Eddie Picardo from Seattle.’ And she said, ‘Oh, you’re the tail gunner,’ ” said Picardo, who happily learned his pilot friend hadn’t had a smoke in 30 years.
Memories of that war necessarily led to thoughts of Americans in Iraq today.
“I definitely support my country,” Picardo said. “When Saddam went into Kuwait, and we went into Iraq in ‘91, we went in as liberators. I was furious when we didn’t go to take Baghdad then and kick him out. Now, it’s like we’re aggressors. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and we’ve got a credibility problem.
“During World War II, there was complete unity. We knew where the enemy was. These terrorists, there’s no way to know where they are. We’ve got a heck of a job.
“I feel sorry for those guys over there,” Picardo said. “Their life is on the line.”
Sixty years from now? Tales to tell.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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