Web edition edited by his son, Dave Tolle (DMT)
Donald James Tolle, during training at Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. April 1942.
Introduction
| My father, Donald James Tolle, served in the United States Army Air Force for three and a half years during World War II, from 1942 to 1945. During his service, he kept a small hand-written diary, and more than forty years later he typed it (on a manual typewriter!), added some related information, made copies, and handed them out to his fellow service members of the 47th Bombardment Group (Light) who had gathered in Long Beach, California, in May 1987 for their 7th reunion. The diary that he distributed at the 1987 reunion included a Preface; a description of his enlistment and basic training; the transcribed (lightly expurgated) original hand-written diary; and an Appendix with an “Itinerary” of his travels during the war and a variety of additional things that he had written during the war, including some poetry. He received a lot of positive feedback about the diary, and the next year, at the 8th reunion of the group (this time in Oklahoma City, in October 1988), he provided an Addendum, giving additional detail about some of his wartime experiences. As his eldest child and only son, I was fortunate to be able to attend several of the reunions of his outfit in the 1980s and 1990s and to meet a number of the guys he served with. They were an impressive bunch, and I greatly enjoyed spending time with them. They were in their 60s and 70s then. Now, decades later, few if any of them are among the living. Dad died in 1993 at age 75. Here you will find everything that Dad provided at the reunions, plus some supplemental material. I have rearranged some of the original material. The Appendix items from the 1987 Diary have now been integrated into the diary, next to the appropriate entries, and surrounded by a box (with a blank background) to distinguish them. Also, the 1988 Addendum items have been moved next to their related diary entries, inside a box with a blue background. My own occasional comments have been placed in a box like this one with a green background, signed with my initials, like this: —DMT. Within text that Dad wrote, I sometimes use square brackets [like these] to enclose more information. For instance, if he refers to someone as Dave, and I am sure who he means, I might add Dave’s last name in square brackets: [Frieze]. All of the material that he handed out at the reunions was typed on his manual typewriter. There were no photographs or maps or newspaper clippings or video. Dad came home from the war not only with his handwritten diary and associated writings, but also with a number of photographs taken by friends (as well as by his younger brother Ed (“Junior”) Tolle) in the Group Photo Section of his outfit. You will see some of these photos here, placed roughly chronologically. Some have unknown dates, so I have estimated where to place them. They are captioned using the captions Dad wrote on the backs, sometimes with fading memory long after the war. In many cases I have modified his captions a bit to provide first or last names or military ranks or other information. A few family photographs from the WWII era have been added, as well as some maps, newspaper clippings, Google street views, and photos and short video clips that I took—some of them at outfit reunions and some of them of Dad, at home in his later years, talking about incidents in the war. Friends and family know me as Dave Tolle, but my official name is Donald MacDavid Tolle, because I was named not only for Dad, but also for three of Dad’s best friends in the war: Don Beetem, Mac McLaughlin, and Dave Frieze, all of whom I had the honor and pleasure of meeting, and whom you will encounter throughout the diary. Enjoy! Summer 2024 Dave Tolle (Donald MacDavid Tolle) Sugar Land, Texas [email protected] —DMT |