Somewhere in Italy

My father Lt. Ernest Anders Erickson wrote a lot of letters while he was in the Air Corps. And I mean a lot! I was surprised when I came across them all together in a box. I had seen some, yet many were new to me.

Attached below the August 10th, 1944 letter are two images. The letters he wrote while in the Air Corps to his folks are stacked accordingly. The other image I call, "The Box of Letters." There contains the full collection of letters and postcards Ernest had kept over the years. Many he received from his mother, Clara Amelia (Nelson) Erickson the late 1990s. The letters and cards go back to the late 1800s in Sweden and then cover a lot of ground and time and many family members.

Ernest's Air Corps days were between early 1942 and the fall of 1945. He had first left Bismarck by train for basic training in Texas and returned after the war in September of 1945.

Ernest wrote close to 250 letters and 30 postcards just to his folks and sister Dian during those three and half years. I know he wrote many more to his grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends. Letter writing was an art form back then and I am grateful he collected so many from his folks and others. So much of the family legacy is held in these old envelopes.

This letter of August 10th 1944, as he writes atop the stationary, "Somewhere in Italy", was written to his folks and 4 year old sister Dian (Dinny). Somewhere in Italy turns out to be Foggia Airfield.

Ernest had just completed his 33rd mission. It was part of a 5 mission shuttle run that had taken him and the crew from England over Central Europe with missions in Poland and Romania, with 3 landings at Poltava Airfield in the Ukraine and Foggia Airfield in Italy.

The 33rd mission was on August 8th, 1944, where my father piloted a B-17, the "Lili of the Lamplight" (44-6085) of the 95th Bomb Group and with the 334th Squadron on the 4th of the 5 shuttle missions scheduled. 78 B-17s with 55 P-51s escort fighters had left Poltava Airfield in the Ukraine and bombed airfields in Romania. 38 hit Buzau and 35 hit Zlistea and following completion of the mission the squadrons flew onto Italy.

Ernest and the crew spent the time in and around Foggia unwinding from the long week of flying. Soon enough he and some of the crew commandeered a jeep. They visited the Mediterranean cities of Salerno & Naples and my father had a chance to photograph the allied ships which were moored in the harbor and scattered throughout the waterways.

In Foggia, a crew member captured what I have always thought were classic photos of my father standing in front of various abandoned Luftwaffe bombers. The photos were taken not long after the Allies had taken over the airfield. Abandoned equipment and airplanes were strewn across the countryside. The images in these photographs seem surreal. I look at them and imagine the chaotic retreat of the once highly disciplined and invincible German military.