SAXTONS RIVER — According to World War II veteran Jack Keil of Westminster, the extension cord was one of the most important pieces of equipment of the war.
As a bombardier, Keil relied on a heated suit plugged into that cord to keep him warm as he manned a Norden bomb sight at 10,000 feet.
A couple of other pieces of equipment also proved vital to Keil's years in the military: a fistful of colored pencils and a sketch pad.
A keenly observant man, Keil felt the need to document his experiences, but war protocol forbade the use of a camera, so he began sketching what he saw.
After 70 years, those drawings bring Keil's experiences vividly back to life and give an insider's view of what life was like in the daily grind of GI Joe.
Keil will share the drawings and some of his experiences in a program at Main Street Arts in Saxtons River Saturday, June 2, beginning at 8 p.m. Between sets of the Butterfly Swing Band playing 1940's dance music, he will use the sketches to relate a day in the life of a bombardier.
“I sketched all my life,” the retired advertising executive explained during a recent interview, “so it was just natural for me.”
His sketches catch scenes at the various stops along his military route, from Mitchell Field on Long Island to the Azores and north Africa and on to Gioia, Italy, where he captured children begging for food, the chow line, life in leaky tents and slogging through a muddy base.
At the base in southern Italy, Keil was roused each day at 5:45 a.m. for the day's briefing before taking off on a B-24, with the nervous excitement and uncertainty of the day's outcome. A typical mission lasted 10 hours and often drew enemy fire.
“We flew 50 missions to wipe out oil depots and communications centers in Austria, southern Germany, Yugoslavia and Romania,” he said. “When we came back to the base, we would send up flares if there were any wounded on board so the Red Cross ambulances could be waiting.”
How Keil wound up in that plane was a typical World War II story of a young man from Rochester, N.Y., who had never been west of Buffalo.
As a junior at the University of Rochester, he had joined the cadet corps, with the promise he would be allowed to finish his studies before he was called up. But then Pearl Harbor happened, and he was off to basic training in Atlantic City with 3,000 other men and, eventually, to the aviation cadet center at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, even though he had never flown before.
Towards the end of the war, Keil was told he would be assigned to do public relations, but in typical military fashion, he wound up being trained for the invasion of Japan. Fortunately, that didn't happen, so Keil was able to return to Rochester to complete his schooling on the G.I. Bill, and go on to a successful career in advertising in New York City.
Now retired in Vermont with his wife Barbara, he is eager to share the drawings he has saved all these years as well as a song or two from that long-ago time.
Further information about the Main Street Arts program is available at 802-869-2960 or www.mainstreetarts.org.