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Staff Sgt. Glenn Powell scrawled those words into a little green journal that would have slid easily into his pocket. He filled the book in 1943 with daily thoughts on service in the Army Air Corps in World War II, the succinct passages detailing his time abroad.
Powell died in 1996, but his family saved the journal, as well as letters sent to him overseas and other war mementos. Sixty-five years later, the passages show his daughter, Robyn Moore of Lewiston, Minn., glimpses of her dad she never saw before.
April 5, 1943 “One hell of a birthday. Bombed El Djem worst mission ever had.”
Powell was born 26 years earlier, the youngest child in a farm family in Elk River, Minn. His farm commitments kept him from enlisting initially, Moore said, but eventually he went off to war. He joined the 12th Bomb Group, 81st Bomb Squadron for an air campaign in the Mediterranean and served as a rear gunner in a B-25 airplane.
January 2, 1943 “Dropped bombs. Started home. Ran out of gas 50 miles from shore. Perfect crash landing. Spent 3 long hours in life boats.”
Moore knew this story, and about the crew’s subsequent rescue, before reading the journal, but she can recall few other war tales her dad mentioned. She knows her father earned a Purple Heart after bomb shrapnel injured his foot, but the where and when of the injury escapes her.
Powell took great pride in his service, even if it was rarely a conversation topic, Moore said. Her parents faithfully traveled to Army Air Corps reunions every four years so her father could visit with the men he served beside.
A small man her dad stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 140 pounds Powell did not brag about his exploits.
“He was the kind of guy who never really talked unless he had something to say,” she said.
March 25, 1943 “Put in a tough mission today. Hit the same old airfield near Gabes. Most ack-ack I have ever seen”
Powell bought the journal in Alexandria, Egypt, on Dec. 19, 1942. Each simple entry is writen in a sprawling cursive handwriting that takes time to decipher, but the words tell Moore another story of her father - like this heated bombing mission over Tunisia. “Ack-ack” is slang for anti-aircraft fire.
Other passages describe Powell’s boredom when a string of poor weather prevented the crews from flying for days, his frustration at the “poor chow” and his conversations with crewmates when they discuss how to get “Jerry (German troops) cleaned out of Africa.”
The journal also reveals parts of her dad’s personality Moore did not always see.
“I think he’s funny in some of these,” she said.
A few of the entries reveal a more turbulent side.
April 28, 1943 “Sad day for the 12th. Two missions first one couldn’t get to target because of weather and on the second bombed on wrong side of lines. Sure hope there was nobody down there. Everybody feels pretty damned sick tonight. Chalk up a black mark for us today.”
That mission is never referenced again in the journal, and Powell made no special mention of it in another notebook he kept. That red leather book, pages yellowed with age, provides mission details in big block print handwriting such as the name and rank of each man on the plane, flight time and ordinance dropped.
Other artifacts give Moore glimpses of her father as well. He saved letters sent to him by his parents and by Helen, his future wife, three years before they were married. In a worn leather billfold, he also kept a dollar bill signed by about 20 men, some with nicknames like “Wildcat,” on July 26, 1942, in Acraa, Africa. Moore guesses that completion of a special mission prompted the signing.
She keeps coming back to the journal, though - and her father’s words. The short recaps of each day and concise descriptions teach her about the man she called Dad.
“There are just so many little things you never knew,” she said.
Several passages detail how Powell hoped to “maybe get a chance to see the states again” and his disappointment when news from the front made that seem unlikely.
The tone changed when his unit finally was notified they could return. The top of that journal page is marked with stars.
Powell documents the many stops they make along the way - Cairo, Egypt; Khartoum, Sudan; Natal, Brazil; Albany, Georgia - before writing one final brief entry.
June 15, 1943 “Home.”
