Luther D. Layne WWII

 I had a discussion with my younger brother Boyd about my father Luther D. Laynes military service and the death of President Roosevelt was brought up. With his help I can recall part of the story dad told. He was stationed at Laughlin Field, Del Rio, Texas when the president died. He told of standing in rank for several hours waiting on some dignitary to show up for a speech that lasted only a few minutes. Dad had two kinds of war stories, those told in the presents of women and children and the good ones.

This got me to wondering about another story he used to tell. His next assignment was at Hammer Field, Fresno, California and all airmen of able body were recruited to fight forest fires in the near by Sierra National Forest. I was watching a program on The History Channel about World War Two and the Japanese launching balloons with incendiary devices and bombs into the jet stream, aimed at the west coast of the USA These devices were intended to cause panic in the population and destruction to the forest in a large enough scale to use up man power. Could this have been the fires they were fighting? Maybe he had a more direct role in the war than he thought.

 Dad was 33 years old when the war started, so he was not front line material. Laughlin Field, Del Rio, Texas was the site of the famous pilots school and his job was Sergeant in charge of 40 to 50 civilian workers who kept the personal equipment, uniforms, shoes ect., of the fly boys repaired
and in military order. The civilians were all women, so the story goes.