Gayle flew with the 493rd Bomb Group, based at Debach in Suffolk. A native of Kentucky, he flew both B-24 and B-17 bombers in combat. He and his crew named their B-24 ‘Kentucky Kloudhopper’. On his 19th mission, a raid against Merseberg, his B-17 was hit. ‘The whole plane disintegrated. The next thing I knew, I was falling head-first at 28,000 feet.’ Gayle was one of seven survivors. ‘The ‘mickey’ [radar] operator was killed in the explosion, the engineer got caught on a door handle going out of the back, one got stabbed to death with a pitchfork when he landed, and the Colonel didn’t get out of the airplane either. Four of them out of 11 died that day.’ He spent several months as a Prisoner of War. He nearly starved, and was forced to march many miles between camps. ‘It’s burned into my memory, I’ll never forget it,” he said.



Gayle was posted to the 493rd Bomb Group at Debach, Suffolk, where he flew B-24s and B-17s. On his 19th mission, his aircraft was shot down. He was wounded and became a Prisoner of War in Stalag Luft III. In January 1945, his camp was evacuated and he was forced to march hundreds of miles to Moosburg, Bavaria. ‘I weighed 113 lb when I got home,’ he remembered. ‘I was just pretty much skin and bone.’ After the war, he became a successful horse doctor in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky.



Gayle (as he preferred to be known) Alexander had a somewhat traumatic childhood being bitten by a dog at the age of four necessitating a course of anti-rabies shots - the first of several in his lifetime. His father, a pharmacist, had died of TB at much the same time and the family then moved to Lexington, Kentucky. Gayle was at the University of Kentucky and out on a date who told him that Pearl Harbour had been attacked, 'where the hell is Pearl Harbour?'



His older brother was already in the Air Corps and Gayle - unusually - was already in possession of a Private Pilot's Licence which he had acquired aged fifteen when he would rent a Piper Cub for three dollars an hour, the three dollars being donated by his grandmother. Having then been at college for two years and in possession of the right grades he did not have to take any further tests and accordingly enlisted as an Air Cadet on December 18th 1941. Pilot training was long and intensive and during one flight he got lost in a heavy storm and, low on gas, he landed in a field where he stayed overnight. He fully expected to be 'washed out' but got off with a reprimand.



Alexander got his wings on October 9th 1942 and the very next day was himself - a 21- year old 2nd Lieutenant - appointed as an instructor. One group of his students were graduates of West Point and of equal rank so it was something of an anomaly that they stood to attention when he entered the room...He was then posted to Tennessee to instruct on the B-24, a plane he had never himself flown. Eager to transfer to fighters he tried to pull strings with a Colonel at the base who it seemed had dated his grandmother in her youth. It didn't work but he did get out of instructing and was sent to Salt Lake City to pick up his bomber crew. Unfortunately there was a severe 'flu epidemic raging at the time 'we lost two boys the first night' and they were moved overnight to Tucson where his brother was director of flying. A happy coincidence and he was able to stay with his family for a month where, once again, his hopes for a move to fighters were thwarted at the last minute. He was literally at the station waiting for a train to take him to San Bernardino and a fighter group when orders arrived cancelling the posting. Instead he was assigned Flight Leader with the 493rd Bomber Group destined for overseas.



They flew to England in their B-24 Liberators via Goose Bay and Iceland in terrible weather eventually landing at Debach airfield in Norfolk on 4th May 1944. Their first mission was on D-Day itself when they made two trips back-to-back. It was on 1st November and the crew's 19th mission - Alexander leading the 34th BG, twelve hundred bombers and 500 fighters for top cover - that they were shot down. Four members of the crew did not survive; Alexander, shot in the leg, recalls passing out as he parachuted down into a field to be greeted by a group of farmers with shotguns. He is convinced that the arrival of an army truck with two soldiers saved his life. They stripped him of his flying suit and watch - but gave him back his toothbrush - and he was then marched for hours in stockinged feet and freezing weather until arriving at a train station.



He arrived with his escort at a small town following a harrowing train journey and was immediately put into solitary confinement -standard practice - for probably a week. He was then with five other airmen 'right out of my crew' sent on to another town for a further spell of solitary before being questioned. His interrogator, a major, offered him a drink and a cigarette both of which he declined and then recited Alexander's service record in full, even to details of his final raid. He was then given new clothes and sent on a further traumatic train journey, fortunately this time with his own co-pilot and navigator - no food or water for three days - to Stalag Luft III at Zagan.



Alexander does not say how long he was at the camp but it must have been only a few weeks because in January 1945 as the Russians advanced into Germany they were all marched out on a 550 mile trek westward having been given just thirty minutes notice. No food, no shelter and one morning when roused by the guards at 5 am two men - of the dozen or so who had been sheltering under a tree - were discovered to be frozen to death. They stayed in Nurnberg for a week en route getting some satisfaction from watching RAF Mosquitos coming in low and bombing at night. The march resumed and they crossed the Danube 'nothing beautiful about it, a little dirty old river with a 1000lb bomb sitting on the bridge'. Many men died on that march, falling asleep by the roadside and never waking up, Alexander got separated from his crew when he overslept and never caught them up.



Eventually they arrived at a town Mooseburg somewhere north of Munich and were thrilled by the sight of American tanks 'rolling right over that barbed wire...we were free and that was the end of it'. They ate white bread, bathed in hot water and even slept in a feather bed for the first time in months before being shipped out in trucks and flown to Le Havre in DC3s. At Le Havre, Gayle recalls two of the ex-POWs died while eating doughnuts; their digestive systems unable to cope with such riches. There they boarded a hospital ship which stopped at Dover to pick up an alarming number of men in strait jackets; the casualties of war. As a captain he was assigned a stateroom and 'lived the life of Riley' in spite of being severely seasick at times and vowing never to set foot on a boat again!



Back home he decided not to stay on in the Service after a total ninety days R &R leave, needing a different challenge. So he went back to college and, having always wanted to be a veterinary surgeon applied to Ohio State for further training funded by the government. He graduated in 1949, having married in his senior year, but gave up his practice when aged 55 and turned to farming.