CLAYTON P. SCOTT

(In 1997 Clayton dictated the events of his life, particularly his military career, in order that his children and grandchildren could have that record. It is condensed as follows :)

I was born May 26, 1920, on a farm near Garden Grove, Iowa, the fourth in a family of six children, born to Pearl A. and Margaret Baker Scott. We came from good German stock on both sides of the family. My great-grandfather, Peter Schott, was born in 1821 in Bavaria, Germany. In 1837, when he was teen-aged, he immigrated to America with his parents and brother.

The family name was changed when my grandfather was in military service during the Civil War. The ''h" was dropped and all his records were under the name of Scott. We don't know if he purposely changed it or the Army clerks simply misspelled it. It is a known fact that sometimes clerks misspelled names. This also occasionally happened in keeping county records. A cousin, Doyle Snyder, found while doing research for the Scott history that in some cases a "t" had been dropped and there were family records kept under the name "Scot."

My parents homesteaded in Montana. Dad had been there five years before his marriage to Mom in 1913. They lived in Blaine County, Montana, the county seat of which was Harlem. Their 320 acre farm was close to an Indian reservation, only 12 miles from the Canadian border. Three of my siblings were born there: Mary lone born December 2, 1914, Kenneth Baker born January 10, 1916, and Harriet Pauline born December 6 of that same year.

In 1919 our parents prepared to move back to Garden Grove, Iowa, where my great­grandparents had lived and where my dad was born. They sold the farm and all the equipment. Kenneth remembers that they did not get full payment for what they sold. At one time Dad went to see Billy McCall, an attorney in Garden Grove, who advised him that it would cost more than it was worth to go after it. I remember his saying that he left more in Montana than he ever had owned in Iowa.

The trip to Iowa took eleven days, traveling in their 1916 Model-T Ford. Each night they camped. Mom would fix their supper, fix breakfast the next morning, and pack a lunch for the day. No road maps were available. I have a "Road Log" that they used, denoting the distance and direction to travel between ranches, hills, and forks in the road.

In those days Garden Grove was a thriving community. There were a lot of beautiful old homes, including the Lady Amber Inn, a local hotel named after a race horse that belonged to Squire Steams. Squire Steams lived in what we thought was a mansion. It had a circular drive and a roofed area near the front door, where drivers could drop off their passengers. There was also a carriage house out back. It had room for four or five horses plus one or two carriages. In recent years, different owners have tried to restore the property but the project becomes too expensive and they have had to give it up.

Today, Garden Grove, like many other small communities, has deteriorated. The family farm can no longer provide for a family to be self-sustaining and younger people have moved from the area. This situation has impacted businesses. .With the improvement of cars and roads, the mind-set of people has changed. The "bigger is better" concept has set in. They are going to larger communities to do their buying, and small town merchants have been forced out of business. It is tragic to drive through these towns that once were thriving and see store fronts boarded up. Some buildings have been bull-dozed, which is better than leaving them standing. Houses and other buildings are also run-down. While the "good old days" were not all good, some that was good has been sacrificed to "progress."

My parents had bought an 80-acre farm near Garden Grove. The house had no running water, inside toilet, or central heating. We had a wood and coal burning stove. I was born there, as well as my two sisters, Dorothy and Doris, who were born on September 29, 1924. In those days, babies were born at home, delivered by a mid-wife. The morning after the twins were born, I walked up to the crib and said, "My name is Clayton. "What is yours?"

That old school burned about 1930. Dad and the board visited the new school at Murray and probably hired the same architect. In the new school we had modem rest rooms, a gymnasium, and junior high and high school assembly rooms.

Family was very important in those days. My mother had one sister and three brothers. There were 18 of us who were first cousins. We would drive to LeRoy every Thanksgiving and Christmas to Grandpa Baker's house. In the Bert Wells family was Mom's sister, Aunt Hattie. When I was nine years old, I rode the pony, Prince, about five or six miles to Aunt Hattie's. One year at threshing time I stayed with them for three weeks and got lots of jobs riding my pony to carry water to the crew. I was paid 25¢ a day. I continued to do that during the threshing season every summer, even after they moved to Corydon, about 25 miles away. By this time I was charging 50¢ a day.

Dad's work for the county was dragging roads. All roads in and out of Garden Grove were dirt. He would hitch four head of horses on a small road grader. For this he was paid 80¢ an hour. When he used a team of two horses for some smaller job, he was paid 50¢ an hour. In the wintertime, they would hire others to help scoop snow to open the roads. For this he was paid 25¢ an hour. One Thursday it rained. He had left his horses at Crown, a whistle stop between Garden Grove and Leon. He took me on my first train ride on Friday morning when we went after the horses to bring them home so the farmer, Charley Morgan's grandfather, wouldn't have to board them for the weekend.

As I became a little older, Kenneth and I pulled some ornery tricks.  For instance, we would put a shiny pair of pliers, with a string attached, on the road near our house, then hide in a culvert. Somebody in a Model T would see the shiny pliers as they went by and come back to pick them up. In the meantime, we would have pulled the pliers into the tube of the culvert. We did this one day after I'd had a bath and shampoo. You can imagine what my mother said when I came back with a head full of dirt.

Kenneth and I smoked our share of com silks in those days, too. Another thing we did was to drive the Model T to the cattle tank to wash it. We'd have to back up the hill because gravity fed the gas into the tank. We couldn't drive up the hill forward because the tank was lower than the engine and wouldn't feed.

I remember the first "talkie" movie was "Coconuts" with the four Marx brothers. It was in Leon. The talkies were much better than the silent films of that era.

Our family was raised in the Garden Grove Methodist Church. In fact, I won a Bible for one or two years of perfect attendance. Later, after Rose and I were married, I joined the Episcopalian Church.

In 1934, when I was 13, my parents lost their Garden Grove farm. Even with the county job, Dad could no longer make payments on the principle or the interest. He said that he paid three times too much for it in 1919. We moved to a larger farm on the Missouri state line, west of Pleasanton. It was an 880 acre livestock and grain farm situated half in Missouri, half in Iowa. It was owned by Dr. Jeffries of Chicago, formerly of Davis City. His father, Isaac Jeffries, owned the adjoining farm, which was about the same size.

The farm was completely equipped with livestock and all the necessary machinery, including an old Farmall tractor. Dad went in on 50/50 shares, paying the rent from his share of the income from the farm. Dr. Jeffries furnished the land and improvements, our family provided the labor. Livestock and equipment were jointly owned. The land was over ten times what we had been accustomed to farming.

I learned to drive the tractor in Missouri, the very first summer after I turned 14. Dad bought a new 10-foot binder run by the power-take-off. This was quite a new adaption of power machinery. The former horse-pulled binders were powered by a bull-wheel. In other words, the bull-wheel furnished the extra power that later was furnished by the power-take-off.

Dr. Jeffries and Dad modernized the house the first summer we lived there. Homer McLain and his father did most of the remodeling-they called themselves "The Slam Bang Construction Company." They installed a water system that started at a spring about 1/2-mile away on the Grand River bottom. The water was pumped up by a windmill and piped to the house storage tank.  From the storage tank we could operate a hand-powered pump to force it into a pressure tank for running water in the bathroom and kitchen. We still did not have electricity, hence it required wind and hand power to operate the pumps. That summer we bought our first radio, a battery operated Zenith. The battery charged up by a wind charger.

I was in eighth grade a second time. Dad was still on the school board and had them hold me back a year since I had been sickly and too small for my age, but I received my diploma in February. The next fall I went to high school in Pleasanton. We had to pay tuition because our house was in Missouri. It was a small school with only 10-12 students in each class, mostly girls. In the rural areas, boys dropped out of school to help on their parents' farms.

There were only three people on staff - a superintendent, principal, and one teacher, and all of them taught classes. There were no elective courses, and in order to include the necessary curriculum, the freshmen and sophomores took the same classes for the first two years. The juniors and seniors would also take their classes together.

Country kids had to provide their own transportation. Some of the girls roomed in town to be close to the school. I rode my pony, Prince. Many times Prince would break loose, go home about 30 minutes before school was out. I walked the 2 1/2 miles home about half the time.

When I started as a junior in high school, I was still very small. I weighed less than 100 pounds, but that year I grew and gained weight. Mom always attributed that to the exercise of skating to school. One winter we had an ice storm that stayed on for at least 30 days, so for that month, I skated the 2 1/2 miles every day.

I played basketball the three years at Pleasanton and won a letter during my junior year. We had no gymnasium. Our basketball court was the outdoor tennis court, so in the winter we practiced in the lumberyard alleyway. We only had eight or ten fellows that played basketball. I remember one of the tournaments in Leon when all the members of the regular team fouled out and four substitutes got to play. I was one of those. I was always a substitute.

During our junior year, our class and others had a trip to Fort Madison to visit the prison. We rode in an open livestock truck. We visited their dining room and had lunch with them. I recall that the prisoners all had metal trays, and the silverware was such that they wouldn't be able to injure anyone with it. From the hallways, we visited some of the cellblocks. Prison life looked to be quite tough.

Because the Cainsville, Missouri school had started running a bus all the way to our house, I transferred to that school for my senior year. The bus was simply a small 2 1/2 ton straight truck on which they had built and covered a box, then added bench seats on both sides. It was rough riding over those dirt roads.

I finally became a cadet earning $75 a month when I reported to the Air Corps Classification Center in Nashville, Tennessee on August 19, 1942. I learned the seriousness of rules when I failed to wear my uniform cap outside the barracks. I had my first - and only ­ demerit and had to walk a two-hour "tour" carrying a parachute on my back.

About a month after the exams at that center were finished, I was told that I qualified to be a bombardier instead of a pilot. I was eager to do this, and on September 17, 1942, I was transferred to bombardier pre-flight school in Ellington Field, just outside of Houston, Texas. The training was very hard - some equated it to a college education that we received in three months. We studied lots of math and calculus, weather, map reading and other subjects pertaining to flying. We also did lots of drill (marching) and calisthenics.

I graduated from pre-flight school and transferred to Big Spring, Texas on December 12, 1942 to commence bombardier training. I was assigned to 43-4, indicating that our class would graduate in 1943. We had lots of ground school including aircraft instruments, air navigation, an E-6B computer (circular slide rule), as well as bombsight maintenance. We also dropped practice bombs from our training plane. Beside the pilot and bombardier instructor, I had a student partner who took pictures of my five bomb drops. These were sand-filled bombs with a small charge of black powder that would explode into a small patch of white smoke so that the camera could record the bomb hit. After my turn at dropping practice bombs, the photographer and I swapped positions while he made his five bomb runs and I took the pictures.

I graduated on March 11, 1943, was given my bombardier wings, and was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. My parents and sister, Doris, came to see me receive my wings. Doris joined the Navy as a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Service) soon after. After the ceremony, I followed the custom and gave a dollar to the first enlisted man who saluted me.

My next assignment was to Las Vegas Gunnery School. We flew in training planes with the pilot and myself as Student Gunner. I fired a 50-caliber machine gun at a tow target, and we had ground school which included skeet shooting and learning the operation of 50-caliber machine guns. I was there for six weeks and was ordered to Moses Lake, Washington, for operational training in a B-17 Flying Fortress.  I took advantage of a 10-day delay enroute between Las Vegas and Washington, and visited my parents and friends in Iowa. When I returned to the base, I was assigned to a crew, and after the proper number of practice bomb drops and navigation flights, our crew was transferred to Geiger Field near Spokane, Washington. We were there about 30 days and transferred to Walla Walla, Washington in August, 1943. Our pilot was replaced and we had to start the three-month phase of training again, but after 30 days our complete training group was transferred to Avon Park, Florida. Complications occurred causing us to spend six days in that transfer.

Before we left Avon Park, I was pulled from the crew and sent to Boca Raton, Florida for radar training. Radar was very new in 1944. I had never heard of it. When I asked what it was, Iwas told that it was an electronic gadget that saw through the clouds, and ground returns came up on a radar scope. With it we were able to identify cities and various landmarks on the radar scope and were able to tell the range and direction of radar returns to plot the aircraft position. In May 1944, I finished radar training and was sent to Langley Field for shipment overseas. I had a 10-day leave to go home to visit my parents. For some reason, when I returned to Langley Field, in spite of never having smoked before, I bought a carton of cigarettes and lighter. I started smoking in England, establishing a habit it took 25 years to tire of. I quit cold in 1969.

We left Langley on July 4, 1944, stopped for fuel at Bangor, Maine where we were delayed because of weather, refueled again in Gander, Newfoundland, then departed for our night trip to Scotland. We arrived in Prestwick, Scotland on July 9, 1944. From there we delivered the radar-equipped plane to Alcanbury, England, where I took six weeks of training that was practically the same training I had in Boca Raton and Langley Field.

Upon completion of training, I was sent to Ridgewell, the 381st Bomb Group, 534th Bomb Squadron. The base was near Cambridge. I was not assigned to any particular crew but flew with whomever was squadron lead, group lead, or deputy group lead. I assisted the navigator by giving him position fixes, range and bearings of various towns, and I would start the bombardier on his bomb run. I would direct the airplane toward the target and call off sighting angles. If he could not sight the target visually, I would complete the bomb run by calling off sighting angles which he set in the bombsite and the bombsite would automatically drop the bombs in the proper release point.

On our very first combat mission, September 8, 1944, we bombed the I.G. Farben factory in Ludwigshaven, Germany. I was an observer with a full crew. I think the commander wanted to see how I would react under fire. When we turned toward the target, at the initial point where we started the bomb run, flak bursts ahead of us were so thick it appeared that we could get out and walk on it. However, everything was o.k. The whole group got back to our home base all right. On my remaining missions, I flew as Radar Bombardier.

My sixth mission was to Cologne, Germany. Our target was a Ford Motor Plant. The "Stars and Stripes," a European military newspaper, reported the next day that 1100 heavy bombers had blitzed Germany for the third day in a row. The paper further reported that we lost 42 bombers and seven Fighters while we shot down 31 Nazi Fighters, plus our gunners in the bomb stream claimed five victories. This was the first of four times that I was scheduled to drop bombs on the city of Cologne with a population of approximately one million people.

My eighth mission on October 6, 1944 was my first group lead and longest combat mission at 1,520 nautical miles, taking eight hours 40 minutes. We led the 36-plane group and our target was a power plant in Straslund, Germany. Enemy fighters attacked us from 12:00 high before the bomb drop. Flak burst beneath us and smoke engulfed our plane. Early reports by "Stars and Stripes" were that 19 bombers and 10 fighters were lost in this raid.

My last B-17 flight, mission #14, was on November 10, 1944. Our target was the airdrome which was defended by a very heavy flak area. Seven hundred fifty bombers hit airfields and industrial plants in the Cologne and Frankfurt area. "Stars and Stripes" reported that we lost 27 bombers and seven of the 600 escorting fighters.

During the above missions, I received the Air Medal and one Oak Leaf Cluster, which indicated I had received two Air Medals. The citation mentioned sustained bomber combat operations. "The courage, coolness and skill displayed by these officers and enlisted men upon these occasions reflect great credit upon themselves and the Armed Forces of the United States." Also, during the above period, I had been promoted to First Lieutenant, Army Air Corps and my base pay now amounted to $191 per month plus $95 flying pay.

I found out that many former officers were reverting to enlisted status. I re-enlisted on September 6, 1946 as a T/Sgt. (E5). From that time, Rose followed me from assignment to assignment - Chanute Field near Rantoul, Illinois, where I was an electronic repair person; and to Westover Field near Springfield, Massachusetts, where I learned a lot about Army administration in my job at the Separation Center. Rose was employed as a file clerk while we lived in Springfield, but she came home quite often to visit her Grandfather Miller. She also visited Dr. Harken who told us we could expect a baby in early March, 1948. Rose had worked for him as a nurse aide prior to our marriage and she wanted Dr. Harken to deliver the baby. She came home at the expected time and I obtained a 20-day leave, which required a five-day extension when the baby was late.

Stephanie Gaye was born March 12, 1948. Dr. Harken had taken an x-ray before the birth because he suspected some kind of complication. It showed that Stephanie was a double breach birth. Dr. Harken wanted me in the delivery room but I had to go out before she was born. Later I told Rose she would never go through that again. They didn't take the baby to Rose all day. I tried to tell her that she had 10 fingers but she didn't have 10 toes. Dr. Harken overheard our conversation and came in saying, "Clayton doesn't quite understand the physical handicap that Stephanie has. She is a beautiful baby from the waist up but has a congenital deformity in her hips and legs." He also told Rose that if she didn't want the baby, he would raise and care for her, as she would need much more medical attention than a normal child. When Stephanie was given to Rose, she told the doctor she definitely wanted her!

Soon after Stephanie's birth I received a telegram saying that I was being recalled in my reserve grade as a 1st Lieutenant with orders to transfer to Davis-Monthan AFB (Air Force Base) near Tucson, Arizona. I returned to Westover Field immediately and received my discharge to accept a commission on March 23, 1948. I returned to Iowa to pick up Rose and Stephanie before departing for Tucson. Dr. Harken advised us to take it easy on our trip. He wasn't concerned about Stephanie, but concerned about Rose's health. We followed his advice and took five days to make the trip in our first family car, a new 1948 Ford five-passenger coupe. I was assigned to the 20th Bomb Squadron of the Second Bomb Group as a Radar Operator on B-29s.

In August, 1948 our bomb group was transferred to temporary duty in Lakenheath, England. The transfer was supposed to be for 30 days but it was extended to a total of 100 days before we returned home. Our group was transferred to Chatham AFB near Savannah, Georgia in May, 1949. I was able to drive Rose and Stephanie, as minimum crew members flew the planes. Upon arrival we rented an apartment in a brand new apartment project in a very nice section of the city, but we hadn't even received our furniture when I was put on detached service to the Boeing Airplane Company in Seattle, Washington. We were there about six months and returned to Savannah, where we practiced bombing and navigation until February, 1950 when we were again transferred to temporary duty at Marham, England. After two months of temporary duty we returned to Chatham.

The Korean War was building up and our group was receiving brand new airplanes which required the observers to be triple rated - for instance, navigator, bombardier, and radar operator. Since I had only two of those ratings and several of our squadron observers only had one rating, we were transferred to Randolph AFB at San Antonio, Texas to train crews for Korea. That transfer came up unexpectedly. I called Rose as soon as I found out about it, then I started clearing the base and our furniture van arrived home prior to my arrival. Rose had even started preparing dinner, had a chicken thawing, and the movers packed it with the household goods. It had a distinct odor by the time our van arrived in San Antonio.

Brooke Army Hospital, an Orthopedic and Burn Center, was located at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio. As an active military person, I was authorized medical attention and hospitalization for myself and family. An orthopedic surgeon at Iowa University had told us about Brooke and what a wonderful place it was. Of course, we took Stephanie to Brooke Hospital where she had an evaluation and several operations. During one clinic they had 23 orthopedic surgeons listening to her doctor explain her case, making various suggestions for further treatment.

They put Stephanie in a body cast after her operation and eventually gave her an artificial limb, enabling her to walk with crutches. She was about three years old at the time and had a very outgoing personality. The nurses liked to take her to the men's ward and show her to some of the amputees who had lost limbs in Korea. It seems that, as they saw her walking through the ward, it would bring some of them out of their depression.

Our second baby, Sara Jane, was born January 27, 1952, at Brooke Army Medical Center. She was not healthy. She had what we call yellow jaundice and the doctors discovered that a mistake had been made on Rose's blood test. She was really 0 negative, while I was 0 positive. Sara stayed in the hospital several days while her blood was completely changed.

Roseanne, our third child, was born May 18, 1953. The doctors knew of our blood problem and had been trying to overcome it with new medication during Rose's pregnancy. Roseanne passed away in just three days. She is buried at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, a military cemetery. Rose and I will both be cremated and buried in the same grave.

As the Korean War was winding down, I was transferred to Ellington Field for navigation pre-flight training in late 1953. Rose and the girls stayed in San Antonio while Stephanie continued further surgery and physical therapy. I usually commuted by bus between Houston and San Antonio each weekend.

In July 1954, I took the family to Mather AFB near Sacramento, California; in January 1955, we were sent to the 307th Bomb Wing at Lincoln AFB, Nebraska. Rose and the girls stayed while several of us new navigation graduates went to McConnell AFB near Wichita, Kansas for about 30 days of training. To learn radar prediction, I was sent to Shepherd AFB at Wichita Falls, Texas. We were transferred temporarily to Greenham Common, England and Moron AFB near Seville, Spain. We were on what were called "reflex missions," the crews being closer to their targets. On these missions I was Target Intelligence Office at least four different times, lasting six weeks for each trip. During this time I maintained my flying proficiency as 100 hours in the air. Several simulated bomb drops and celestial navigation missions were required. In 1966, I navigated one of our B-47s to Tucson to the salvage yard.

I was only 45 years old and wanted to continue working. I discovered that I was over ­ qualified for many of the positions I interviewed for, but I did find a job with the state employment service, for which I traveled throughout the state conducting manpower studies. I worked with SCICAP (South Central Iowa Community Action Program) and SCICOG (South Central Iowa Council of Government) with a wide variety of interests. We helped older people find jobs, and we applied and were approved for a federal grant for Osceola's water tower in the Industrial Park, to name several. Between projects, I assisted with funerals at the Kale Funeral Home. In 1979, I commenced working with the local Development Corporation. As Executive Secretary, I was responsible for accomplishing all the detailed paper work pertaining to attracting new industries into the area. I was in this position for 13 years during which we brought in several factories, which offered approximately 1,300 new jobs for the area.

In 1992, at age 72, I retired from that position but continued some volunteer duties. In addition to the above named boards, SCICAP and SCICOG, I served as committee member for RC&D (Resource Conservation and Development), and I served on the board and was secretary­ treasurer of Clarke Community Housing until July 1996. Two of the most interesting involvements were working with Eddy Saylor on the 4-H auction sale during the County Fairs, and with the Iowa Sesquicentennial Commission. A project for the commission was that in 1996 we filled a time capsule and placed it in a floor cavity in the Clarke County Courthouse. I am a past-president of Rotary, and in 1991, I was honored to received the Community Service Award given by the Rotary in conjunction with the Osceola Chamber of Commerce.

Rose has also been working since we returned to Osceola, first at Iowa Southern Utilities, and for many years she was Librarian at the Osceola Public Library. She continued part time for several years afterward. She is currently one of the volunteers reading with children at Clarke Community Elementary School.                                     ·

Stephanie continued her education at the University of Iowa, and married Frank Nidey. They have one son, Nathaniel Levi Scott Nidey. They live in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Sally married Dr. R. Scott Frey. They also have a son, Stuart Che'. They live in Jacksonville, Florida.

In 1995, Rose and I visited Europe with some of my World War II friends and their wives in observance of the 50th anniversary of the end of the European War. For two weeks we traveled extensively and after this visit, I have no regrets of dropping bombs on military targets in many of the cities we visited. Recently some Americans have been attempting to rewrite history, portraying us as "the bad guys." If people who deny the Holocaust could see what we saw, they might change their minds.

In my 1997 autobiography, I fear I gave too little emphasis to Rose's contribution. I could not have had a successful career without her. She took the responsibility of our daughters during my absence, especially through Steph's surgeries and rehabilitation. Rose never complained about the many transfers. She always wanted to find new living quarters as soon as possible and make it into a home. She and I are proud of our children and the way they are raising our grandsons to be good, well-adjusted boys. That is a challenge in this day and age.

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Last Revised November 4, 2012