Just before the Stymie, a World War II B-17, took off from an English airfield headed for Munster, Germany, the waist gunner gave the crew chief his leather gloves.
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Charles ''Buddy'' Perryman was 28 in 1942 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps' Mighty 8th. He served as a mechanic at Thorpe Abbotts Air Base.
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''They were nice gloves,'' said Charles ''Buddy'' Perryman, an Augusta World War II veteran and crew chief for the Mighty 8th Air Force more than 50 years ago. ''Not the kind you would work in, the kind you would dress up in.''
The ground crew had been up all night working on the Stymie so it would be ready for the daybreak mission.
Mr. Perryman's friend, Max Drudge, whose job was to fire at the enemy from the plane, promised the crew chief he would make a kill for him because the 28-year-old didn't hit his cot that night as he labored over the plane.
But the Stymie was shot down over Munster, and Mr. Perryman didn't find out if his friend got his shot until many years later.
MR. PERRYMAN said the ground crew, stationed at Thorpe Abbotts in southeastern England, knew something was wrong when other planes returned and the Stymie didn't.
''We just kept waiting and waiting, and they didn't come back,'' he said.
The Stymie was the first airplane Mr. Perryman and his crew of three worked on, and when it didn't make it back from what would have been its 16th mission, the relationship with the flight crew changed.
''After that, we learned not to get attached to the crew,'' Mr. Perryman said.
On Oct. 10, 1943, the day the Stymie went down, only one of the 13 aircraft on the mission returned and more than 100 men were killed.
It was a tough lesson for the small-town boy from Lincolnton, Ga.
Mr. Perryman was drafted in April 1942 at 28 into the Army Air Corps 8th Air Force - later nicknamed the Mighty 8th. His bomb group, the 100th, became known as the Bloody Hundredth because of the number and nature of casualties it suffered.
''After so many losses, it was a nickname they earned,'' said Jan Riddling, the 100th's official historian, who has been helping the 100th collect their historical records for about 10 years.
Losses during combat weren't the only ones Thorpe Abbotts personnel had to deal with.
They had to watch out for German planes, which sometimes followed U.S. planes back to the base.
But for ground crew members, there was a greater danger.
The threat of American aircraft crash landing, crashing into each other and arriving home with live bombs was more of a problem.
His closest call happened when he was working on a plane on one of the field's runways.
''All of a sudden, I looked up and there was a B-17 heading right at me,'' Mr. Perryman recalled. The bomber exploded in the air as it collided with another fighter plane about 300 yards away from him.
''If it hadn't exploded, I wouldn't be sitting here today,'' Mr. Perryman said, his voice becoming quieter.
Luckily, no one died in that accident - everyone was able to bail out.
ON OTHER DAYS, the men were not so lucky.
More than 220 planes were lost from 1943 to 1945 - the 100th's original flight crew, who shipped over together, sufferedmore losses than any other group. The 100th shot down 261 enemy aircraft. That was the number that could be confirmed. According to their records, 1,200 more planes were downed by the 100th.
The casualties suffered by the Americans taught the ground crews a valuable lesson.
Mr. Perryman said the ground crew members were always nice to their comrades and would do anything to help them, but continually becoming close to groups of men who would fly away and might not ever return was not an option.
Mr. Perryman's crew worked on almost 10 planes, mostly bombers, during their years in England.
''When they didn't come back, it just killed them the first time,'' Mrs. Riddling said of the initial ground and flight crew relationships. ''After you've had your heart ripped out, you don't get close again.''
The first crews were close because they went through training in the United States together and traveled to England on the Queen Elizabeth as a group, becoming friends on a ship crammed with about 20,000 men, Mr. Perryman said.
During the war, Mr. Perryman kept a journal of his daily activities. Everything from accounts of friends' deaths to trips to London were recently transferred from the original scattered pages to tablets of blue-lined paper.
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Augustan Charles ''Buddy'' Perryman, a mechanic at Thorpe Abbotts Air Force Base in England during World War II, worked on B-17 Flying Fortress bombers similar to one of the models he has put together.
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A day at Thorpe Abbotts usually started at about 3 a.m., when someone woke both crews to prepare for the day's mission. The flight crew would eat breakfast and be briefed while the ground crews prepared the planes that would end up over Germany.
One group of men would load the bombs, and then the ground crew would fuel and, if necessary, repair the plane, checking the engines, pressure gauges and oil. When it took off, the ground crew would wait for its return.
IF THE PLANE survived the mission, the ground crew would fix the craft, sometimes replacing entire engines.
''Planes would come back all shot up, and we would have to fix what we could,'' Mr. Perryman said, sitting next to a table filled with black-and-white pictures of planes, men in uniform and snow-covered runways.
Often the plane would not return and the crew would rely on secondhand information to learn what happened.
Initially, all Mr. Perryman's crew knew about the Stymie was that it had been shot down over Germany.
''It was a long time before we knew if they were POWs or if they were dead.''
About six months after the Stymie crashed, he learned the flight crew had become German prisoners of war.
Dot, Mr. Perryman's wife of 55 years, said her husband rarely talked about his war experiences until much later in their marriage. But about 20 years ago, Mr. Perryman got back in touch with the men from the 100th and has attended several reunions.
It was then Mr. Perryman found out Mr. Drudge was alive, and he wrote to him. The two occasionally corresponded until Mr. Drudge's death about a year ago. Mr. Perryman said he still has the leather gloves.
His experience isn't something he regrets, but the memories, both good and bad, will always be with him.
''It's not something I would ever want to do again.''
Reach Teresa Wood at (706) 823-3765.
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