Itzel Lopez
Andrew Little
Mrs. Barnard
P: 6 U.S History
23 April, 2011
Captain Bob Meyer
Captain Bob Meyer was born in Chicago, Illinois. His family came from England in 1635
and his family has been in every war this country has ever had. His father had been a pilot in
World War One and his brother was in World War Two. Captain Bob Meyer graduated from
high school at age nineteen since he did not go to school for a year. He was also a Lieutenant
Colonel in ROTC. When World War Two broke out many young men wanted to be apart of it,
one of those young men was Captain Bob Meyer. He joined the Air Corps Branch and became a
glider pilot and kept the family tradition. For his training he went to Texas, New Mexico, and
Arizona. He says that training was not so hard since he had just gotten out of high school. On his
glider he put “attention Meyer is coming” in German.
Captain Bob Meyer saw a lot of combat in the air on top of Europe. One in twelve pilots
would land in Europe and one of them was him. During his service he made four invasions one
in Normandy, France, Holland, and Germany. He only has to do three but no one told him so he
went above and beyond his duty and invaded a fourth time. Some of the loads he said he would
carry were men, jeeps, three thousand pounds of landlines, and a seventy-five mm howitzer. In
One invasion the picture of where he had to land was taken from thirty-five thousand feet above
and he did not know that there had been trees, bushes, and stone walls. They had landed around
four thirty in the morning and it was dark. Some people crashed into the stone walls. This was a
very dangerous job and you had seconds to land and there had been traps on the ground that the
Germans put. When he had to land in Normandy he had landed in a German camp and the
Germans had become furious. Captain Bob Meyer also mentioned that the planes back then had
been made out of canvas and if a bullet were to go in it would go out the other side.
Captain Bob Meyer says during war time you have to have your own kind of faith. His
faith was on a Spanish song “Que Sera, Sera” which means what will be will be. Right before he
would go to combat he would write a letter if he did not come back. When they would invade
they would know a week to ten days prior to the invasion. If you did not come back after the
invasion your name would be taken off the roster but if you came back home it would be on
there.
Captain Bob Meyer had some humorous experiences during the war as well. One thing he
said was that he landed in the French Riviera with all his gear and all these French women came
around noon to the beach and had taken their clothes off and put on bathing suits. A strange
experience he had was that one time he saw a guy that had been shot in the stomach in
Normandy and then two weeks later he saw him in London. He said one night at two in the
morning in Germany a German had stuck a bullet to his head and asked him if he wanted to die,
of course he replied “hell no”. They made a deal that if the Germans were to win he Captain
Robert Meyer would be the Germans prisoner but if the Americans were to win the German
would be his prisoner. In the end they both started to talk and found out they had been both from
Chicago, so they talked about the high school they went to, the dates they had, and their high
school life.
Captain Bob Meyer remembered all the good clubs and casinos he visited while he had
been in Paris. He said to make time pass they would sometimes play basketball, football, and
baseball. Whenever he would step into a pub in London the glider pilots would be called pretty
boys due to there trousers. He also said that the bunks they slept in had been eight bunks high
and the one at the top would have hard time breathing. He also says there was no discrimination
at war time because life was very important at that point in time.
After his service Captain Bob Meyer received fourteen medals. He said that the “G” on
his wings stood for guts. When he got to England him and his glider pilot friends would say that
the men who had no “G” on there wings meant that they were not a good pilot, this caused
women not to talk to the other pilots. He says it was hard to stay in contact with family members
because the mail was too slow. In October they came back home in the Queen Mary, which
during that month it had made the trip kind of rough and made the ship tilt a lot. Since there had
been other army branches there the glider pilots would not get sick because they had been use to
rough rides. During the war he made many friends and they were like his family. He also saw
many parts of the world due to the war. He said he is famous in Holland because of all the
pictures taken of him. He served in the military for thirteen years and after the war he became a
church fundraiser for thirty-five years. He went to the University of Vanderbilt due to the GI Bill
but did not graduate from there. He says being in the military gave him a purpose, experience,
and moral turpitude. In addition it enabled him to set goals and reach them. Captain Bob Meyer
also says life takes a different meaning when knowing it could be your last day.