One Man's Air Force: The Experience of Byron Dussler at Wendover Field, Utah, 1941-46

One Man's Air Force: The Experience of Byron Dussler at Wendover Field, Utah, 1941-46

BY ROGER D. LAUNIUS

THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN fighting man has been a subject of intense interest in recent years. The publication of numerous accounts of the lives of common soldiers for such periods as the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Indian wars has greatly enhanced our understanding of these individuals. One of the most neglected areas of scholarship, however, concerns the experiences of the common soldier in World War II. This study seeks to illuminate this area as it relates to one master sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Force who was stationed throughout the war at Wendover Field, Utah, and left a remarkable series of letters written to two second cousins describing in detail his assignments, friends, enemies, and general army life.

"Wendover was a profound experience for me," recalled Byron Dussler in April 1983. "Sometimes I tho[ugh]t of it as a prison where I was confined for an indefinite time during which I had very little liberty." At other times, however, he enjoyed the experience immensely.

Dussler was born on a farm near Atwood, Illinois, in the central part of the state, in 1908, leaving his home for the first time, for an extended period, when drafted into the army late in June 1941. He resigned from his position as a clerk in an Atwood store, completed six weeks of basic training, and was sent along with thirty-six other draftees to a newly activated airdrome at Wendover, Utah.

Wendover Field was one of several newly established training bases then being constructed throughout the United States in anticipation of conflict against fascist nations. Military leaders had found the desert area adjacent to the little town of Wendover, on the Utah-Nevada border, to be ideally suited for development of bombing and gunnery ranges; it was far enough from population centers, close enough to transportation lines, and had good enough climate for aerial operations to be a desirable site for flight training.

In all, some 1.8 million acres made up Wendover Field proper and its air crew training range. Most of this was acquired on September 20, 1940, when the U.S. Army Air Force gained from the Department of the Interior 1.56 million acres. The service acquired another 14,068 acres from the State of Utah, Tooele County, the Western Pacific Railroad, and a few private firms a short time later. Construction of the base's facilities, on the south side of the town of Wendover, began in November 1940. Workers built temporary barracks covered with tar paper, two paved runways, taxiways, and an aircraft ramp. The second phase of construction, completed in mid-1941, provided four sixty-three-man barracks, also covered with tar paper; a mess hall; officers' quarters; an administration building; a communications office; two ordnance warehouses; a dispensary; three ammunition storehouses; a bombsight storage building; an electrical plant; and a base theater.

These meager facilities, all of which were considered temporary, greeted the first personnel assigned to Wendover Field, two officers and ten enlisted men comprising a bombing and gunnery range detachment. Officially activated on July 29, 1941, this detachment arrived at the field on August 12, 1941. Other personnel arrived soon thereafter. Byron Dussler was one of these, moving with thirty-seven other draftees from Fort Douglas, outside of Salt Lake City, to Wendover in September 1941 as part of the growing bombing and gunnery range detachment. His first impression of the area surrounding Wendover Field reveals much about the man, showing that he was literate, relatively well-read, and thoughtful:

We were sent to a bombing range on the desert about seventy five miles west of Salt Lake City. To reach the bombing targets we drove where there weren't any roads. The salt flats are quite level, but mountains are visible in all directions. The low flat surfaces of sand and salt glare in the sunlight, and on them nothing grows. On sandhills, where the salt has been bleached out, scraggly clumps of sage brush hold each hillock.

What fantastic mirages one sees. Coleridge's Kubla Kahn [sic] comes to life. I saw an enormous lake, with islands in it of orange colored rocks rising abruptly from the water. On the shores reeds and rushes grew, but all the colors were wrong. Only in dreams could one see such an unnatural place. Of course, it was unapproachable; it always receded into the distance, or else, disappeared altogether. I saw distant trees, but as we drove toward them, they vanished.

Once at Wendover, Dussler was assigned to a detail involved in building and maintaining ground targets for bombardment groups that would train on the expansive weapons range nearby. He spent several days, he wrote, "filling flares with kerosine which outline the night targets, and spreading used crankcase oil in an enormous circle to outline a day target"; but soon he was placed in charge of a maintenance detail tending the coal furnaces of the makeshift buildings on the base. Because of his job as chief of the furnace firing crew, Dussler received the nickname "Casey" after the famed engineer. Casey stayed with him throughout the war and became something more than a nickname. It was almost an alter ego. Few on base knew his real name, and later he even had a nameplate on his desk that read "MSgt Casey.''

As soon as Dussler was assigned to Wendover Field rumors began to circulate that since the United States was not at war all draftees over twenty-eight — Dussler was thirty-three — would be released from active service. Throughout the fall of 1941 he tried to determine the truth of this rumor and hoped for the possibility that he would be mustered out of the army because of it. He hinted at his disgust with military conventions when discussing this possibility in a letter to his cousins dated September 26. "Every night the train goes through Wendover with men going home with their over-28- discharges," he wrote, but "here we can find out nothing." A few days later Dussler held a meeting with other draftees having the possibility of being discharged. "We nominated one of our group to see our first sergeant," he wrote, "but the sergeant said he was busy and merely stated, at present it's thumbs down, terminating the interview with the same gesture." Dussler nosed around a bit more, however, and found out that the necessary paperwork for their discharges was "gently reposing in somebody's basket quietly gathering dust."

Eventually this paperwork was completed. The army released Dussler from active duty at Fort Douglas on November 29, 1941. He arrived at his home in Atwood, Illinois, on Saturday, December 6, 1941, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course, following the Japanese attack, the United States entered World War II and mobilization commenced. Dussler was recalled to active duty and reported to Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Illinois, where he remained only a short time before being sent back to his old unit and job at Wendover Field.

Dussler's return to Wendover was more reminiscent of a conquering hero than of a soldier being transferred. He reported to his old first sergeant, learned he was once again in charge of the fire crew, and was told to report to a Lieutenant Thomas, known to all the draftees as Lieutenant "Rock-A-Bye" because of a peculiar tottering stance. Thomas told him that everyone was delighted he was back. "The place hadn't been warm since I left two months before," he told his cousins. He then saw the base commander, Capt. D. G. Smith, who interrupted his salute "with a hand shake," Dussler said, "and made me a corporal on the spot."

Dussler did not remain in charge of the furnace crew long. Throughout the spring of 1942 Wendover's personnel were involved in readying the base for training of B-17-equipped bombardment groups, these growing activities requiring the expansion of the headquarters contingent. Consequently, many of the personnel assigned to other duties were brought into the headquarters to handle the administrative jobs that seemed to increase almost daily. Early in April 1942 Dussler was reassigned as a clerk in the headquarters of the 315th Army Air Force Base Unit, the organization that managed all Wendover activities, consolidating morning reports. He was clearly delighted with the new responsibilities. His letter to his cousins on April 5 is telling. "I feel like Cinderella must have felt," he wrote. "Yesterday I was chief chimney swep and today I rode to the railway depot in a staff car to deliver a report which must be in the mail. I haven't quite recovered from the shock of getting this job after sweating it out for two weeks, I had entirely given up hopes, when all at once it happened."

A month later he was promoted to sergeant, and in June he was assigned responsibility for the base's payroll. It required long hours of tedious work that eventually took its toll, especially because of the large numbers of personnel that had to be serviced when the bombardment groups began training at Wendover during April 1942. Because of the strain of meeting these commitments, Dussler was hospitalized for exhaustion in August 1942 and then sent home for two weeks to aid his recovery.

He stayed in that job for several months, all the while angling to get the position of base sergeant major, the highest ranking enlisted job at any army post and one that carried substantial respect and authority. On October 21, 1942, he was successful in this quest, after the previous sergeant major had arranged a transfer to a combat unit. Dussler never could understand why his predecessor had transferred out of such an important and powerful job to risk his life. His opinion was that those who could only shoot should fight and those who had administrative skills should do that. At no time during his army career did Dussler have any real desire to enter combat.

He enjoyed his new position as base sergeant major enormously. Dussler wrote to his cousins that it had many benefits, not the least of which was a lessening of his work load, his own telephone, and control of all appointments to anyone in the headquarters. He described some of the benefits of this position in a letter to his cousins in October 1942:

I have a crew of enlisted men who man message center, distribution, special orders, mimeograph, general files and trial judge advocate's office. All mail and wire messages come to my desk after being removed from envelopes. I read them and route them to their proper departments, and answer what I can myself. All answers and new correspondence are routed across my desk for final check.

Dussler confided not long after beginning work as sergeant major that he felt like "Alexander the Great, with no more worlds to conquer." He also noted, "It's like sitting on a throne all by myself. The fellows who used to tell me to 'go to hell' now say 'yes sir'." That is, all but one. One old associate from his pre-sergeant major days always greeted Dussler with a lusty, "Hello, exjanitor.''

While sergeant major, Dussler developed to a fine art a disgust for most of the officers assigned to the airdrome. He saw them essentially as either young punks without sense enough to recognize their own inadequacies or older soldiers without ambition, ingenuity, or connections. An air base headquarters unit in time of war, he reasoned, was not exactly where the cream of the officers' corps would be stationed. He was essentially correct; most exceptional officers were serving in combat units. A feel for his general attitude toward the Wendover officers can be gained from his discussion of a new private in his office that was excused from early morning roll call, calisthenics, KP, and other disagreeable assignments. Dussler could not see why this particular private got special consideration, as he was one of the least productive and most "thick-headed," to use Dussler's term, of the men in the squadron. Finally he learned that he was the brother-in-law of the squadron adjutant. "He has been in the army a few weeks," Dussler complained, "and has already started his application for officer's candidate school." Although, he quickly added, after considering the private's general uselessness, "I think he is fine officer material."

Dussler endured what he thought was continuous nonsense from officers. As base sergeant major, however, he was in a position to deal with officers as was no other enlisted man. He did not grant accepted military courtesies and got away with it. "Somehow," he reflected in a letter to his cousins on August 22, 1942, "I feel a little guilty with all my stripes as I consider myself the most unsoldierly person that ever got into the military service." He added, "I hate the army. I can't stand drill. It irks me to have to salute an officer. I do not 'sir' them when I talk to them. It is merely 'yes' and 'no' and I try to make my conversation as civilian as possible."

He also found ways of gaining revenge on officers that he particularly disliked. On one occasion in April 1943 Dussler took revenge on his squadron commander and adjutant after they had in his estimation, "been pretty heavily passing out extra duty to my boys in headquarters." Not long thereafter the base commander had an unpleasant assignment for an officer and asked his adjutant to assign responsibility. Louie F. Wise, the first lieutenant to whom Dussler was directly responsible, then asked the sergeant major to handle the job. "As quick as a flash I nominated our squadron adjutant," Dussler wrote, "and he was forthwith elected." Later, he tormented the squadron commander by assigning him, at Wise's direction, the responsibility of writing a tedious report for the base commander on a training class being conducted at Wendover, and Dussler, as the individual reviewing all documents sent to the command section, returned the report for expansion and revision.

Byron Dussler did not dislike all officers, and with a few, like Lieutenant Wise, became good friends. In 1942 when Wise first arrived at Wendover he endeared himself by admitting that he did not understand his job and telling Dussler that the two would work together as partners. Dussler relished the way Wise delegated so many jobs to him, allowing the sergeant major to solve most of the office's problems. In most instances Wise acted merely as Dussler's endorsing officer, a rubber stamp, never complaining about not being fully in control of affairs. However, by December 1943 Wise had made captain and left Wendover; he was replaced by a young officer Dussler despised. The only virtue of the transfer, according to Dussler, was that the replacement was "new to the job and as green as grass and that's the way I like them, so I can break them in to suit me." Dussler continued, "He does everything I tell him and what more can I ask. I go through all the mail first and show him only what I want him to see. I usually pick out something that requires enough work to keep him busy and give it to him as an assignment."

Dussler was able to get away with these attitudes and actions in large measure because of his ability to get results on the job. He was, by all accounts, an exceptionally capable NCO. No doubt, Dussler's ability to circumvent the bureaucratic labyrinth to get work done quickly placed him in good graces with both his superiors and his fellow draftees. For instance, an officer telephoned the adjutant's office complaining about his inability to requisition a 2.5-ton truck for the afternoon and had been given a half-baked excuse by the motor pool supervisor. Since Lieutenant Wise was not in, Dussler called over to the motor pool and had the truck for him in a matter of minutes. Additionally, on August 20, 1943, an enlisted man came into the headquarters and asked for an emergency furlough. "I fixed him up in fifteen minutes flat," Dussler bragged, "whereas, if he had gone through his orderly room he probably would be delayed for another day." Dussler admitted that to get the soldier's emergency furlough, however, "I made generous use of forged signatures." He was not hesitant to cut corners to get his work done. And, interestingly enough, his superior did not seem to mind, provided no one up the chain of command complained.

Dussler, of course, rationalized his approach to doing his job by maintaining that the war necessitated prompt actions and everyone benefited. Wendover had grown from the tiny contingent Dussler had been a part of in 1941 to some 12,500 military and 2,000 civilians by 1943, and the bureaucratic necessities of managing such a large airdrome prompted many to allow him to disregard official procedures if he did not do so too flagrantly and was efficient. Moreover, Dussler believed many of the regulations and directives were unnecessary and needed to be ignored or thrown out entirely. He constantly berated others who did things that appeared foolish or nonproductive, even if they were according to regulation.

He complained, for example, that when one of his clerks had two straight days of KP, one of which involved moving from one mess hall to another and took about fifteen hours of work, he was so tired he missed the early morning roll call and was punished severely for his lapse. Dussler matter of factly wrote, "I fail to see the justice of this." He thought this a much too rigid approach. There are several complaints about "tin soldiers" in Dussler's letters. Nor were his feelings any less kind toward incompetency among the enlisted force. He recalled two incidents of soldiers on leave. "Some dummy in Los Angeles," he wrote to his cousins on February 20, 1943, "wired for an extension on his furlough, but failed to give an address to which reply could be made. Another request came by telephone from a little town in Louisiana," he reported. "When I attempted to answer collect and approve, my call was refused." Such ridiculousness made Dussler boil.

As an organization operated by the Second Air Force, Wendover Field's primary mission throughout World War II was the training of aircrews for B-17, B-24, and B-29 bombers, as well as a limited number of fighter pilots. During the war no less than twenty-one heavy bombardment groups underwent training at Wendover, each participating in a four- to six-week program at the base. The 306th Bombardment Group was only the first such unit assigned for training at Wendover, arriving April 6, 1942; and the last was the 509th Composite Group, whose first elements departed Wendover for the Pacific on April 26, 1945. In between, several other units came and went, each taxing the base's and by extension Dussler's headquarters function. For instance, so active was Wendover Field during 1944 that its personnel were constantly managing the simultaneous training of at least two complete bombardment groups. Most of the time, Dussler remembered, it was a mad scramble to satisfy all the needs of those assigned to the base.

Dussler's world of paperwork, reports, and military inefficiency was far removed from the intense combat of World War II. Bombardment groups came and went, and Dussler mentioned a few of them upon occasion, but wartime censorship prohibited discussing in unofficial correspondence the activities of combat units. It seemed to Dussler that the war was truly far away for the soldiers at Wendover Field. His letters sometimes showed despair that his service at Wendover was somehow pointless. He wrote to his cousins not long after being reassigned to the desert base: "The war is the most remote thing on earth to us; we scarcely talk about it. Each day, Sunday included, is a repetition of the preceeding [sic] day." Later to a friend who asked him about the war, Dussler satirically replied, "I suppose they will let us know when it's over, won't they?"

At the same time, Dussler recognized the importance of Wendover as a training base and its place in the overall war effort. As base sergeant major he learned about many incidents of "personal heroism" among those working at the base. For instance, one of the most persistent problems at Wendover during the war was the lack of housing for the large numbers of military and civilian personnel who had moved into the area. Because of the base, Wendover grew rapidly during World War II from a few hundred to over 20,000. The tiny community was totally unprepared to house such large numbers, and the government was forced to construct new housing and support facilities. Even this was not enough. Dussler reported one instance where a woman came to him as base sergeant major in virtual desperation "to ask whom she should see to get a place to live. She was working at the sub-depot and was living in the back end of a truck." She had been at the base for several months and had been shoved from one office to another without any success in obtaining housing. In the middle of her meeting with Dussler she suddenly stammered, "I-I-I'm g-g-getting d-d-damned t-t-tired of this t-t-treatment." Dussler assisted her in finding a place to live. Later, he reflected on the situation:

Oh! If only one could remedy all the misfortunes that happen to unfortunate people. Their problems are doubly acute because they are so helpless. 1 admire these people, who when war comes, live on the desert like soldiers under the most harrowing circumstances. Shame on those in society who contribute to the war effort by sponsoring benefit dances.

Later he reported on what he called "the motley crowd of soldiers, civilians, wives, girlfriends, all stranded at Wendover. I looked at them and thought of how many lives are turned topsyturvey by the war." Then he mused, "Will this [war] last for endless time?"

The war was difficult for Dussler and others stuck in the desert at Wendover. Even if one was patriotic beyond normal bounds, the long days away from civilization with no apparent feeling of accomplishment had to take its toll. Dussler, most of the time, hated the place. "If I were to tabulate all the good and bad at Wendover," he wrote in April 1942, "it would be like this:

Good - Weather Beer Sleep

Bad - No sheets Chow 6:15 rising 10:00 bed check double bunks everything else.

To fill the long hours Dussler and many of his friends frequented the State Line Hotel and Casino, which, according to Dussler, was "a desert rendezvous for travelers, gamblers, and other professional people of license," that had "a spirit and color that makes one feel the pep and tang of mischief." The troops also held "beer busts" where the goal was to get drunk as quickly and cheaply as possible for as long as possible. Dussler defended both extravagances by telling his cousins that there was little else to do.

One of Dussler's favorite drinking buddies was Arthur W. Roberton, a sergeant known to all by his nickname, "Flash." Indeed, everyone knew their comrades by nicknames: Dussler was Casey, Lieutenant Thomas was Rock-A-Bye; and a Private Harris was called Iron Head. Roberton was a close friend who admired Dussler greatly. The two were inseparable. For instance, when Dussler was placed in the hospital for exhaustion in 1942 Roberton visited him virtually every day. Roberton even had himself assigned as Dussler's assistant in base headquarters. This was not an entirely satisfactory arrangement, however. Dussler complained that Roberton was a poor typist and not the quickest at analyzing a situation and acting appropriately. "He is a good flunky tho[ugh]," Dussler reported:

He opens doors for me, steps aside and lets me enter first, and I believe he'd shine my shoes if I would ask him. . . . Some of the old acquaintences [sic] on the [bombing] range crew have noticed this situation and kid us. They say Casey took Flash under his wing so that when we get sent to Africa, and Casey gets tired of marching across the desert, he can call on his man Friday to carry him on his back.

Dussler admitted that there was some truth to their assessment. "I'm afraid I do, sometimes, evaluate people by what they are worth to me."

One of the areas that Roberton asked for advice from Dussler concerned relations with women. For some reason the ladies found him irresistible. As an example: a woman Roberton had been seeing before he was drafted kept writing him love letters and promising to visit him, hinting that they could run off to Las Vegas and get married." After Roberton talked to Dussler about his situation, the sergeant major wrote to his cousins, "She wants to marry him so badly that she lost all control of her tongue." He then diagnosed what he thought was Roberton's basic problem:

Poor Flash! He likes to start an affair but never wants to finish it. It is the same old story every time and I have to listen to it. Boy meets girl. A pleasant evening is planned and Roberton expects that to be the end. Then comes the deluge of letters. Every girl is ready to throw overboard every male she has ever known.

Dussler remarked in several letters that he was bored from listening to the details of Roberton's love affairs, but he seemed to enjoy living vicariously through his buddy's escapades. For instance, he took delight in the situation of Roberton visiting his first sergeant's girlfriend in Denver on his way back from furlough. It was only a short visit, but the first sergeant's friend, after one meeting, broke up with him to go with Roberton. Dussler reported with obvious delight the drunken brawl that took place in the State Line Casino when Roberton and the sergeant met afterward. But Dussler consoled his friend when the woman from home that Roberton had been going with found out about his indiscretions. He received a letter from her that said simply, "Wish me luck, I married Bill." To help Roberton through his melancholy, Dussler took him to the State Line Casino where they enjoyed a wild evening. Roberton soon forgot all about his lost love. Later he barely missed the opportunity to become a recruiter for WACs in Denver, a position for which he thought he was uniquely qualified. When this did not materialize, he transferred to the European Theater of Operations where he worked in classification in England until the end of the war."

In January 1944 a new phase in Byron Dussler's military career at Wendover Field began. A new base commander came in and replaced the key staff personnel of the newly organized 216th Air Base Unit with his own appointees. One of those reshuffles involved Dussler, who was reassigned to the Directorate of Flying Training. At last he was a part of the central mission of the base. "I'm going to find out all about combat flying," he told his cousins, "by reading about it." One of the unique aspects of this position was that all his clerks were black women assigned to the WAG detachment of the 216th Army Air Force Base Unit (Colored). "I'm sergeant major to a colored office force, and I like them," he exclaimed. "I hope they like me." This situation was very educational for Dussler; he had never been closely associated with black workers before. He was from rural Illinois, where few blacks lived, and since the army air force and all other services were segregated he had not had much contact with blacks there. Indeed, Dussler's workers were members of the only black unit stationed at Wendover during the war, and the number of blacks in this organization never numbered more than a hundred. Consequently, headquarters personnel treated the black unit as something akin to a leper colony. Blacks had very few privileges. They were in fact segregated at all base functions and were housed in rundown barracks far removed from the airdrome's central buildings.

Dussler realized quickly that the four WACs he had working for him were not ordinary army air force clerks; they were really quite exceptional both in their capabilities and their outlooks toward the military. He made these observations about them in a letter dated January 8, 1944:

Mrs. B., very black and a typical African, was a social science teacher in a Georgia High School. She is now a private first class and on KP regularly.

Private First Class S. is the mother of a married daughter. She told me she used to have a column in a daily newspaper and is frequently writing articles for periodicals. She came into the Army because, like others in her organization, she thought it was the patriotic thing to do. Another, Corporal D. was a kindergarten teacher from Indiana. Corporal A. says she is an old maid. She is as slow and deliberate as a snail, and I worry about her, fearing she will never get her work done, but she always does.

Clearly, these women were not run-of-the-mill soldiers; they were better educated than most clerks Dussler had been associated with. and they served in the army air force only because they wanted to assist their country in the war effort.

Although the women wanted to serve their country, Dussler recognized that his clerks' lives at Wendover were far from enjoyable. Their segregation from the rest of the base population was upsetting. He wrote, "They don't like it, but they are in the Army and stuck." Dussler also believed he was stuck. "I wonder why I was made sergeant major to a colored force?" he asked, as if it were a punishment. "I wonder if this is a demotion, the result of politics, or is it a job that someone thought I was fitted for?" As it turned out, in the reshuffling of personnel to make room for the new base commander's assistants, Dussler, as a master sergeant, received the only open billet for his rank available at the base. Had he cultivated the right officers, Dussler might have engineered some type of arrangement in a more prestigious office, but as it was he had to take what he received.

Dussler felt sorry for his black subordinates. He noticed one in particular who seemed to be lethargic on the job, presumably because of her shabby treatment at the base, and encouraged the others to act the same way. "I can see she has little love for whites. Perhaps, she is justified in this lack of affection," he noted, but Dussler recognized that for all her loafing, this WAG was a better clerk than many he had supervised while base sergeant major. Interestingly, he recognized and commented in his letters that "They are really no different from the whites I know." In their social position, he thought, he would probably act even more maliciously.

Dussler also experienced something of the racial inequalities of the United States when one of the WACs asked for and received a two-day pass. She told him she wanted to visit Salt Lake City and, to use her words, "see the Mormon things." Then she realized that the trip on the bus "would necessitate staying overnight." She then turned back the pass, telling Dussler somewhat sadly, "I wouldn't have a place to stay." Before desegregation of public facilities and without a black population to warrant hotels catering to blacks, the WAG was afraid to make a trip to Salt Lake City. The injustice of this bothered Dussler, who wrote, "What a tragedy it must be to be born black."

Dussler remained in the Flying Training Office until the end of 1944. His black WACs were transferred along with the other members of their detachment to Sioux City, Iowa, on April 5, but he continued with a new crew. By the time of the WAG transfer, however, the training activities at Wendover were beginning to slow down. With the allies on the offensive and the end of the war in sight, fewer people were stationed at the airdrome and fewer bombardment groups underwent training. indeed, by the fall of 1944 the only training being conducted at Wendover was that of Col. Paul W. Tibbets's 509th Composite Group, which was devising and testing delivery techniques for the soon-to-be constructed atomic bomb. Even before the completion of this unit's training, Dussler's office was all but closed down and the majority of its personnel reassigned. Dussler and a few others remained in the office to complete some final reports, but he expected to be sent to another base upon completion of that assignment late in 1944. Such was not the case. Instead, in January 1945 he moved back to the base headquarters as personnel sergeant major, charged with the increasingly important responsibility of mustering soldiers out of the army.

Although he had been busy before, soldiers' discharges began to consume most of Dussler's time after Germany surrendered in early May 1945. "I did not know VE Day could cause so much work," he complained to his cousins on May 18. "I've been stuck in the office every night until about ten. I have a pile of policies pertaining to discharge and it is becoming in size like a mail order catalog." He reported similar problems three months later, after the surrender of Japan:

The war is over but not for me. I am busy sending to separation centers all 38 years old and those high point men who fit in quotas. We had no celebration except free beer. We heard the noise and confusion over the radio. I worked the next day as usual. The end of the war made not one particle of difference to me. The war has always been very remote to me, and when it ended my routine was not disturbed.

The work of discharging part of the largest military force in American history began to pile up after the surrender of Japan. Dussler barely had time to reflect on his role in the war effort. He recalled in his letters that he remembered vaguely Colonel Tibbets, whose 509th Composite Group trained at Wendover during the winter of 1944-45, after learning he had gained fame by dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Otherwise, his only comments were that "it looks like I am going to be the only one who is going to be discharged twice from Wendover Field (once before, 29 November 1941)."

On October 14, 1945, Byron Dussler was sent to the separation center at Boise, Idaho, where he was mustered out of the army air force. This act alone improved his attitude toward the military, but it did not end his tour at Wendover Field. Three days later he returned to the Utah desert base as a civilian and continued his separation work. Master Sergeant Casey became Mr. Casey. His skills were too great to be lost, so the Second Air Force, his unit's parent command, approved his continuation until the rush of discharges followTng the war had been processed. Dussler worked at Wendover throughout the winter of 1945-46, receiving high praise for his efforts. Finally, in March 1946 his work there ended. He wrote as an epilogue to a long career at Wendover: "As I pack to leave I think of the words of the mass I used to listen for:

Ite. Missa est.

Go. It is finished."

Byron Dussler's air force had been one filled with paperwork, bureaucracy, and internal politics. It was one that Dussler hated and one that he loved. When the war ended, however, he did not abandon government service. Instead, in 1946 he entered the permanent civil service and went to Japan as a civilian clerk with the United States Army of Occupation. In 1950 he returned to the United States and his home in Atwood, Illinois, where he continued in federal service two more years at an army signal depot. When a petrochemical complex opened a few miles from his home, Dussler left civil service and worked there until his retirement at age sixty-two. He still lives in Atwood.

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