CLIF WORKMAN

By Stephanie Bryan

World War II was a very hard time for everyone.  It affected many families in the United States and helped start the fight for women's rights.  When men went off to war, women stepped in to support them by building planes.  Even baseball players got involved in the war and left, leaving women to start a league of their own.  Many things came from the war.  Although bad things came from the war, lessons were learned.

Ernest Clifton Workman, known to most as Clif, was born in Sheridan, Wyoming in 1922.  Clif was set up by his friends on a blind date and met Phyllis, who he married in 1941, and they are still married.  One day Clif volunteered for service in the war and then went in once every week to ask if he had been picked for duty.  Finally he was told he had been selected.  Clif left for duty in October 1943, leaving behind his wife, a brother and sister, and his job as a banker.

Clif first served on the East Coast of England and was an Army Air Corps Sergeant Major in charge of payroll, paper work, and the activities of the squadron.  Clif was in the 367^th squadron that contained three hundred and fifty men who flew P-47s with the emblem of a buzzard named "Gruesome Gus."  The planes the squadron flew also had their tails painted orange to make them more recognizable in the air.

While still stationed in England, Clif recalls one night he came back to the base and a V1 Buzz-Bomb had dropped about three or four hundred yards away from where he was standing.  It was dropped in a field that it flattened completely.  The bomb left a hole fifteen feet deep.      

After being stationed in England, the squadron was moved to France and Germany.  They landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day plus thirty days.  In France he was stationed in Tule and Nance.  His next base was near the Heidelberg castle, which sits on the summit of Jettenbuhl.  Clif visited the castle and was overwhelmed by the beauty and size of it.  He saw the castle's cellar, which contained the famous Heidelberg Tun, a wine vat with the capacity of fifty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty-four gallons or two hundred twenty thousand and seventeen liters.

Many days went by before Clif was finally able to go home.  The process he had to go through was long and tiring.  Before he could go home he had to go through many different stations to see if he was needed anywhere else.  He wasn't and he finally got to go home.  Clif and many others went home on the Queen Mary.  Designed to hold six thousand people, it transported about fifteen thousand which wasn't much better than his trip over on the US Monterey  that was designed to hold six but transported five thousand. 

Clif was finally back in the US at a base in New York in August of 1945.  After waiting a few hours in line for the phone, he tried to call his wife.  When he finally got to the phone he then had to wait while operators across the country manually routed his call from one town to another.  When the call reached Sheridan, Wyoming, the operator there turned out to be one of his friends that he had gone to school with.  After she greeted him, she missent the call to his folks in Sheridan rather than to his wife in Gillette.

Many people who were in World War II, or any war, try to forget what they see or how many of their friend's lives were taken.  It is very tragic and the whole country thanks them for what they did.  Clif Workman, along with many other men from the war, came home, went back to the jobs they had left behind, and continued like nothing had happened.

CLIF WORKMAN

By Frank Keeney

Clif Workman lived in Gillette, Wyoming with his wife.  He worked at the Stockman's Bank.  He found out he was going to have to go fight the war when he was at the post office.  It was there that the sign up sheet was posted.  He asked the clerk if his number had come up.  She said, "Yes, you are going to be leaving this Friday."

When D-Day happened, he was in England with the 367^th  Fighter Squadron.  Clif was Sergeant Major (Chief Clerk) for the Squadron.  The group he served with had an exceptional bomb tonnage dropped record in World War II.  One of their best bombing missions was when they found a German train transporting goods and one of their bombers hit the train as it entered a tunnel, destroying the train and the tunnel. 

While Mr. Workman was in England, he and the other men would get around on bicycles.  One day he was coming back from somewhere and looked up in the sky to see a British airplane shoot down a Buzz-Bomb.  A Buzz-Bomb is a gas-powered bomb.  When they ran out of fuel they would fall out of the sky and hit the ground.  The Germans used them to bomb London.  The Buzz-Bomb landed within four hundred feet of their base.  Mr. Workman was just entering the base when the British airplane shot down the bomb.  When it hit the ground, the area cleared by the bomb was about one hundred feet round and fifteen feet deep.  Clif was glad the Brits shot it down before it landed on the base.

When the group returned to the States, they were on the Queen Mary, a ship that was supposed to hold only six thousand people.  They were actually transporting fifteen thousand people at once.  When they got back to the States they were supposed to get to call a loved one, but the telephone lines were so full sometimes it would take over two hours to get a call through.  When Mr. Workman got to call his wife, he discovered the operator placing the call was an old high school friend.  His call was still misdirected to his parents in Sheridan rather than to his wife in Gillette.