Norman Wallner
Birthday: March 12, 1924
Birthplace: Sherry, Wisconsin
Family: Louis and Anna Wallner
Occupation: Worked at Stevens Point Mill
Branch: Army/Air Corps
Entered Service Date: April 07, 1944
Discharge Date: June 06, 1946

"I entered the Army Air Corps on April 7, 1944. I entered in the voluntary draft, at Fort Sheraton, Illinois, as a radio operator. From there I was sent to Sheppard fields South Dakota for Basic Training. In Basic training we learned everything from marching to K.P. duty "anything related to the kitchen" to radio and gunnery. After basic training I was transferred to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There I learned Morse code, voice radio, directional, campus, and flash code, and more gunning skills. We radio operators had to keep communications between plane-to-plane and ground to plane, so they didn't crash, they also kept up communications between ground and plane sometimes though accidents did occur. One day when I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota one plane was coming for a landing from a training run and another plane was taking off, to take its run, the pilot coming in to land's radio was off and the two planes collided."

"I was then transferred to Yuma, Arizona for gunnery school, where we did a lot of target practice. They had this train out in the desert and it just went in circles and we had to shoot it. They also set up targets that we had to shoot at. We did most of the practices with 6 caliber machine guns. Soon we got to do gunnery from the planes. Radio operators had to learn gunnery because when we weren't working the radios we had to man the left waist gun."

"After my training in Yuma I got transferred to Williams Field Arizona, there we got some refresher courses in communications. From Williams Field I was sent to Tyndel Field Florida. for three more weeks of refresher courses. From there I was transferred to Lincoln Nebraska, for more refresher courses." Norm stayed in the Air Corps six months after the war was over. "When I got word that we dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan I was stunned at first, I had no idea that we had a bomb that powerful." After Japan surrendered Norm had a chance to go over to Japan. "I knew I had a hernia, but they didn't know, before we could go to Japan we had to get a physical. What they did was give us piece of paper and told us to write if we had any illnesses we had to write it on the paper, so I wrote that I thought I had a hernia, they ran some tests, and sure enough I did, and I didn't get to go to Japan. I was discharged three weeks later."