Edwin Stanton Gaither was a big city kid from Allentown, Pennsylvania. At least it seemed to someone from a South Dakota town, that a hundred thousand residents living in his home town constituted a big city. He had ambitions based upon the best “deal” he could think of while carrying out his job as an electronic gunner on a B-29 Super Bomber. His postwar aim was to become a Doctor. He knew it would make him the most money for the least effort. By the year 1954, “The Gate” did add the M. D. initials to his name.

We were assigned to Great Bend Army Air Base, near the town of the same name, in Kansas. At the time our job was to build and operate a school to train crewmembers in the operation and repair of the Remote Control Gunnery System on the B-29. We were all enlisted men with special training which qualified us to perform our project. Of course, we had to have an Officer in Charge. This man had been a school teacher before enlisting. Lt. Bowlby hadn't the faintest idea of the esoteric machinery with which we were all very familiar. In a way, he was mainly a figurehead for those of us who did perform our jobs. He was a fair man to us, and never earned the “chicken shit” sobriquet so many officers carried.

By grabbing the side of his bunk and doing a sort of flip, Edwin Stanton Gaither earned his name, “Swinging Gate.” His acrobatic maneuver landed him, clad only in his underwear, directly in front of the bearer of good news. He flipped his cigarette into the closest butt can and almost sneered, “Hell Bowlby, I wasn't coming down to that place anyway.”

The Lt. turned around, without a word, and left the room to fight his way back to his Officer’s Quarters. Two days later, orders came through assigning Cpl. Edwin S. Gaither as a Gunner in a Bomber Group leaving for overseas in one week.

The Gaither saga continued with many war stories which will be told here, but also regarding the Lt. who removed him from his safe stateside job to combat status because of his remark.

T/Sgt. Edwin S. Gaither had completed his tour of duty with the Bombing Group that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. The trip home, after the surrender of Japan, was on a Troop Ship with hundreds of other fighting men returning from the South Pacific. When the transport landed at San Francisco, there were two parallel gangways installed. One, for those who were disembarking after doing their job to save America. The other, for those who had served no battle time and were being sent to the War Zones for cleanup duties.

Fate had devised a meeting between the “Swingin' Gate” on his way home and Lt. Bowlby on his way overseas. This occurred as one of them was halfway down the gangway at the moment the other was at the same point on his way up the other lane. When he saw the Lt., Gaither only said, “Good luck, Bowlby. Where you're going, you'll need a hellova lot of it.”