Les Cook, a “cracker jack” bush pilot amounted to a one man support unit for the 93rd and 340th.
He ferried food, supplies and mail to their camps, landing on water with his pontoon plane if he could or flying low over a clearing, dumping cargo out as he passed.
This didn’t always work out. On one occasion Les, his plane loaded with 25 pound boxes of drift pins and cases of canned vegetables – mostly beets, made a ‘pass and drop’ delivery to the 340th. Drift pins from burst boxes scattered everywhere, even impaling trees, and the trees looked especially macabre with gallons of blood red beet juice dripping from their limbs.
