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Any pool of water serves as a "washing machine," and Indians launder their clothing by beating it against rocks. |
Fortune tellers are everywhere. This one uses a trained monkey for delving into the mystic world. |
Bullock carts provide the main form of transportation, are used for hauling everything from fragile pottery to heavy timbers. |
Temples receive the most attention from American soldiers, who spend much time in studying the numerous India religions. |
One of the most symbolic photos of the XX Bomber Command and India is this one of a line of coolies passing in front of a Superfortress. The coolies helped build miles and miles of runways for the Command. |
Women do most of the manual labor. Employed by a construction company, these coolie women are repairing a building. Others work on road gangs, as railroad section hands, and in the rice paddies. |
Market day in the outlying villages is similar to Saturday in the small country towns of America. This woman is bartering for some potatoes. Bamboo juice is sold at the market and by nightfall the area is a place of gayety. |
Rice paddy fishing isn't a profitable occupation, but it does provide some food, and bait for river fishing. The Indians, women and men alike, are seining one of the many roadside ponds. |
Ferry boat operators do a prosperous business, transporting Indians across the many "restricted bridge" rivers. |
India, more so than any other country in this world, has its very wealthy and extremely poor. This photo, taken from the porch of a guest house, shows one of the smaller palaces of a maharajah. |
Cows are sacred to most of the India populace, are free to roam everywhere - whether it be through the business district of a large city, or the grounds of a common villager. Dung is plastered on walls of buildings, left to dry, and then used as fuel. |
The primitive inhabitants of rural India hardly exist, living in slit-bamboo shelters and eating only what they can harvest from the land. Their way of life is almost unbelievable. |
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Jap Decoy Didn't Work It's the natural thing for Superfortress crews to help other members of their group in distress, but they don't easily fall prey to Jap trickery. The enemy painted a decoy B-29 with 300-foot wingspread, so scaled that it appears to be flying at several thousand feet. From a great altitude, the decoy gives the illusion of a B-29 in flight with flames streaming from its port inboard engine. The Japs figured other planes would be drawn down to investigate and become targets for heavy concentration of flak. None did. |
Clothed In Money With acres of other Superfortresses in the background, the 1,000th B-29 to be produced at the Wichita Division plants of Boeing Airplane Company is ready to move into a theater of operation. The Superfortress bears on its aluminum skin approximately $10,000, spontaneous contribution by Boeing-Wichita employees to the Infantile Paralysis Foundation. |
Flight crew poses in front of their plane, which recently flew with LIFE photographer in mission over Burma. |
Tail gunner at his position. |
S/Sgt. Edwin O. Duty (back row, right), Crew Chief and other members of the ground crew. |
Another crew of "OLD•BITCH•U•AIRY BESS" - Front Row (L to R): Irving Lash (Crew Chief - Flight Engineer), Milt Johnson (Right Gunner), Wendell Sheffield (Top Senior Gunner), Eugene Szatlocky (Radar), Rex Walker (Left Gunner), John (Doaksie) Griffin (Tail Gunner). Back Row (L to R): John Mack (Navigator), William Wisener (Bombadier), Bruce Whitfield (Pilot). |
"Old-Bitch-U-Airy Bess" on the hard deck of the flight line being checked and serviced, engines running. |
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"Not just the best trained soldier in the world, not just the best equipped
soldier in the world, but the BEST INFORMED soldier in the world." |