Army & Navy: Young Man’s War?

Master Sergeant Louis T. (“Soup”) Silva, aged 47, who won the Distinguished Service Cross for shooting down at least three Japanese Zeros over Java (TIME, April 20), had long been considered No. 1 anomaly in an Air Force whose combat crews’ average age is under 25. After fabulous Gunner Silva’s death in the accidental crash of a Flying Fortress in Australia last July, oldsters apparently lost their toe hold in the Air Forces. But last week in London a lean, grizzled, Fortress tailgunner aged 44 turned up: Staff Sergeant Merril W. Gilger, World War I Field Artillery wagoner, onetime Los Angeles real-estate man.

When Major General Carl Spaatz asked Sergeant Gilger how he disposed of a Messerschmitt during a recent raid, the sergeant cropped his answer as closely as he crops his hair. “I shot him down,” he said.