BROWNSTOWN -- From the comfort of a wood pellet fire and his favorite chair, Francis Shields laughs about World War II.

Planes torn to shreds, blowing a Japanese submarine out of the water, sitting on his helmet instead of wearing it. He just chuckles.

"That's the way he's always been," says Bea Lovell, his oldest daughter.

Shields did the same 64 years ago as a gunner and radio operator on a B-17 in North Africa. His attitude helped him stick out 50 bombing runs to help the Allied forces win World War II.

"Some gunners couldn't take it; they had to quit," says Shields, now 89 and a father of seven. A fellow airman later committed suicide in England.

"It never did bother me," he says.

Shields certainly saw the unpleasant aspects of war during his Army Air Forces duty in 1943. Some planes in his unit, the 353rd Bomb Squadron, didn't return from their flights. Some that did were ripped to shreds with the crewmen in the same condition.

Many World War II soldiers considered flying the craziest job, likening the planes to ducks in the sky, just begging to be shot down.

Shields liked it. He chose it.

Infantrymen spent months in the muck, fighting hand to hand. He was detached from the destruction. It all just looked like a bunch of smoke from his vantage point 25,000 feet in the air.

"I was right because I came home," he quips. "I had a bed every night, breakfast every morning."

Shields, one of seven farm siblings on the Yakama Reservation north of Harrah, enlisted at age 22 on Jan. 7, 1941. The draft had already started and war appeared like an inevitable chore on the horizon.

He was sent to McChord Field, where he joined the 17th Bomb Group. He couldn't become a pilot because he lacked college education, so he signed up as a gunner.

The comedy started immediately. He calls his training light-hearted and easy, believing the men who taught him did so as a punishment for their own tomfoolery. Most of his first year was spent on practice flights around the Northwest.

"Thank God I never saw anything to shoot at because I didn't know how to run" the bottom gun turret, he remembers.

When the United States declared war on Dec. 8, 1941, his crew began patrolling the Pacific Coast in a B-25, looking for Japanese ships. On Christmas Eve, they spotted the outline of a submarine in the mouth of the Columbia River and bombed it out of the water. He doesn't recall any anxiety over his first action.

"It never bothered us because you don't see it," he says.

In 1942, he was transferred to England for light bombing runs in an A-20. On July 4, he flew his first European mission to Belgium.

In November, the Air Forces moved him again, this time to North Africa. He first held a desk job in Oran, Algeria. He remembers bathing in natural hot springs and horsing around. Fun for a while, but it grew boring.

He asked for and received a transfer to the 353rd and began his 50 missions. The Air Forces required 50 runs that involved contact with the enemy before he could go home.

That's when things got ugly -- for some.

In three-plane formations, the squadron flew bombing raids into southern Europe to take out docks, bridges and other enemy facilities. Of course, the enemy fired back with rockets that exploded with flak, shards of steel that spread out and ripped up planes, equipment and people in their way.

They always came from below, so Shields sat on his helmet instead of wearing it. He never knew if it worked, because he never got hit and never noticed any dings in his helmet.

"I never got a scratch," he said. About the worst his crew suffered was a grazed head wound on a fellow gunner. He credits a good pilot and luck.

His 50th mission took out a bridge on the border of Switzerland and Italy. After returning to the United States, the Army sent him to train other airmen in Utah and Idaho. In 1945, the Army discharged him.

He went back to Brownstown and resumed making his living with jobs at area farms. The federal government ran his picture next to newspaper advertisements selling war bonds. It quoted him saying: "If the folks at home can keep the ammunition coming along like that, it will help us to finish the war sooner."

He never really said that, but it made him laugh.

Shields also laughed about his new relationship with Josephine Heilman. When he left, she was a child who attended the same church. When he got back, she was still only 17.

They began dating, even though he was 11 years older and people talked.

She laughed, too. "I didn't listen to them," she says.

They married two months after her 18th birthday in 1947. He farmed for 15 years, then drove a school bus for the Mt. Adams School District. She took care of a house with seven children.

He never discussed the war much, until his children got older and asked about it. He is a member of the American Legion in Harrah and the VFW in Yakima. He also attended a 1997 reunion in Spokane with his mates from the North Africa missions.

In June, Shields had heart surgery. He even laughs about that. He thought he was just out of breath. Lovell took it seriously and rushed him to the hospital.

Today, the couple have 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. They all live in the Yakima Valley, gathering at Christmas, Thanksgiving and Super Bowl Sunday for food and company.

They usually share a few laughs, too.