The two men recently reconnected after losing touch. “You’ve got to start at the bottom and work up,” Abel kidded him. I was supposed to be learning the equipment.”Ībel heard that story for the first time during a late-May visit with Farrens at Willson House Residential Care. “I wasn’t happy about it – it was horrible - and I went to complain.
“I patched hemorrhoids for 41 days,” he said with a chuckle. “I was surprised to see it, and I was so glad to talk to somebody who was involved in the same stuff I was,” Abel said.įarrens also supervised nurses at the hospital, but not before putting in his time. “He said he had a picture of the Enola Gay, and I told him I was interested in that because I was kind of involved myself,” Abel said.įarrens went home and dug out the roll of 127 film that had been tucked away for decades. Abel was an Army Air Forces cryptographer who handled top-secret messages on the neighboring island of Guam. Their conversation turned to the war, how they had both served in the South Pacific, and the mission of the Enola Gay.įarrens was an Army medic at a hospital on Tinian, the launching point for the attacks that ended the war. Farrens was a barber, and Abel needed a trim. His friend Jim Farrens captured the image of the famous B-29 Superfortress shortly after it returned from dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.Ībel and Farrens met years ago in Aurora, where they were both living at the time. More valuable than the signature, at least to Abel, is the story behind the photo. A photograph of the Enola Gay, signed by pilot Paul Tibbets, has a prominent place on the wall among Miles Abel’s World War II keepsakes.