Category: Memoir

A Book in Memory, A Book of Memory: “Fighter Pilot”, by 1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr.

Originally created in February of 2019 and having appeared at one of my Brother blogs, ThePastPresented, I’ve now updated and modified this post – about the book “Fighter Pilot” – comprised of posthumously published letters written by WW II Army Air Force fighter pilot 1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr. – to appear “here”, at WordsEnvisioned. 

Though the book by definition pertains to aviation and military history, by virtue of being a “book” per se (well, that’s what it is!) and bearing two examples of Lt. Beck’s own art, its historical significance and unusual nature merit that its author not be forgotten.  

Enjoy!

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“On the other hand,
if I don’t make it,
everything I have written will be here for anyone to read,
and I feel it will make a better ending to my life than just to be
“missing in action.”

“When you read all this I shall be right there looking over your shoulder.”

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This photographic portrait of Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr. is from the National Archives’ photo collection “Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation – NARA RG 18-PU”.  Though I don’t know the Advanced Flying School from which Lt. Beck graduated and received his commission, the large pin that he’s wearing, bearing the abbreviation “43-B”, indicates that he received his wings in February of 1943. 

No words are needed to convey his pride and determination.  

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Military literature from all eras is replete with autobiographical accounts of the wartime experiences and postwar reminiscences of its participants.  Such narratives, whether published during the immediacy of a conflict, or afterwards – years, and not uncommonly decades later – are typically based upon combinations of official documents, letters, diaries, photographs, illustrations, and above all, human memory, however fickle, imperfect, or uncertain the latter may be.  The commonality of most such accounts, regardless of the era; regardless of the war; even regardless of the identity of the soldier and the nation for which he fought; is that the participant of the past, would become the chronicler, creator, and literary craftsman within the present, for the future. 

Among the vast number of books and monographs presenting the story of a soldier’s wartime experiences, is another kind of literature, bearing its own nature and origin.  That is, stories about the lives and military experiences of servicemen who never returned from war, created by family members – typically parents – sometimes by former comrades – as living memorials that exists in words, and grant indirect testimony of and witness for those who can no longer speak.

A striking example of this genre of military literature is the book Fighter Pilot., created and published in 1946 by Levitt Clinton and Verne Ethel (Tryon) Beck, Sr., of Huntington Park, California.  The book is a posthumous autobiography of their son, First Lieutenant Levitt Clinton Beck Jr., who served as a fighter pilot in the 514th Fighter Squadron of the 406th Fighter Group, of the 9th Air Force.  Centrally based upon the thoughts, musings, retrospectives, and then-undelivered “letters” penned by their son, and including transcripts of correspondence several photographs, Fighter Pilot is historically fascinating, detailed, and from a “human” vantage point, a literary work that is best termed reflective – for the reader, and, by Beck, the writer.

Shot down during a brief encounter with FW-190s of JG 2 or JG 27 on June 29, 1944, Beck crash-landed his damaged Thunderbolt (Bloom’s Tomb; P-47D 42-8473) south of Dreux, France, near Havelu.  His loss is covered in MACR 6224.

Taken to Les Branloires by Roland Larson, he was given civilian clothes by a Mr. Pelletier, and then taken to the town of Anet, where he remained for three weeks, hidden by Madame Paulette Mesnard in a room above her restaurant, the Cafe de la Mairie (on Rue Diane de Poitiers).  There, while safely hidden (Fighter Pilot reveals that Madam Mesnard insisted that Lt. Beck remain there until Anet’s liberation by Allied troops…) he would compose the writings that would eventually become Fighter Pilot.

Three weeks later, Lt. Beck was taken to the home of Mr. Rene Farcy, in Les Vieilles Ventes.

One week further, Beck was picked up by a certain “Jean-Jacques” and the latter’s female companion, “Madame Orsini”.  Ostensibly a member of the Underground, Jean-Jaques was actually Jacques Desoubrie, a double agent who worked for the Gestapo.  Desoubrie took Lt. Beck to a hotel in Paris, on Boulevard St. Michel.

The next day, the Lieutenant was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the prison of Fresnes.

From there, in accordance with German policy (as of the Summer of 1944) towards Allied aviators captured while garbed in civilian clothing and without military identification (dog-tags), and, in association with resistance networks in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, Beck was one of 168 captured Allied aviators sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

A very detailed account of the mens’ experiences at Buchenwald can be found at the Wkikipedia biography of RNZAF pilot Squadron Leader Phillip John Lamason, DFC & Bar, who became the senior officer of the group.  As quoted, “Upon arrival, Lamason, as ranking officer, demanded an interview with the camp commandant, Hermann Pister, which he was granted. He insisted that the airmen be treated as POWs under the Geneva Conventions and be sent to a POW camp.  The commandant agreed that their arrival at Buchenwald was a “mistake” but they remained there anyway.  The airmen were given the same poor treatment and beatings as the other inmates.  For the first three weeks at Buchenwald, the prisoners were totally shaved, denied shoes and forced to sleep outside without shelter in one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps, known as ‘Little Camp’.   Little Camp was a quarantine section of Buchenwald where the prisoners received the least food and harshest treatment.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“As Buchenwald was a forced labor camp, the German authorities had intended to put the 168 airmen to work as slave-labor in the nearby armament factories.   Consequently, Lamason was ordered by an SS officer to instruct the airmen to work, or he would be immediately executed by firing squad.  Lamason refused to give the order and informed the officer that they were soldiers and could not and would not participate in war production.   After a tense stand-off, during which time Lamason thought he would be shot, the SS officer eventually backed down.

“Most airmen doubted they would ever get out of Buchenwald because their documents were stamped with the acronym “DIKAL” (Darf in kein anderes Lager), or “not to be transferred to another camp”.   At great risk, Lamason and Burney secretly smuggled a note through a trusted Russian prisoner, who worked at the nearby Nohra airfield, to the German Luftwaffe of their captivity at the camp.   The message requested in part, that an officer pass the information to Berlin, and for the Luftwaffe to intercede on behalf of the airmen.  Lamason understood that the Luftwaffe would be sympathetic to their predicament, as they would not want their captured men treated in the same way; he also knew that the Luftwaffe had the political connections to get the airmen transferred to a POW camp.”

Eventually, the men were transferred out of Buchenwald, with 156 going to Stalag Luft III (Sagan).  Ten others were were transported from the camp over a period of several weeks.

Two of the 168 did not survive:  They were Lt. Beck, and, Flying Officer Philip Derek Hemmens (serial 152583), a bomb aimer in No. 49 Squadron, Royal Air Force.  Hemmens’ Lancaster Mk III, ND533, EA * M, piloted by F/O Bryan Esmond Bell, was shot down during a mission to Etampes on the night of June 9-10.  Ironically, Hemmens was the only crew member to actually escape from the falling plane.  His fellow crew members died in the crash of EA * M.

Lt. Beck, weakened from an earlier bout of illness from the conditions in the concentration camp, died from a combination of pneumonia and pleurisy while isolated in the camp’s “hospital”, on the evening of September 29-30, 1944.

He has no grave.  His name is commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing at the Luxembourg American Cemetery.

Similarly, the name of F/O Hemmens, who died on October 18, is commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial.

Well, there is at least some justice in this world, even if that justice is not speedy:  Jacques Desoubrie, whose infiltratation of two French Resistance groups eventuated in the arrest of at least 150 Resistants, fled to Germany after France’s liberation.  He was, “…arrested after being denounced by his ex-mistress, and executed by firing squad as a collaborationist on 20 December 1949 in the fort of Montrouge, in Arcueil (near Paris).”

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For one so young at the time (Beck was 24), the overlapping combination of seriousness, introspection, contemplation, and literary skill (and, some levity) in his writing are immediately apparent.

A central and animating factor in Beck’s words was the realization of the danger of his predicament, and the possibility that – however remote, at the time; for reasons unknown, at the time – he might not return.  He was realistic about this.  Whether this feeling arose from a premonition, or objective contemplation of the danger of his situation, either or both motivations spurred him to record thoughts and create letters for two eventualities:

His return, and the creation of a permanent record of his experiences, perhaps for the sake of reminiscing; perhaps for eventual publication.

His failure to return, and a document by which he could be remembered by his parents and friends.  (He was an only son.)

As he recorded:

“The idea has been growing within me these last few days that I should like to take all these experiences and others I have had, and have my book, “Fighter Pilot,” published after the war is over.  There is the thought, too that “Lady Luck” may not be able to ride all the way with me.  So, while I have a few days to wait for the French Underground to complete their plans for my escape back to England, I see no reason why I shouldn’t write every day, all that I can, so that just in case my luck has run out, you will know what has happened to your wandering son.”

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I obtained a copy of Fighter Pilot some decades ago.  The book was republished in Honolulu by “Book Vompay LLC” in 2008, with the book’s Worldcat entry stating that, “This edition is a revised and corrected version of the original, which was first published in 1946.”  As of this moment – late 2022 – two original copies are available from two eBay sellers, at $20 and $40, while Kissinger Legacy Reprints has republished the book for a selling price of $40 to $50.  

Some extracts from the book’s text, as well as some images, are shown below.  These will give you a feel for the book’s literary and historical flavor.

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The book’s dust jacket bears an image of a bubbletop Thunderbolt, almost certainly sketched by Beck himself.  Though the canopy frame bears a kill marking denoting a destroyed German plane (see account below), this aerial victory was not confirmed: USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World II, contains no entry for this event.

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A poem by Beck, composed at the age of twenty.

I SEE IT NOW

(Written in 1940)
By L.C. Beck, Jr.

I WATCHED the day turn into nite,
Creeping shadows reached the sky;
Birds flew to their nests,
Still singing as they went;
All mankind lay quiet at rest,
As though to heaven sent.
Quiet ne’er before was like this –
Even wind hung softly about the trees,
As is afraid of waking birds,
Sleeping in their nests;
‘Twas like another world to me,
And I found myself wishing –
Wishing it were true.

I’ve suffered – and have hated it,
But in my mind a thought was born,
Making a new path for me –
On which I now find my way.

I see it now –
While I suffer here
I must not question of it;
It is the way of life –
Too much happiness would spoil me;

I’d grow too fond of life on earth
And the after life I seek
Would not be so sweet -.
We must have our troubles here;
Our hearts torn by loss,
Our hands made bloody by war,
Our future left unknown.

Once again the time has come
When day and night do meet, –
But all are going in ways apart
And but touch here in their passing;
I’m glad that God mas made it so
For it thrills me to my very soul
To see so bright a luster of the day
Meet the sweet sereneness of the night.

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The book’s simple and unadorned cover.

____________________

1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr., in an undated image taken in the United States.

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Pilot, propeller, and power.  Given Beck’s rolled-up sleeves and the intense sunlight, this picture was probably taken somewhere in the southeastern United States.  Another clue: 406th Fighter Group P-47s did not have white engine cowlings.

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Dated March 8, 1944, this picture is captioned “Officer’s Party, AAF”.

Fighter Pilot lists the names of the men in the photo.  They are (left to right):

Front Row

Billington, James Lynn 2 Lt. (0-810463) – Queens County, N.Y.
KIA June 24, 1944, MACR 6346, P-47D 43-25270
Dugan, Bernard F. 2 Lt. (0-811868) – Montgomery County, Pa.
KNB April 15, 1944 (No MACR)
Born 8/16/19
Arlington National Cemetery; Buried 7/19/48
Beck, Levitt Clinton, Jr., Lt.

Middle Row

Long, Bryce E. Lt. (0-811938) – Edmond, Ok. (Survived war)
Van Etten, Chester Lumley Major (0-663442) Los Angeles, Ca. (Survived war)
Gaudet, Edward R. 2 Lt. (0-686738) – Middlesex County, Ma.
KIA June 29, 1944, MACR 6225, P-47D 42-8682
“Atherton”
Benson, Marion Arnold 2 Lt. (0-806035) – Des Moines County, Ia.
KIA June 17, 1944, MACR 6635, P-47D 42-8493

Rear Row

Cramer, Bryant Lewis 1 Lt. ( 0-810479) – Chatham County, Ga.
KIA August 7, 1944, MACR 7405, P-47D 42-75193
Cara Montrief (grand-daughter)  According to Fighter Pilot, Cramer’s daughter was born three weeks after her father was shot down.
Dorsey III, Isham “Ike” Jenkins – Opelika, Al. (Survived war)
David “Whitt” Dorsey (brother)

Note that Major Van Etten is wearing RAF or RCAF wings.

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Lieutenant Beck’s loss in combat is covered in Missing Air Crew Report 6224.  However, Beck’s own account of his last mission, written while he was in hiding at Anet and providing the “other side” of the Missing Air Crew Report, appears in Fighter Pilot.  His final radio call, “Eddie, I think I may have to bail out,” – probably to 2 Lt. Edward R. Gaudet – was heard and reported as “My airplane is hit.  I think I’ll have to bail out,” by 1 Lt. Bryant L. Cramer, who himself was shot down and killed less than two months later.

As for Lt. Gaudet, he was shot down and killed during the very same aerial engagement as Lt. Beck, while flying P-47D 42-8682.  His loss is covered in MACR 6225.

Images of MACR 6224, and Lt. Beck’s story as recorded in Fighter Pilot, follow below:

CHAPTER TWO

My First “Victory”

WE WERE TO fly the “early one” that morning of June 29th.  We dashed down in the murky dawn, that only England can boast about, for breakfast and briefing.  Both very satisfying, we took off and headed for our target, just a few miles south-west of Paris, along the Seine river.  My flight carried no bombs, as we were to be top cover for the squadron on their bomb run.  It was a group (three squadrons) mission.

Just before we reached the first target, a bridge, the flak opened up and we did some evasive action to go around it.  None of it came very close to my flight, but we were not giving them very much of a target to shoot at, I guess.  The clouds made it rather hard to keep the others down below in sight, so I dropped down to about 12,000 feet.  We lost the rest of the squadron for a while and then I spotted them to the west, being shot at.  I started over there with my flight and as we neared the others, someone in my flight called:

“Break, Beck, flak.  Break left!”

I did, and then, Eddie, I believe, said: “It’s a 190.”

I turned 180 degrees and saw the 190 in the middle of three 47s — Cramer, Eddie and Unger.  I gave it full boost and started back after the little devil.  He looked very small among the Thunderbolts and I had no trouble recognizing him as a 190.  He was breaking up and then I think he saw me coming after him as he turned around and we were then going at each other head on.  For a brief second I thought of breaking up into a position where I could drop on his tail, but he was the first Jerry I’d ever seen and I wasn’t going to let him live that long if I could help it.

I knew, however, that his chances of shooting me, at head on, would be just as good but I was a little too eager and mad to give a damn.  I squeezed the trigger and I think the first round hit him because I saw strikes on his cowl, wing roots and canopy all the way in.  I guess I’d have flown right through him, but he broke up a little to the left and I raked his belly at very close range.  I thought to myself:

“Becky, there’s your first victory.”
Just to make sure, though, I turned with him and started down but I didn’t seem to be going very fast.  I rammed the throttle with the palm of my hand but was rather astonished to feel it already up against the stop.  I flipped on the water switch but that didn’t seem to do any good either.  I looked down at my instruments and then it was very clear.  My engine had been shot out.  I felt a little panicky at first but settled down and started “checking things.”

Nothing I did seemed to have any effect, so I called:

“Eddie, I think I may have to bail out.“

Oil started licking back over the cockpit.  Here we go again, I thought.  Just like Cherbourg.  She is even worse this time, I guess.  The damned engine was just turning over and that was about all.  I knew I could never make the channel but I was still trying, I guess, because I was messing around with the throttle and everything I could get my hands on …  6000 feet now.

I still had my eye on my “victory”, though.  He was going down in a spiral to the left, smoking very badly.  Wham!  Something hit me in the back and threw me forward.  I didn’t need to look to know what it was.  I broke to the left pulling streamers off everything and there he was.  A sleek little 190 sitting on my tail – gray and shiny, spitting out flames of death up at me.  It wasn’t a very pretty sight, I must say — looking down his cannons — I knew then that I was no longer fighting to get the ship running again.  I was fighting for my life!!

I was pretty scared for an instant, but it seems that just when I get that feeling inside and almost think I’m a coward, something snaps.  It did, and I was once again the mad fighting American I had been, with an engine.  I forgot for the time being that my engine was dead, I guess, because I watched him flash past and then jerked my kite around to the right to a point I knew he would be.  I hadn’t looked out the front of the canopy for some time and now as I did, all I saw was the reflection in the glass, covered with oil, of my gun-sight.  I cursed and pulled the trigger, shooting in the dark, but at least I felt better.  I kicked the ship sideways to have a look out of the side and there was Jerry — just a hundred yards up front.  I swung the nose around to about the right position, I thought, and fired.  I don’t know whether I hit him or not, but he seemed in pretty much of a hurry to get the hell away.

I pressed the “mike” button and said:

“I’m bailing out.”  But all I heard was deathly silence.  I knew then that my radio had been blown to bits by the Jerry on my tail.

I thought that I’d better jump at about 4000 feet, so I undid my safety belt and just then my ship shuddered and I heard terrific explosions all around me.  I looked out of the only clear space left in the canopy, and saw more flak than I’d ever dreamed possible in one small area.  I couldn’t see which way to break so I just went to the right, because the ship did, I guess.  I knew then that to bail out would mean sure capture and I still had just a wee bit of hope left for my chances of getting away.  I decided to stick with the ship and try a trick that “Benny” and I had talked about one night before he was killed.

I opened the canopy a crack so I could see the ground and when I did, I saw the longest clear stretch of land I think I ever saw in France.  It was just about the right distance away, I thought, for me to make my dive to the deck and then scoot over there, at tree top level, and belly in.

I remembered that I had taken my safety belt off, so I started trying to put it on and still keep my eye on Jerry at the same time — also fly the ship— without an engine.  Some fun, and if you want to try your ability at being versatile, it is a good trick.

I got under Jerry without his seeing me, I guess, and then down among the trees; I had to keep a keen eye out of the cockpit, so I gave up the idea of buckling my belt again, and decided that I would stretch my luck a bit more, by doing the impossible.  I really had no choice, but to hell with the belt.  Here comes Jerry again.  I had about 275 MPH, so I felt pretty “safe”, you might say.  I would wait until he got in range, then break and throw off his aim and then belly in.  It was very simple, when you happen to be the luckiest guy in the whole air force.  I put one hand on the instrument panel and waited until I got slowed down a bit.  I eased her down slowly and was just about ready to touch the ground when I realized that I had not put my flaps down and my stalling speed would be much too fast.  I pulled up, but just before I did, I felt my prop hit the ground.  I pushed the flap handle down and then watched the grass go by on either side.  It seemed as though I’d buzzed half way across France by now and I must be running out of field.  I kicked the ship sideways and looked.  The trees were still quite some distance ahead, so I eased the old girl down and then I was sliding.  I put my “stick hand” on the panel, too, and just braced myself and waited.  It shook me around quite a bit, but as I had ridden quite a few rough roller coasters without a safety belt, I was doing pretty well without one now at 100 MPH or so in a 7 1/2-ton hunk of metal.  Just before the last few feet, the ship turned to the right and threw me crashing into the left side of the cockpit.  It was then that I realized that my back and ribs were already sore from the shock I’d received from the 190’s cannon.

Flames were licking up over the cowling of my ship and I had no more than enough time to get out.  I knew I wouldn’t have to destroy my ship.  I jumped out, parachute and all, and again hit on my left side, on the wing.  I was pretty sore around that part of me by now, also quite excited and too mad to care much.

A few yards from the ship I stopped long enough to take off all the equipment strapped to me.  I considered taking the escape kit out of my ‘chute pack, but there wasn’t time.

When you are 100 miles inside enemy territory, naturally one has the feeling that every bush hides a German.  I was quite inexperienced in ground fighting, so I didn’t look forward to shooting it out with the Germans with my .45 pistol.

Thoughts were running through my mind about just what to do and how, all during those first five or ten seconds.  I even thought about hiding my ‘chute as we had been instructed in a lecture, but I looked back at my airplane and almost laughed.

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At approximately 0815 on 29 June, I was flying the wing of Yellow Flight Leader, Lt. Beck, at 13,500 ft. on a heading of 260o over Dreux.  The flight was jumped all too effectively at this time by four FW-190s, who came out of the clouds directly over us.  Lt. Beck and I broke left, bit one of the 190s got hits on Beck’s airplane before I could get it off his tail.  His engine was smoking rather badly, and as I followed the enemy aircraft down in a dive, attempting to close into effective range, I heard Lt. Beck call on the radio and say, “My airplane is hit.  I think I’ll have to bail out.”  I can not say for sure whether he made the jump successfully or not, nor am I positive he did jump.  It is quite probable, however, that he did jump, and successfully.  A pilot from the 513th Squadron, flying below us at the time of the encounter, reported seeing an unidentified, black fighter dive into the ground, and saw a chute open up above it.  The Focke-Wulfs were silver.

Missing Air Crew Report 6224…

Here’s NARA’s digital version of the original Luftgaukommando Report (“Meldung über den Abschuss eines US-Amerikanisch Flugzeuges” – Report about the downing of an American airplane) covering the loss of Lt. Beck and his Thunderbolt: J-1582.  Note that though Lt. Beck was shot down on June 28, 1944, this document was actually compiled only a little over four months later: November 2, 1944.  Lt. Beck had died two months before.

Also from Here’s a list (list number 28, to be specific) of four of the Allied warplanes shot down in France on June 27-28, 1944.  Data about losses appears as black typed text, while identification numbers of pertinent Luftgaukommando Reports appears in bright red.  The Luftgaukommando Report numbers are KE 9108, KE 9065, J 1582 (Lt. Beck’s plane), and KE 9064.  Note that Lt. Beck, name then unknown, is reported as being a “flüchtig”: close translation “fugitive”.

I’ve been unable to correlate KE 9108 to any aircraft, but KE 9064 definitely pertains to Lancaster III JB664 (ZN * N) of No. 106 Squadron RAF,  piloted by P/O Norman Wilson Easby, and KE 9065 covers Lancaster I LL974 (ZN * F), piloted by F/Sgt. Ernest Clive Fox.  Of the seven men in the crew of each aircraft – both of No. 106 Squadron RAF – there were, sadly, no survivors.

As described in W.R. Chorley’s Bomber Command Losses, Volume 5:

JB664: T/o 2255 Metheringham similarly targeted.  [To attack rail facilities at Vitry-le-Francois.]  Crashed 2 km E of Bransles (Seine-et-Marne), 16 km SE of Nemours.  All [crew] were buried in Bransles Communal Cemetery.

LL974: T/o 2255 Metheringham to attack rail facilities at Vity-le-Francois.  Shot down by a night-fighter, crashing at Thibie (Marne), 11 km WSW from the centre of Chalons-sur-Marne. All were buried locally, since when their remains have been brought to Dieppe for interment in the Canadian War Cemetery.

Though KE Report numbers – covering British Commonwealth Aircraft losses – appear in NARA’s master list of Luftgaukommando Reports, I don’t know if (well, I don’t believe) they’re actually held at NARA.

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Here’s a postcard view of the main street of Rue Diane de Poitiers in Anet.  Lt. Beck lived on the third floor of the building on the right, in the room with the window directly below the small “X”.

Below, is a 2018 Oogle Street view of Rue Diane de Poitiers, which (well, to the best degree possible!) replicates the orientation and perspective of the above 1940s postcard image.  Akin to the postcard, the view is oriented south-southeast.  The window of Lt. Beck’s hiding place is visible directly beneath the leftmost of the two television antennae.

The location of Madame Mesnard’s restaurant was (in 2018) occupied by a branch of the Banque Populaire, while the business to the right (_____ Centrale“) was at the time the Pressing Diane Anet laundary service.

Below is another 2018 Oogle view of 16 – 18 Rue Diane de Poitiers.

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Here’s s a very different view of Rue Diane de Poitiers: The drawing, sketched by Lt. Beck himself, shows buildings directly across the street from the window of his room.  His self-portrait appears as a reflection in the lower right windowpane, with his initials – “By LCB” – just below.

Below is a 2018 Oogle street view of the building directly across the street from Lieutenant Beck’s room.  In 2019, it was the home of the Boulangerie pâtisserie chocolaterie à Anet (Chocolate Bakery Pastry Shop in Anet).

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Here are Lt. Beck’s last diary entries and final words to his parents, composed just prior to his departure from Anet, and, his ill-fated attempt to return to Allied forces:

It’s a very beautiful day today, the first nice sunny one in over a week. I shall just have to lie in the sun awhile, even though I won’t get much written.  As I said previously, I was to leave at 8:00 o’clock at night.  That was wrong, I find, after talking to Paulette about it.  It was at 8:00 o’clock in the morning.  That means that I don’t have tomorrow to write and so today must wind up my writing from France.

It has been lots of fun writing all this.  I guess that I am just halfway glad that I got in on this part of the war.  Just a few hours after I set my plane down in France, I thought to myself:

“Boy, what a story this will make.”

Even if I don’t get out of France, ever, this will, by mail, and that is one reason why I have taken it so seriously.  Had I felt that it never would be read I should not have written so much.

Writing something like this that will not be mailed right away gives me a chance to say just anything I feel.  If I get back to England and finally to America again, I can just tear up anything that was meant to be read if I were killed trying to get back.  On the other hand, if I don’t make it, everything I have written will be here for anyone to read, and I feel it will make a better ending to my life than just to be “missing in action.”

No one wants to die like that — just without anyone knowing what happened.  I feel then that I have really accomplished a great deal in leaving these passing thoughts behind.  Hoping with all my heart that they will be of some comfort to all my friends, and especially to my Mom and Dad.

When you read all this I shall be right there looking over your shoulder.  (You may not see me but I am here.)  You can feel that I have not gone away, but have, instead, come back to you.  (I am so much closer than I was in England and France.)

You should see my tan now.  I’m either mighty dirty or very tan, one or the other.  At least I like it and feel much more healthy when I’m brown, as I have told you before.

I’ll be darned if Larson didn’t bring me two packages of cigarettes.  He must have killed two Jerries to get them.  What a guy!!!

How can a guy feel sad and lonely with someone doing everything in the world for you – ?

Mom, if you will, I’d like you to write a letter to Paulette and to Larson.  They can get the French lady I spoke of, to translate it for them.  You can write two or just one letter — suit yourself.  Address it to Larson Roland, Anet, France.

He has lived here all his life and everyone knows him.  Also, if you like, you can ask them to write and tell you just what happened.  You will want to know I am sure and if there is any way humanly possible, they will find out and write you.

So, as this lovely day draws to an end, so does my writing.  Always remember this saying which you put at the bottom of so many of your letters.  It is truly a short, sincere, and very simple statement but holds a world of comfort and thought:

“Keep smiling.”

I have kept smiling every day and it has made each day of my life joyously happy.  Just remember me as always smiling, Mom.  And now it is you and Dad who must, “Keep your chin up” and “Keep smiling”, always.

I shall always be, Your loving son

— L.C.—

______________________________

Earlier in the text appears a letter to an unknown “Helen”:

Helen,

You didn’t think I would forget you, did you?

After knowing a girl as lovely as you, for twelve years, a guy would be absolutely a “dope” if he did!

Thinking of all our wonderful times together is easy but to forget them would take more than a lifetime.

I guess something must have gone wrong with the machine that “puts names on bullets”.  We both were quite sure, weren’t we?  I really felt that I would live to be a hundred, but I suppose I can say, quite safely, that in my 24 years I have had my share of living.

It’s always nicer, anyway, to end a story at its best climax.  My story ends just as I like it.  Full of thrills and excitement and with the blood tingling in my veins — Fighting.

I guess there isn’t much else to say.  You know how I always was about such things.  Perhaps leaving things unsaid at times is better.  Just now, anything I say might sound foolish or untrue.  Perhaps it would be, but when a person writes a note of this type he doesn’t very often say things he doesn’t mean.

If you can see my point I shall only say this and no more.

I loved you dearly when we were at our best.  You must have known.  Surely you could tell.  As for some of the time, I will admit that I wasn’t sure.

Our love affair was, ’tis true, quite irregular and although it might have been better, I shall always think of it as a very wonderful part of my life.

Perhaps had we been a bit older when we met and I a bit more settled, as well as you, we would have been married.

As it turned out you are much better off as you would be a widow now instead of a beautiful young girl, with a fine future ahead of you.

Well, “Sweet Stuff,” I shall say Byeeeee now, with a kiss for old times.

I want to wish you every happiness that can be yours.

Until we meet again — I shall be waiting.

Love, L. C.

______________________________

Finally, just before his departure from Anet:

If anything happens to me, I hope that you can finish my story.  It would be my last wish and I think a very nice way to end a thus far, perfectly swell life.  Naturally, I truly hope that I shall be able to finish the story myself, but if not, the ending will be for you to finish.  Paulette will have someone write you and tell you just what happened, if the French Underground can find out.  This is quite an unhappy little note, isn’t it?  I feel much the opposite, however.

______________________________

______________________________

Here are images of four of the pilots mentioned by Beck, or, appearing in the group photograph above.

This is “Dorsey III”, namely, Isham “Ike” Jenkins Dorsey III, of Opelika, Alabama.  He survived the war.  Contributed by his brother, David “Whitt” Dorsey, this photo appears at Isham Dorsey III’s commemorative page at the Registry of the National WW II Memorial.

______________________________

“Unger”, mentioned in the account of Beck’s last mission, is listed in Fighter Pilot as “Lt. Edwin H. Unger, Jr., New York, N.Y.”  His image, as an aviation cadet, appears in a composite of photographic portraits of servicemen from Nassau, New York, in the Nassau Daily Review-Star of May 26, 1944, accessed via Thomas N. Tyrniski’s FultonHistory website.  (That’s where the “If you are reading this you have too much time on your hands.” is from!)  Lt. Unger survived the war.

______________________________

This is Major Chester L. Van Etten of Los Angeles, who’s seen (wearing RCAF or RAF wings) in the center of the above group photo.  This image, also at the Registry of the National WW II Memorial, appears in a commemorative page created by Chester L. Van Etten himself.

______________________________

Also appearing at the WW II Memorial Registry is this image of Lt. Bryant L. Cramer, appearing on a commemorative page created by his grand-daughter, Cara Montrief.  Given the markings on the P-47s cowl, I assume that this image was taken in the Continental United States.

Here’s Lt. Cramer’s portrait, taken in August of 1943, from the National Archives’ collection “Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation“.

References

Beck, Levitt C., Jr. (Beck, Levitt C., Sr.), Fighter Pilot, Mr. and Mrs. Levitt C. Beck, Sr., Huntington Park, Ca., 1946

Chorley, W.R., Royal Air Force Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War Volume 5 – 1944, Midland Publishing, Hinckley, England, 1997

USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World War II – USAF Historical Study No. 85, Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center, Air University, 1978

First Lieutenant Levitt Clinton Beck., Jr. – FindAGrave biographical profile

P-47D 42-8473 “Bloom’s Tomb” – at 406th Fighter Group

Lancaster ND533 – at Aerosteles

Lancaster ND533 – at North East War Memorials Project

Lancaster ND533 – at WW2 Talk

Jacques Desoubrie – at Wikipedia

Allied Airmen at Buchenwald – at Wikipedia

Allied Airmen at Buchenwald – at National Museum of the United States Air Force

Squadron Leader Phillip John Lamason, DFC & Bar – at Wikipedia

 

Story of a Secret State, by Jan Karski [Ever-so-slightly-revised post…]

Sometimes, to see the present more clearly, you have to go back to the past.

Case in point, “this” post, created way back on December 6 of 2016 (a “lifetime” in blog history!), showing cover art – by an unknown artist – of Popular Library’s 1965 paperback imprint of Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State.    

However, it’s only befitting to show the very cover of the first edition of Karaki’s superbly written, riveting, and morally impassioned work.  Published by Houghton Mifflin (Boston) in 1944, the front cover displays a stylized white eagle from the National Coat of Arms of Poland…  

…while the rear cover shows Blackstone Studios’ portrait of Jan Karski.  

________________________________________

…and here is the front cover of Popular Library’s paperback:

story-of-a-secret-state-jan-karski-1944

We were in a part of Poland neither of us knew well.
We were in uniform, possessed no documents of any kind,
and had no idea of conditions about us.
We were hungry; weakened by the ordeals of the last few weeks;
and in the now heavy downpour had no protection but our threadbare garments.
In the circumstances, there was nothing to do but trust to luck.
Determining to knock at the door of the first dwelling we came upon,
we got up and walked through the wood
until we came to a narrow strip of grassless soil
that was obviously either a path or a road.

After about three hours of trudging through the rain,
we perceived the outlines of a village, and slackened our pace,
approaching it cautiously.  
Tiptoeing quietly up to the first cottage,
we found ourselves at a small, typical peasants’ dwelling.  
Hesitantly we stood before the door from under which a dim light issued.  
As I raised my hand to knock, I felt a tremor of nervousness and apprehension.  
I rapped on the door with brusque over-emphasis to allay my dread.

‘Who is it?’ The trembling voice of a peasant reassured me slightly.

‘Come out, please,’ I replied,
attempting to make my voice sound polite but authoritative,
‘it is very important.’
The door opened slowly,
disclosing a gray-headed old peasant with a grizzled beard.  
He stood there in his underwear, obviously frightened and cold.  
A wave of warm air from the interior made me feel almost faint
with the urge to enter and bask in it.

‘What do you want?’ he asked in a tone of mingled indignation and fear.

I ignored the question.  
I decided to try to play boldly on his feelings.
‘Are you or are you not a Pole?’  
I demanded sternly. ‘Answer me.’

‘I am a Polish patriot,’
he replied with greater composure and celerity than I had anticipated.

‘Do you love your country?’ I continued undismayed.

‘I do.’

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘Yes, I do.’

The old man evinced considerable impatience at my questions
but no longer seemed terrified – merely curious.
I proceeded to satisfy his curiosity.

‘We are Polish soldiers who have just escaped from the Germans.
We are going to join the army and help them save Poland.
We are not defeated yet.  You must help us and give us civilian clothes.
If you refuse and try to turn us over to the Germans, God will punish you.’

He gazed at me quizzically from under his thick eyebrows.  
I could not tell if he was amused, impressed, or alarmed.

‘Come inside,’ he said dryly, ‘out of this miserable rain.
I will not turn you over to the Germans.’

But Wait, There’s More!…

…some links pertaining to the life of Jan Karski, at…

… Remember This Film

… Wikipedia

… Culture PL

… Internet Archive (Jan Karski Papers)

… Online Archive of California (Jan Karski Papers)

… Jan Karski Educational Foundation

… Yad Vashem

… Jewish Virtual Library

… Accidental Talmudist

… Military History Fandom

December 6, 2016 – 242 hits as of 7/21/22

Life With A Star, by Jiří Weil, Preface by Philip Roth – 1989 (1964) [Jacqueline Schuman]

I went into the entryway of a house and looked at my face. 
And then I knew I shouldn’t have. 
The mirror shouldn’t have been used to show me my image. 
I should have used it instead to reflect sunlight onto the cracked walls of my room. 
Because at that moment I saw for the first time what Josef Roubicek looked like,
and it was not a nice sight. 
I saw shrunken cheeks, with a large nose protruding between them;
I saw two deep furrows painfully framing a mouth;
I saw grayish skin, a wrinkled forehead, and sunken eyes behind glasses. 
This was getting me nowhere, being able to look at my face on my birthday. 
There was nothing in it for me. 
I shouldn’t have looked forward to it, nor should I have bought the mirror. 
I had no need for it. 
It slipped from my hand and broke into a hundred pieces on the tiled floor. 
I left the house without even looking back at the slivers,
and then I began to laugh at myself, at my vanity and longing. 
No, this was not the way back to life.

– Jiří Weil –

Those Who Fall, by John G. Muirhead – 1986 [Cover by Eric Joyner, Interior Illustrations by Susan Coons]

This post has been updated to include Tom Ferrell’s laudatory review of Those Who Fall, from The New York Times Book Review.  The review follows…

‘I Drop Bombs.  That’s My Job’

THOSE WHO FALL
By John Muirhead.
Illustrated.  258 pp.  New York:
Random House.  $18.95.

By Tom Ferrell

The New York Times Book Review
February 15, 1987

PEOPLE who have been in battle have a claim on our attention, as the Vietnam veterans keep insisting.  This is not because we are grateful, or even because we should be.  There’s a terrible disproportion between risk and gain, increasing with time.  The Americans in a World War I cemetery lost all they had to lose, but it would be a bold and speculative accountant of history who might try to show just how we are better off in 1987 for men who died very young in 1917.

John Muirhead isn’t dead, though men were killed in his plane and more than enough airmen went down in flames before his eyes.  He too has trouble defining his claim on our attention.  This is how “Those Who Fall” begins:

“I suppose I am like most men who soldiered for a time.  I think that something unusual happened to me; some particular meaning was revealed to me so I should set it down.  Men have been boring their wives, their children, and other men with these kind of stories from Marathon through Chickamauga, and I’m no different from the lot.  Having survived it all, I can’t leave well enough alone, but must ponder on it and remember and talk at least about one part of it that was, I think, a kind of glory.”

Mr. Muirhead, whose first book this is, is now a retired engineer.  In early 1944 he was a B-17 pilot based near Foggia, Italy, flying missions up the Adriatic and over the Alps to targets like Regens-burg, Munich and Wiener Neustadt.  For combat soldiers, the men of his heavy bomber group enjoyed reasonable material conditions: hot meals, dry beds in which they could safely sleep, even hot water at times.  Then they would rise, before dawn, to start a long day’s ride over an armed and hostile industrial society, 10 men in a contraption 75 feet long and weighing not all that much more than a New York City bus.

The chief hazards were fighters – Germany still had at that time enough planes, pilots and fuel to mount a vigorous defense – and flak.  “We edged past Pola,” Mr. Muirhead writes, “and were saluted with a barrage of flak that for all but a few bursts fell short of the low-left squadron.  Three stray shells exploded in the center of the formation.  I could see the orange flame in the middle of the black puffs.  Two successive bursts erupted off the tip of our right wing and magically an array of star-shaped holes appeared in our windshield.  …  It never seemed to us that the flak came from anything on the ground.  Not from guns that men fired.  Flak came from the sky itself; it blossomed there.”  Things got rapidly worse and stayed worse for hours; on this trip to Regensburg, a particularly horrible one, Mr. Muirhead’s left waist gunner was killed, one engine was shot out and his group lost 11 of 21 planes.

• • •

Fear and self-induced amnesia became the poles of Mr. Muirhead’s service life.  He avoided knowing the other members of his crews.  He tells us, repeatedly, that he forgot why the war was being fought and didn’t want to know.  “I work in this little parish,” he tells a nonflying officer friend.  “I’m employed to fly a bomber from here to there.  I drop some bombs there, and then I come back here – if I’m lucky.  That’s my job; I’m used to it.”

On June 28, 1944, he was shot down over Bulgaria, surviving with most of his crew.  Defeat brought a kind of relief, but apparently not only because capture enhanced his chances of living out the war.  “Peace and comradeship,” he writes, could now replace professional relations among his crew and his new acquaintances in captivity.  Though he nowhere says so, I suspect he was glad to see his responsibility diminished.  Another pilot’s error in formation that had destroyed two B-17s and 20 men returns oppressively to his memory several times in his narrative.

His P.O.W. camp was atop a hill, with splendid views; but life in it was very lousy, literally.  Also hungry and unmedicated, though it isn’t clear that his Bulgarian captors were in much better case; the Germans had stripped their unfortunate ally to support their own military machine as their situation deteriorated on both fronts.  In September, with the Russians massed on the Bulgarian border, the camp commandant opened the gate and released the prisoners.  What happened after that Mr. Muirhead doesn’t say.

WE haven’t been bored; the battle stuff has been keenly drawn, the terror and desperation, some of it quiet, are as real as can be.  There’s a lot of soldierly helling around and a lot of funny obscene conversation, funny in the way reflex obscenity can be when it supplants or augments official military jargon (there’s also a lot of effortful, quasi-poetic writing, much of which deserves good marks for trying).  And there’s enough nuts-and-bolts matter about caring for planes and running the squadron to fix the whole tale solidly in the slot of 1944 material technology.  All excellent of its kind, and it is a kind, the kind that feeds little bookstores and catalogue houses specializing in “militaria” and “aeronautica.”

But what about the glory?  Promised at the start, it begins to glimmer in the P.O.W. camp when the men win a tiny victory over toilet regulations.  “To endure we sought to win such trifles to measure the day.  We had become aliens of the poorest kind, and we had to find more than bits of bread to live on.  …  The last hour, the last minute, the last second of the last day, would come to pass, opening the way for us.  That would be the moment of our glory, our long-remembered glory.”  And so it proved, when Mr. Muirhead and two comrades, with four legs among them, walked out the prison gate and across their hilltop – a victory parade without a band.  Military memoirs don’t dare to dress themselves in glory much any more, and maybe you had to be there, but Mr. Muirhead has the courage to trust his memories.  I’m convinced he was there.

Tom Ferrell is an editor of The Book Review.

I suppose I am like most men who soldiered for a time.
I think that something unusual happened to me;
some particular meaning was revealed to me so I should set it down.
Men have been boring their wives,
their children,
and other men with these kind of stories from Marathon through Chickamauga,
and I’m no different from the lot.
Having survived it all, I can’t leave well enough alone,
but must ponder on it and remember and talk at least about one part of it that was, I think,
a kind of glory.

On the twenty-third of June, 1944,
I ended my time as a bomber pilot flying out of Italy with the 301st Bomb Group,
and became a prisoner of war in Bulgaria.
My last mission was to Ploesti.
Although that name had its own dreadful sound,
the other places and other names all took their toll
whether you feared them or not.
It mattered very little when you finally bought it.
The odds were, one always knew, that something was going to happen.
It was not felt in any desperate way,
but rather it came as a difference in consciousness
without one’s being aware of the change.
In the squadron we learned to live as perhaps once we were long ago,
as simple as animals without hope for ourselves or pity for one another.
Completing fifty missions was too implausible to even consider.
An alternative, in whatever form it might come, was the only chance.
Death was the most severe alternative.
It was as near as the next mission,
although we would not yield to the thought of it.
We would get through somehow: maybe a good wound,
or a bail-out over Yugoslavia or northern Italy; the second front might open up,
and the Germans might shift all their fighters to the French coast.
We might even make it through fifty missions – a few did.
But such fantasies didn’t really persuade us,
not with our sure knowledge that we were caught in a bad twist of time
with little chance we would go beyond it.
Our lives were defined by a line from the present
to a violent moment that must come for each of us.
The missions we flew were the years we measured to that end,
passing by no different from any man’s except we became old and died soon.

I don’t know whether any of this is true or not.
Everything happened that I have said happened,
but it’s memory now, the shadow of things.
The truth lives in its own time, recall is not the reality of the past.
When friends depart, one remembers them but they are changed;
we hold only the fragment of them that touched us and our idea of them,
which is now a part of us.
Their reality is gone, intact but irretrievable,
in another place through which we passed and can never enter again.
I cannot go back nor can I bring them to me;
so I must pursue the shadows to some middle ground,
for I am strangely bound to all that happened then.
We broke hard bread together and I can’t forget:
Breslau, Steyr, Regensburg, Ploesti, Vienna, Munich, Graz,
and all the others; not cities,
but battlegrounds five miles above them where we made our brotherhood.
It’s gone and long ago; swept clean by the wind, only some stayed.
Part of me lives there still, tracing a course through all the names.
I don’t know why.
What is it that memory wants that it goes through it all again? 
Was there something I should have recognized? 
Some terrible wisdom? 
The kind of awful knowledge that stares out of the eyes of a dying man? 
I was at the edge then and almost grasped the meaning,
but I lived and failed the final lesson and came safe home.
I linger now, looking back for them, the best ones who stayed and learned it all.
“It was as if in greeting that three of the tiny creatures came out from the boards around the stove and scurried toward me.  I was sitting on Mac’s bunk.  He used to feed them crumbs every time he came in the tent.  A fourth mouse joined his friends and, while they nibbled happily, I began the sad chore of going through Mac’s belongings.”  (pp. 66-67)

“I don’t have any damn matches.”

“I handed him mine.  He took them without a word; he struck five of them before he got the pipe going.  He had forgotten his cigarette, which was still smoldering on the bomb cart where he had placed it.”  (p. 114)

“The ground was rushing up at me!  I was moving toward a high ridge!  I swept over it, and then I plunged through the upper branches of a giant pine; mu chute caught and was held fast while my inertia drove me over a deep, rocky gorge.  My forward motion was violently snubbed, and I was sent rushing back toward a massive trunk.  I missed it by three feet, but continued to swing wildly beside it.  After a time, the motion ceased.  I hung there over the steep incline of the gorge.  The base of the tree reached deep into the slope; it was much too far to drop.”  (p. 194)

__________

In this strange life, we lived in the narrow dimension of the present.
We didn’t seek the future, for it was not there;
and if we could not move into it or beyond it,
we could not return to our past.
We were dull and listless,
but we did not have the true languor of young men
whose dreams were of worlds ahead of them,
and who saw the present only as prelude to it.

 If we were without dreams, without a past or a future,
and were caught in the stillness of the present,
our vision then became wise.
There was peace in the absence of clamor;
there was serenity in the days without battles.
If this tattered place where we lived
were to be the full measure of our lives,
we would find some sweetness in it.
A small mouse nibbling a piece of biscuit in my tent
was as wondrous as a unicorn.
The soiled streets of Foggia were full of light,
and one time when I was walking there,
I heard the pure voice of a woman singing.
I learned each day of the goodness of life.
I cherished what was given to me,
holding it just for the moment it was given,
for I knew it was fragile and could not be held for long.

__________

The Muirhead crew prior to departure for Italy.  Author John Muirhead is in front row, far left, holding headphones. Notice that the aircraft in the background is a B-24 Liberator, which the author initially flew before assignment to the 301st Bomb Group.  (USAAF photo, from dust jacket of Those Who Fall.)

The Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) – #16203 – covering the author’s final mission:  Target Ploesti, Roumania – Date June 23, 1944.  John Muirhead, as pilot, is listed first in the crew roster. 

The second page of the MACR, listing the crew’s enlisted personnel (flight engineer, radio operator, and aerial gunners). 

Eyewitnesses to the loss of Muirhead’s B-17, S/Sgt. William E. Caldwell and S/Sgt. Anthony J. Petrowski. 

John Muirhead, mid-1980s.

 

Against Joie De Vivre – Personal Essays, by Phillip Lopate – 1989 [Peter Sis]

My parents had a bookcase which held a few hardcovers
and a library of Pocket Books,
whose flimsy, browning pages would crack if you bent down the corners. 
I can still picture those cellophane-peeling covers with their kangaroo logo,
their illustrations of busty, available-looking women
or hard-bodied men
or solemn, sensitive-looking Negroes with titles like

Intruder in the Dust,
Appointment in Samara,
Tobacco Road,
Studs Lonigan,
Strange Fruit,
Good Night, Sweet Prince,
The Great Gatsby,
The Sound and the Fury.

Father brought home all the books, it was his responsibility;
though Mother chafed at everything else in the marriage,
she still permitted him at the same time to be her intellectual mentor.
I have often wondered on what basis he made his selections:
he’d had only one term of night college
(dropping out because he fell asleep in class after a day in the factory),
and I never saw him read book reviews.
He seemed all the same, to have a nose for decent literature.
He was one of those autodidacts of the Depression generation,
for whose guidance the inexpensive editions
of Everyman, Modern Library, and Pocket Books seemed intentionally designed,
out of some bygone assumption that the workingman should
 – must
 – be educated to the best in human knowledge.

(by Phillip Lopate, from “Samson and Delilah and the Kids”)

______________________________

Cover illustration by Peter Sis.  The nine (or is it eleven?) vignettes symbolize the central themes of book’s nineteen essays, the titles of which are listed below…

I

Samson and Delilah and the Kids
Against Joie de Vivre
Art of the Creep
A Nonsmoker with a Smoker
What Happened to the Personal Essay?

II

Never Live Above Your Landlord
Revisionist Nuptials
Anticipation of La Notte: The “Heroic” Age of Moviegoing
Modern Friendships
A Passion for Waiting

III

Chekhov for Children
On Shaving a Beard
Only Make Believe: Some Observations on Architectural Language
Houston Hide-and-Seek
Carlos: Evening in the City of Friends

IV

Upstairs Neighbors
Waiting for the Book to Come Out
Reflections on Subletting
Suicide of a Schoolteacher

______________________________

Phillip Lopate (photo by Sally Gall)

Give Us This Day, by Sidney Stewart – 1958 [Harry Scharre?] [Revised post]

(This post has been updated to include the back cover of the 1958 paperback edition of Give Us This Day, as well as the front cover of the 1990 edition. (Scroll to bottom.))

Manila:
December 1941

IN THE LAND where dead dreams go lies the city of Manila,
as it was before the war.
Manila, where the white man didn’t work in the afternoon because it was too hot.
Manila, with its beauty and its poverty and its orchids at five cents apiece.

What could a soldier do with a handful of orchids
if he had no one to give them to?
I used to buy those orchids.
I’d pay my nickel for them and stand there awkwardly holding them in my hand.
I would run my finger over the satin petals and then,
embarrassed,
I would give them to the first little girl I met,
because there was something very lonely about buying orchids
when you had no one to give them to.

____________________

I began to plan the things I wanted to do when I went home.
The promises I had made to the boys about seeing their parents.
I thought of the things that home meant to me.
The things that freedom, and being home, would mean.
I thought of seeing women again, white women,
and being again where people laughed,
where laughter was good and life was good.

I wondered if ever again things would worry me. 
I thought what I would do with my life. 
I had never asked to live, but God had spared me. 
Now I knew there was an obligation within me to justify my life. 
I must do something.

My mind wandered back to the times
when Rass and John and Weldon and Hughes
sat together around the fire in the evenings. 
We talked about the things we wanted to do
when we were free and we were home again. 
Rass had wanted to go into the diplomatic service. 
John had wanted to be a professor again.

“I’m going to be a writer,” I said. 
“I’m going to write novels.”

We used to laugh about it. 
They were interested in the things I wanted to write about. 
Once, when we were very hungry, John had turned to me.

“Some day, Sid, I wish you’d put me in one of your books.”

“Yes, Stew,” Rass said. 
“I wish you’d write a book about this, about all of us. 
Will you?  
Could you do that for us one day?  
Write a book about all of us. 
Something that we could keep.”

I remembered what I had promised them.
I would write a book about them some day.
But I felt cold inside and I thought, “No, they’ll never read that book now,
 that book I’m going to write about them.
About their faith and hopes, their goodness and their beliefs.”

______________________________

Biographical blurb about Sidney Stewart, from the jacket of the book’s hardcover (1957) edition.

______________________________

1990 edition of Give Us This Day.  Artist? – unknown.

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 [Lloyd Howe]

Though primarily known for his 1943 book God Is My Co-Pilot, Colonel Robert Lee Scott, Jr., was the author of some twelve other works, the central themes of which were his experience as an Army Air Force fighter pilot (which included command of the 23rd Fighter Group), and, military aviation and flying “in general”. 

Scott’s second book, Damned to Glory, was published by Blue Ribbon Books in 1943.  Probably inspired by a central aspect of his experiences in China – flying the Curtiss Warhawk fighter plane – the book is a literary paean to the P-40:  The aircraft is presented as a symbol and embodiment of American technology, industry, and democracy, through accounts of the plane’s use by the air forces of the United States and its Allies (Royal Air Force, South African Air Force, and the Soviet Air Force).  The book’s chapters are thematically arranged, each covering use of the Warhawk in a specific theater of war, or, by a specific military air force, with some of the chapters (you’ll see in three following posts) being introduced by a brief poem, likely of Scott’s authorship. 

Strikingly, given that the book was published in the midst of WW II, the dust jacket clearly – and I believe intentionally – shows a damaged P-40, its pilot dead or mortally wounded, as the aircraft enters an uncontrolled dive while under the guise of other pilots.  Perhaps this depiction fits the book’s very title: Damned – to Glory.  Perhaps – this will remain conjecture – Colonel Scott and Blue Ribbon Books wanted to visually convey the message that despite the (by then) reasonable confidence in an eventual Allied victory, that victory would not arrive without sacrifice and cost. 

Particularly notable are Lloyd Howe’s interior illustrations.  One per chapter, reproduced in black and white, perhaps the original works were done in water colors, or, were pencil and / or charcoal sketches. 

While these illustrations are not accurate in terms of dimensions and proportions of aircraft (either Allied or Axis), they solidly convey a sense of action and location, and are stylistically similar to the “box art” of plastic model kits – ahhh, remember Airfix, Aurora, Monogram (my favorite), and Revell? – of the 1950s through the 60s. 

It’d been my intention to present scans of each image in Damned to Glory through a succession of posts, but – (!) –  my copy of the book is too fragile to scan each of these illustrations without damaging the spine.  So, while only three interior images are presented in the following posts, these images are representative of Lloyd Howe’s artistic style.  Each image is accompanied by text from its relevant chapter. 

Click ahead, and enjoy. 

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A P-40 “sharkmouth” emblem is embosed upon the front cover…

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…while here is Scott’s introduction…

Ghost Ship

WHILE the thunder of her sixteen hundred horses shook the earth, she stood quivering with anticipation, her lines as graceful as those of any living thing.  She was poised for action.  The pilot who caressed her controls could feel under his hand the throbbing pulse of her life as the mighty Allison in her vitals roared its defiance.  From the pointed nose of the spinner, back along her streamlined breast, she was a thing of beauty.  Small as she looked to the casual observer, the pilot knew that there was tremendous power enclosed within her delicate skin.

Man had labored for years over drafting-boards to work out her design, that she might be ready when war should come to threaten his way of life.  Man had formed with loving care the engine which was her heart, the wings which were her means of sustentation, the driving prop which was her means of motion through space.  Then man, now become her creator, had trained himself again as a specialist, that he might become her pilot and thus become her very soul.

She drank her food from great tanks of high octane gasoline which had the potentiality of an explosive.  And within her slender wings, that seemed hardly large enough to support her weight, were enclosed six fifty-caliber guns, which, when discharged at their rated normal of over six thousand rounds per minute, gave her the fire-power of one entire infantry battalion.  Underneath these slender wings she could also carry nearly a ton of deadly bombs, which could blast a capital ship from the seas or deliver a city to destruction.  From her twelve beautifully flared nostrils, she exhaled thousands of staccato explosions per minute, and her breath, hot with the passion of battle, pushed her to greater speed by the jet effect produced.  When master pilots rode her into combat at high speed, the tips of her laminar-flow wings would sweat a gauze-like vapor which became a frozen mist behind this rocketing projectile.

Her function in life, the prime reason for her existence, was to carry her guns into range of a hostile bomber, hurtle it from the skies, and by this same method destroy all who came out to oppose her own bombers.  It was her destiny to die, if need be, in gallant battle, that her bomber convoy might go on with its terrible cargo of death to wreck the industry of the enemy.  In case she must carry the bombs herself, after their delivery she must become a fighter again, ready to use her guns and sting the enemy with death.

Her every feature had a strangely feminine beauty, an arrogant grace like that of some high-born vestal who, by her very place in life, knows her own destiny.  Standing there atremble, she seemed like some aristocratic priestess who, though selected’ to die, would know how to make her sacrifice worth while.

She was an American fighter plane, the ten thousandth of her line.  Constructed from elements which had come from every part of the globe, she was the creation of American minds, of skillful American hands – more than that you could not ask.  Pilots called her “Warhawk,” and the Army charts spoke of her as P-40.  Friends called her tender things that were sacred to them; her enemies, Jap and Hun, called her terrible names that meant tough, strong, fast, wicked and dirty.  The pilot who flew her, whether he was an American, a Russian, a South African, or any other of the Allied Nations – for they all flew her – became her animating spirit.

These pilots, and they are legion, have fought the enemy with her on every front in this war.  They are her judges; throughout this story they will bear witness that those ten thousand P-40s have fought a glorious fight.  The materials which made her were gathered from the many countries of the earth, and now, on battle scenes around the world, they have been returned as debris and the rusting dust of war.  Dust shall return to dust.  But by actual statistics, for every one of these Warhawks destroyed in battle, thirteen and one-half enemy planes have paid the penalty.  With no disparagement of other American planes, this gallant, global ship must be considered one of the greatest American fighter planes.  She was in production when the trial of war came and other fighter ships were merely on the plotting boards.  Her test was made in battle.

Now when faster and higher-climbing fighters are taking over, she merely salutes them, as they go climbing into the very heavens beyond the stratosphere with the knowledge she helped to teach them.  If she were human, which she very nearly is, she would have tremendous stories to tell of her fighting days and of her continuing battles, for P-40’s are still roaming the skies of nearly every battlefront.

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…while the rear dust jacket has an excellent image of Colonel Scott seated in a P-40N.

 
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Here’s a better view of Scott’s portrait.  (Notice the absence of a gunsight.)

Face of a Hero, by Louis Falstein – 1951 [Al Schmidt]

The two images below, of the first (1950) edition (Harcourt, Brace and Company) of Face of A Hero, show the book’s front cover / spine, and title page, the latter including an illustration of an aviator’s flight helmet, goggles, and oxygen mask.  

The book’s cover combined and is limited to two fundamental elements: one symbolic – a human face; the other quite “real” – a formation of six B-24 Liberator bombers under attack by two enemy fighter planes.  Though the novel’s general setting is, of course, the WW II air war against Germany,  it’s intriguing that the cover art is set upon varying tones of red, rather than cooler “aerial” shades of blue, gray, and white.

Though the artist’s name is not presented on either the cover or within the book itself, stylistically, the human face at least seems to be reminiscent of the work of Ben Shahn…  (Well, maybe!)

It occurred to me I must write to Ruth, but I didn’t know what to tell her.
A subtle wall was being erected between my wife and me
because we had not shared this experience.
I realized with a shock that my wife was a civilian, safe back in the States.
And I suddenly resented those who were safe.
I was appalled at the ease with which I abandoned myself to self-pity
even in my hour of triumph.
But aside from the corrupting but very comfortable stabs of self-pity
there was no denying that my most profound experience had been shared with me
not by Ruth but by nine comparative strangers.
They were now a part of my life, part of my joys and sorrows.
We had not chosen one another as brothers; it had been ordained for us.
Mel Ginn, a rancher from western Texas, was my brother.
I didn’t know much about him and he was suspicious of me because I came from a large city.
He was amused by my clumsiness with the guns.
He was puzzled that an “old man” had got himself mixed up in the fighting.
Mel had never met a Jew before and this confused him also.
Before our first mission we had little to say to each other.
But today we had been through life together.
Before our first mission Leo Trent and I had little in common.
Leo used to sell perfume in Hollywood before the war.
His heart had been set on becoming a pilot,
but he had been washed out of cadet training “three hours before graduation.”
That was his story.
It rankled that his younger brother, who was twenty-one, two years Leo’s junior,
was an ace Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific while Leo became a “venereal gunner.”
He was not a good gunner (this we had in common),
and up in the air I saw him paralyzed with fear (this too we had in common).
Leo and I had never become close,
perhaps because we each knew the other to be a coward who resented being found out.
That’s why he was wary of me.
He credited me with an insight that always sat in judgment on his weaknesses.
Also, he mistook my aloofness for snobbery.
He did not like riddles.
But I wanted him to like me.
He was, after all, my brother. (p 30)

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The images below are of the 1951 Pocket Books edition of Face of A Hero, featuring cover art by Al Schmidt. 


Would Andy laugh at me if I told him I was in this war because I wanted to keep America free?
I wanted to tell him I was in it not only because I was against Hitler;
I was also for something.
I was convinced that after we won it, life would be better for all.
People would get along better;
not only Missourians and Illinoisians,
but Italians and Americans too…
But how do you tell these things to a frightened man, a man facing death?
I was afraid Andy would laugh at me.
Americans had an ingrained suspicion of words, any words smacking of patriotism.

Andy sat silent for a while, contemplating the pebbles on the tent floor.
“Oh, I’ll fly my missions,” he said.
“I’m no better or no worse than anybody else.
I certainly wouldn’t pull a stunt like Bowles pulled yesterday,
shooting off his toe and claiming it was an accident.
I wouldn’t do a thing like that, nobody in our crew would.”
He regarded me searchingly to see whether I believed him.
He got up and went to sit on his cot.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the navigator sighed.
“It’s all mixed up in my mind.
In one way I feel I’m a sucker for being in this.
In another way I feel useless.
I’m supposed to be a navigator.
The army spent a fortune to train me.
But do I navigate?
I’m just a passenger in the ship, while the lead navigator does all the work.
You men could fly without me.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a gun to fire.
You don’t know what it means to be shot at and not shoot back.
You’re helpless, useless.
You go crazy.
If I could only keep busy in the air –
maybe I wouldn’t have the time to worry so much about death…”
He slapped his thighs savagely
and stood up and walked to the cone-shaped entrance of the tent.
“I don’t know what to think.
I’ve never been so mixed up and so scared in my life…”  (109-110)

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The image below – a portrait of Louis Falstein posing against a “backdrop” of a B-24 Liberator’s fuselage – was scanned from a photographic print.  It’s unknown if this picture was taken during his training in the continental United States, or later, at the 450th Bomb Group’s base at Manduria, Italy. 

Most likely, the former. 

Notably, this is the same image of Louis Falstein that appeared (albeit highly cropped!) as the cover of the 1999 Steerforth Press edition of Face of a Hero.  The novel’s re-publication that year generated much commentary concerning the book’s similarities to – and striking differences from – Joseph Heller’s stunningly over-rated embodiment of literary mediocrity (and, ironic commercial and cultural success) otherwise known as “Catch-22“.

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The portrait below, showing Lou in more peaceful times, appears on the jacket of the first edition of Face of A Hero.