Category: Aviation

The Age of Advertising: Until I Come Back – Nash-Kelvinator – December 27, 1942

There’s a well-known adage that pertains to many aspects of life:  “Less is more.”  This is so in the field of advertising, where relegating the name or image of a corporation, product, or service to the “background” – sometimes humorously; sometimes ironically; sometimes idealistically – can ignite a flame of curiosity and interest that would otherwise lay fallow.  

A superbly done example of this approach (who’s the person who dreamed this one up?!) appeared in The New York Times on December 27, 1942, in the form of an advertisement for the Nash-Kelvinator corporation, a manufacturer of automobiles and household appliances.  The ad consists of a painting – though in a newspaper obviously printed by the half-tone process – of the bombardier of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in the nose of his aircraft during a mission over Europe, followed by his thoughts as expressed in stream-of-consciousness internal monologue.  Only at the very “bottom” of the advertisement – placed after the bombardier’s message – appear symbols for Nash-Kelvinator (a car and kitchen refrigerator).  This is followed by a statement about the company’s mission: To manufacture weapons and material in support of the war effort, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that life in the United States will continue once victory is achieved and servicemen return.  There is absolutely no mention – in this age before the primacy of shareholder value, and, America’s deindustrialization only three short decades later – of any of Nash-Kelvinator’s products.  The ad, published only a year and nearly a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is simply a message of patriotic solidarity, cautious optimism, and, hope.

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Here’s the ad in its entirety:

The text of the ad is striking in – through very few words – encompassing several aspects of the war in general, and America’s air war, in particular. 

First – this stands out! – the B-17 is shown and described as being on a night-time mission, rather than a daylight sortie.  This probably reflects currents of news about the 8th Air Force prevailing in 1942 (assuming such information was available to the public?!) in terms of discussions concerning whether the 8th would switch to night operations and participate with Royal Air Force Bomber Command in wide-area bombing.  Of course, this never came about.  As described by John T. Correll at Air & Space Forces Magazine in “The Allied Rift on Strategic Bombing“, “Churchill had President Franklin D. Roosevelt almost convinced that the B-17s should join Bomber Command in operating at night.  Before that happened, Churchill met with Eaker during the Allied conference at Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943, and Eaker talked him out of the idea.  His key point was the value of keeping the Germans under attack both day and night.”  

Caliban Rising addresses the issue of the RAF’s advocacy of night bombing for the 8th Air Force, versus the American intention of bombing by day, in his video “Shocking Comments About RAF Bomber Command vs 8th Air Force,” commencing at 4:55.  

Then, we learn that the bombardier signed up because of the adventure involved in combat flying, but only upon reaching England and encountering the reality of war, and, the nature of the Third Reich, did he begin to appreciate the true gravity (accidental pun, there) of his decision.

This takes the form of symbolic encounters with symbolic representatives of two of the nations which have have been conquered by Germany: A Czech civilian refugee in London, and, a fallen Polish fighter pilot who sacrificed his life to destroy an Me-109.  A third encounter is of a very different sort, and expressed in a very different way.  A fellow American aviator’s offer a a cigarette to a captured German flyer is refused with sheer fury, the aviator being “Izzy Jacobs”, obviously and clearly by the “sound” of his name a Jew.  A sign of the times (and the Times?) the word “Jew” is absent from the ad, unlike “Czech” and “Polish”.  Well, that this point was even made in a mainstream advertisement by a major American corporation in 1942 is itself remarkable. 

Then follow the bombardier’s thoughts about past, present, and future.  His central hope is that the country he returns to – for he expects to return – will be much the same as the country he left, with the hope that the reader – the American public, will, “Keep it for the way I remember it, just the way I see it now – until I come back.”

Whoever he was, I hope he made it back.

“UNTIL I COME BACK”…

We’re over 20,000 feet now (the coffee’s frozen in the thermos) and that’s the Zuyder Zee below.  We must be halfway across Holland.

Funny thing what happens to a fellow…

Those are the same old stars and the same old moon that the girl and I were looking at last Christmas.

And here I am – flying 300 miles an hour in a bubble of glass, with ten tons of T.N.T.

Somehow – this isn’t the way I imagined it at all, the day I enlisted.  Don’t get me wrong – sure I was sore at the Japs and the Nazis – but mostly, it was the thrill of the Great Adventure.

Well, I know now – the real reasons – why I’m up here paying my first call on Hitler.

It’s only when you get away from the U.S.A. that you find out what the shootin’s really about and what you’re fighting for.

I learned from the Czech chap in London.  The refugee, the nice old fellow who reminded me of Dad except for the maimed hands.  I was dumb enough to ask about it.  “I got that,” he said, “for writing a book the Nazis didn’t like…”

Then there was the captured German pilot who screamed and spit when Izzy Jacobs offered him a cigarette…how do fellows get that way?

And that crazy Polish pilot – the fellow who rammed the Messerschmitt.  After the funeral I learned what was eating him.  Seems as how he had a sister in Warsaw who had been sent to a German Officers Club…

I hope to hell Hitler’s home tonight…light and wind are perfect.

Yes, sir, I’ve met ‘em by the dozens over here – guys warped by hate – guys who have had ambition beaten out of them – guys who look at you as if you were crazy when you tell ‘em what America is like.

They say America will be a lot different after this war.

Well, maybe so.

But, as for me, I know the score…you learn fast over here.  I know how there’s only one decent way to live in the world – the way my folks lived and the way I want to live.

When you find a thing that works as good as that – brother, be careful with that monkey-wrench.

And there’s one little spot – well, if they do as much as change the smell of the corner drug store – I will murder the guy.

I want my girl back, just as she is, and that bungalow on Maple Avenue…

I want that old roll-top desk of mine at the electric company, with a chance to move upstairs, or quit if I want to.

I want to see that old school of mine, and our church, just as they are – because I want my kids to go there.

That’s my home town…

Keep it for the way I remember it, just the way I see it now – until I come back.

NASH KELVINATOR

NASH-KELVINATOR CORPORATION, DETROIT, MICHIGAN

Published in the belief that here at Nash-Kelvinator we carry a double responsibility – not only to build the weapons for victory but also to build toward the kind of a future, an American future, our boys will want when they come back.

Reprints of this Nash-Kelvinator advertisement will gladly be sent you on request.

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Here’s a close-up of the ad’s single illustration, showing our pensive bombardier in the nose of his aircraft.

(By way of explanation, the image above was scanned from a paper photocopy made by a 35mm microfilm viewer (I think manufactured by Minolta … it’s been a few decades since I made this!) which I used to review this issue of the Times … as 35mm microfilm … rather than from a digitized image “copied & pasted” from the Internet such as from the “Times Machine”.  The ubiquity and ease of access of digitized images from newspapers, though fantastic for accessing text, is typically a step far down in terms of the quality of the images that accompany such news items.  In other words, technological convenience is often an unrecognized and unanticipated step far, far backwards in terms of preserving the past.)

Intentionally or not, the unknown artist who created this illustration changed the mood of the art by making the figure of the bombardier – relative to the size of the B-17 – perhaps twice as small as in actuality, making the aircraft look practically cavernous.  You can see this in the image below, which illustrates a B-17 bombardier as seen looking forward from the crew station of the aircraft’s navigator.  If he’s seated, there’s just enough room for him and not much more.  This WW II Army Air Force Photo 3200 / A45511) is captioned, “Lt. Maurice A. Bonomo, Bombardier, 333 W. 86th St., New York City, 18 daylight missions; holds Air Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters”.  The picture gives an excellent representative view of the the bombardier’s position in a B-17 Flying Fortress (specifically, a B-17G Flying Fortress). 

Given that Lt. Bonomo isn’t (!) wearing his oxygen mask, and is directly touching the control panel without (!) gloves (neither of which would be advisable at altitude…) this is certainly a “posed” photograph, taken while the B-17 was on the ground.

Though the date of this photograph is unknown, what is known is that Lt. Bonomo, a member of the 401st Bomb Squadron, 91st Bomb Group, became a prisoner of war on July 20, 1944, during a mission to Leipzig, Germany.  On that date, he was a member of 1 Lt. Arthur F. Hultin’s crew in B-17G 42-102509, which was lost due to anti-aircraft fire.  Fortunately, all 10 crewmen survived as POWs.  The plane’s loss is covered in MACR 7274 and Luftgaukommando Report KU 2560, the latter document being unusually detailed in its description of the plane.

The husband of Janet A. Bonomo, of 333 West 86th Street, in New York, Maurice Bonomo was imprisoned in North Compound 2 of Stalag Luft I, in Barth, Germany.

Here’s a similar picture.   Taken on or before December 28, 1942, Army Air Force photo 3A40521 / 23535AC is captioned, “Bombardier on a Boeing B-17 flying on a search mission in the Hawaiian Islands.”  The nose framing reveals that this is an “E’ model of the B-17, unlike the “G” version in the photo of Lt. Bonomo.  (I scanned this picture at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.)

And, here’s a view limited to the photo itself, with contrast and lighting slightly adjusted to render details (clouds in the distance) in greater clarity.

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The contemplative and serious nature of the advertisement, both in print and art, cannot help but remind one of the scene – in William Wyler’s wonderful 1946 movie (see at Archive.org) “The Best Years of Our Lives” – in which former 8th Air Force bombardier Capt. Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews, highly uncertain of his place in the America to which he has returned; completely uncertain about his future, and certainly seeing no future for himself in his hometown of “Boone City” (any-midwestern-state-USA), decides to leave for parts unknown. 

While awaiting the departure of his flight at a nearby Army Air Force Base (the sequence having been shot at Ontario Army Airfield, California), he happens to wander through a boneyard of surplus warplanes (past rows of Wright Cyclone Engines with Hamilton Standard propellers stacked alongside, like lines of soldiers-all-in-a-row, engineless P-39 Airacobras, and then engineless B-17s; this would’ve been under the auspices of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation). 

Randomly coming across an aircraft nicknamed “ROUND ? TRIP” (the plane is B-17F 42-3463, which never actually left the United States, its nose art having been created for the movie), he enters the nose compartment and climbs into the bombardier’s position.  (Once and again.)  Then, in one of the most evocative and moving scenes to emerge from a film of this era – truly, any era – he relives the past.  Viewed from the front, the camera zooms in on the aircraft and then pans across each of the B-17’s four nacelles from the plane’s left to right, momentarily focusing on each as the background music rises in pitch and intensity, symbolizing the plane coming to life for a combat mission.  The fact that the aircraft’s engines are actually missing from this plane – the camera focusing on each nacelle’s empty bulkhead – reveals to us that for Captain Derry, past and present are indistinguishable. 

The camera then zooms in on Derry as (breaking out in a sweat), he leans forward as if to peer through imagined bombsight, and relives the experience of witnessing a friend’s B-17 being shot down in combat – with no survivors.  Only when the foreman of a salvage crew looks up to notice Derry in the aircraft and yells from below, does Derry abruptly awaken from his dark reverie.  This transition is symbolized in the way that Derry (as viewed from outside the bombardier’s nosepiece) is filmed out of focus amidst his flashback, and only comes into clear focus when he leaves the past.  Having returned to the present, Derry leaves the plane, and after a brusque but straightforward conversation with the foreman that entails the possibility of a job – a menial job for a former Captain but a job nonetheless – returns to the present, and the possibility of a real future.

Below you’ll find a clip of this sequence.  In the full version at Archive.org, it begins near the film’s end, at @ 2 hours 32 minutes.

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It was an arduous journey, but our bombardier came back.

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A Reference or Two (and More)

Nash-Kelvinator, at…

… Wikipedia

… USA Auto Industry World War Two

… Motor Cities

… History Garage

… South Bay History

… Historic Detroit

The Age of Advertising: “This Is Where I Belong” – The United States Army Air Force – September 7, 1943

Appearing after Nash-Kelvinator’s 1942 advertisement in The New York Times, which features an inspiring illustration of a B-17 Flying Fortress bombardier in the nose of his aircraft, here’s an ad that’s stylistically similar, but to a different purpose:  Though it uses the visual symbol of an aviator – a bomber pilot – on a combat mission, the ad is for the military, rather than a corporation.  Rather than validating the patriotism of a corporation, it seeks to persuade men to defend their country.  And at that, it does a masterful job.  

The advertisement – seeking candidates for pilot, navigator, and bombardier positions in the United States Army Air Force – which appeared in national newspapers in early September of 1943, the example below having been published in The New York Times on September 7.

The ad evokes purpose and achievement, within a context of teamwork.  Patriotism is certainly implied, but that’s secondary to both challenge and adventure.

Following the verbal “hook” (a well-written and meaningful hook, at that!) forming the core of the advertisement, information is presented about the practical steps of entering the Army Air Corps for qualification as a Pilot, Bombardier, or Navigator.

The artwork, depicting a B-17 pilot, is by Robert L. Benney, who, during his very lengthy career as a professional artist, served as a civilian correspondent, focusing on military activity at Saipan and the Marianas Islands.  Several powerful examples of Benney’s work – which has a very distinctive, clearly recognizable style, in terms of visual texture and the use of light and shadow – can be found at the website of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

The ad is below, followed by a verbatim transcript of its text.

(The image was scanned from a paper photocopy made by a 35mm microfilm viewer, rather than from a digitized image “copied & pasted” from the Internet.  The abundance of digitized newspaper images, though a boon for accessing text, is often a step far downward in terms of the quality of the images within such news items.  Technological convenience can be a step far, far backwards in terms of preserving the past…)

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THIS IS WHERE I BELONG…

We’re almost there…

Only four minutes to go – and the plane up ahead will drop the first flare.

Only four minutes to go – and Joe will give us our speed, the doors will open and we’ll start our run … and the ship will quiver like a thoroughbred who’s been given her head…

And Bob will center the target and we’ll come in – and the ten seconds or fifteen will seem like a year before we hear him call “Bombs away”…
And then – they’ll go out of the bay, nose over and fall, and begin their march over the land with the stamp of a giant’s tread.

This is where I belong…

Not down there but up here…with my ship and my crew…in a world of our own.

Up here, where the clean, sharp air bites to the bone, I can see things clear.  I can see the kids we were, and the team we’ve become and the men we’ll be.

Up here in the night, I remember nights with the books – when numbers and formulas fumbled and blurred and I couldn’t get them into my head.

But I swore that if other men had done it before – I could, and I would.  And all at once they came clear and I understood.

And I remember the time when I took over the stick and the ship lost speed and she stalled and spun…and my mouth went dry and my hand shook.  And then, my instructor’s voice was quiet in my ear and the fear left me – for good.

And now up here, alone, and all of us closer together than we’ve ever been, I hear once again the words of a pilot I knew: “I can’t tell what it means to fly with a bomber crew,” he said, “that’s like telling a blind man what you mean by the color red.”

As the target comes nearer, and the fighters slide up, and the guns start their chatter, I know this is where I belong…this is what matters…

This is my air.

This is my future.

This is what I was born for…to fly with the Army Air Corps!

If you can qualify – you, too, belong in the Army Air Forces as a Bombardier, Navigator or Pilot!  And here’s what you can do about it right now.  Go to your nearest Aviation Cadet Examining Board – or see the commanding officer of the Army Air Force College Training Detachment nearest you.

If you are under 18…see your local Civil Air Patrol officers about taking C.A.P. Cadet Training – also see your High School adviser about taking H.S. Victory Corps prescribed courses.  Both will afford you valuable pre-aviation training.

If you are 17 but not yet 18…go to your nearest Aviation Cadet Examining Board…take your preliminary examinations to see if you can qualify as a Junior Cadet in the Air Corps Enlisted Reserve.  If you qualify, you will receive your Enlisted Reserve insignia but will not be called for training until you are over 18.

If you are 18 but under 27…go to your nearest Aviation Cadet Examining Board…see if you can qualify as an Aviation Cadet.  If you are in the Army, you may apply through your commanding officer.  When called, you’ll be given 5 months’ training (after a brief conditioning period) in one of America’s finest colleges…you’ll get dual-control flying instruction…then go on to eight months of full flight training during which you will receive a $10,000 life insurance policy paid for by the Government.  When you graduate as a Bombardier, Navigator or Pilot – you will receive an extra $250 uniform allowance and your pay will be $246 to $327 per month.

And after the war you will be qualified for leadership in the world’s greatest industry – Aviation!

(Essential workers in War Industry or Agriculture – do not apply.)

U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES

THIS ADVERTISEMENT HAS THE APPROVAL OF THE JOINT ARMY NAVY PERSONNEL BOARD

“NOTHING CAN STOP THE ARMY AIR CORPS”

For information regarding Naval Aviation Cadet training, apply at any Naval Aviation Cadet Selection Board or any Naval Recruiting Station; or, if you are in the Navy, Marine Corps or Coast Guard, apply through your Commanding Officer.

The Age of Advertising: Robinson Airlines

Here’s an advertisement for Robinson Aviation / Robinson Airlines, from 1945, featuring a sketch of a Fairchild F24.

The airline was founded in 1945 by C.S. Robinson, and was based out of Ithaca Municipal Airport, at Ithaca, New York, servicing routes in the Mohawk Valley of New York State.  Renamed Mohawk Airlines in 1952, the company survived until the early 1970s, when it merged with Allegheny Airlines.

____________________

Announcing
FIRST DAILY NON-STOP
AIR SERVICE
between
ITHACA and NEW YORK CITY

RESERVATIONS and INFORMATION
ITHACA, SENECA BUILDING – PHONE: ITHACA 3-1576
NEW YORK, 730 FIFTH AVENUE – PHONE: CIRCLE 6-4546

FLIGHT 2 SCHEDULE FLIGHT 1
8:OO A.M. Lv. ITHACA Ar. 6:55 P.M.
9:45 A.M. Ar. NEW YORK Lv. 5:00 P.M.

This service has been established to provide ITHACA INDUSTRY and CORNELL UNIVERSITY with direct air transportation to New York City.  At present four-place Fairchild airplanes are being used to provide one round trip daily.  Schedules will be adjusted and expanded as necessary.

ROBINSON AIRLINES
ITHACA, NEW YORK        NEW YORK CITY

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This video, from the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) YouTube channel, provides great views of an F24 in flight.  And on the ground, for that matter.

The Age of Advertising: Northwest Airlines – 1945

A late-WW II advertisement for Northwest Airlines (decades before its absorption by Delta) incorporating sketches of two Douglas DC-4s, one headed “west” and the other “east”.

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NOW!
NORTHWEST PASSAGE
ACROSS THE TOP OF THE COUNTRY

Coast-to-Coast air line flies direct from New York-Detroit to Seattle-Portland

Northwest Passage is here … to round out the nation’s air transport system, as the fourth coast-to-coast air line.

It brings – for the first time – the advantages of fast, direct coast-to-coast air service to the great cities across the top of the country.

NORTHWEST AIRLINES

Information and reservations at: 535 Fifth Avenue, New York, Telephone: VANderbilt 6-6360

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.  

________________________________________

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.

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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.—

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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.

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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.

______________________________

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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

 

The Gunner, by William Stevens – June, 1969 (1967) [M. Hooks]

M. Hooks cover art for The Gunner appropriately depicts an aerial gunner in a shearling leather flying jacked and draped with a belt of 50-cailber ammunition, given that the protagonist of William Stevens’ 1967 novel is Sergeant Thomas Deacon, an aerial gunner on B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in the Italy-based American 15th Air Force. 

Rather than being a fictional exploration of the nature of military service and combat flying in the Second World War, the novel’s focus is quite different: While the opening pages present a dramatic but somewhat abbreviated account of aerial combat culminating in the horrific crash-landing of Deacon’s B-24, virtually the entire remainder of the novel deals with Deacon’s adventures (and misadventures) on “the ground” afterwards, in terms of his psychological rehabilitation for combat, and, his interactions with non-flying military personnel, as well as civilians. 

Though interesting in concept, unfortunately, I felt that the novel was more than underwhelming, dwelling until its conclusion (which I shall not divulge here!) on Deacon’s mental state and mood, to the point of real tediousness.  The main problem is that Deacon seems to be a palimpsest or cipher, reacting “to” situations and people, yet lacking a true inner life, distinctive mental state, and character, let alone a fleshed-put pre-war biography in terms of family and social ties, vocational history, or formative experiences.  Or, if he does possess any inner life, this remains largely unexpressed.

Of course, one can’t help but notice the one endorsement (by James Jones, a fantastic writer) and five book-review excerpts gracing the cover of this Signet edition.  Perhaps these snippets are just that, mere snippets of the reviews in their entirety (with any criticisms of the novel left on the “cutting room floor”).  Perhaps these reviewers genuinely felt positively of the book.  If so, I can only conclude that I neither read nor recognized the “same” novel, for I felt that The Gunner, while nominally interesting in a fleeting way, was anything but brilliant.  

On July 3, 1968, The Knickerbocker News published this brief news item about The Gunner: 

‘The Gunner’ Novel To Become a Film

“The Gunner,” a World War 2 novel by William Stevens, has been purchased by Universal and will be produced by Dick Berg, it was recently announced.

The dramatic story centered around an Air Force sergeant in Europe was published recently by Atheneum.

It would seem that things never proceeded beyond the “purchased” stage.  As memory serves, and verified at the Internet Movie Database, no such motion picture ever emerged.  

Being that the novel was penned in 1967, I wonder about the degree – if any – to which Stevens was influenced by Louis Falstein’s 1950 Face Of A Hero, or Joseph Heller’s astonishingly over-rated, near-irredeemably over-inflated, fortuitously-timed Catch-22 (*** gag ***) which without question is the worst of the trio, while the forgotten Face of a Hero is easily the best.  It’s notable that the three works all center around the experiences of American airmen in either the 12th or 15th Air Forces in Italy, circa 1944-1945 (this was noted for Falstein’s and Heller’s novels, back in 1999), thus revealing a commonality of influence which found markedly different expression – well, yeah, admittedly, there are some similarities across all three works – in terms of the protagonist’s understanding and interpretation of his experiences and self-understanding, manifested through plot, character development, literary style (and for lack of a better word!) ideology, albeit the latter is really only manifest in Face Of A Hero.  

As for Stevens, I know little about him, other than the blurb that appears on the jacket of the hardbound edition of The Gunner: “William Stevens was born in Flushing, New York, in 1925.  He served with the U.S. Army during the Second World War and then worked as an electromechanic on guided missiles.  Subsequently he was a war-surplus junkyard scout, a buyer and a purchasing agent from 1947 until 1964, when he moved his family to Marth’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and began writing seriously.  His first novel, The Peddler, was published in 1966.”  So, just a thought: Given that so much of the The Gunner – at least early in the novel – occurs in the context of combat fatigue and psychological rehabilitation, and for this his writing is crisp and delineated – I wonder if Stevens’ military service occurred in a medical setting, rather than as an aircrewman.  Just an idea.  

According to Worldcat, Stevens’ literary oeuvre consists of the following titles:

The Peddler, 1966, Little, Brown

The literary “flavor” of The Peddler – perhaps drawn verbatim from the blurb on the book’s flyjacket? – can be found in an advertisement for the ninety-seventh anniversary of Ulbrich’s (whatever Ulbrich’s was!) in the Buffalo Courier-Express of October 6, 1968:

Book Sale $1 and up.
Publ. at much higher prices

Reprints of bestsellers, publisher’s overstocks – many in full color

Subjects of interest to everyone.  Treasures for your own library – welcome gifts for friends.  All at once-a-year savings!

The Life and death of a salesman, THE PEDDLER, by William Stevens. The story of a twelve-grand-a-year peddler who hawks goods in the most ruthless market place in the world – New York City. Like thousands of other peddlers hustling their ware in the city before catching the 5:12 to suburbia, he dreams of making it. Whenever the pack grows too heavy he puts it down and swings through a few martinis. But he cannot swing indefinitely, and there is always another buyer to see, another sale to close. Pub. at $5.95. Sale $1.00.

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The Gunner, 1968, Atheneum

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Cannibal Isle; A Novel, 1970, Little, Brown

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Best of Our Time, 1973, Random House

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William Stevens, in a jacket photograph (by Howell’s Photo Studios) from the hardbound edition of The Gunner. 

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To conclude, here is an opening passage from The Gunner:

One there had been one crew, one ship.
They trained on the flat Midwestern plains,
in untroubled skies,
dropped dummy bombs and made long transitional flights.
They beered it up in Lincoln, Kansas City, Cheyenne,
sported coin-silver wings and corporal’s stripes.
One crew, forging an arrow, men and machine a single instrument to be brought to the war.

The airplane was taken away.
They were jammed into bucket seats along with other crews and flown across the ocean in a C-47.
They were not surprised to touch down in England.
Everyone knew that it was one huge airfield,
that the Eighth was winning the war,
that flight pay brought a lot of action in Piccadilly.
The Quonset huts were bearable, the beer strong, everyone spoke the same language.
That was what the war was all about – off to a day’s work, then home at five to pipe and slippers.
But the Eighth was primarily a B-17 air force.
The ship the crew had been trained for was being flown from Italy.
Someone arranged a slow boat for them, arranged to have waiting an airplane that could fly.

Jerry Juicer had made sixty-three missions, too many. 
They knew it would never take them through their tour,
knew that no ship could last one hundred and thirteen missions. 
Jerry Juicer was a relic, bald spots showing through its olive-drab paint,
flak patches creating crazy checkerboard patterns on the wings and empennage. 
It was sure to die, to take them with it. 
They needed a brand-new airplane, a new average to work against, new luck.

The crew took the ship up to get used to it.
The pilot found the controls sluggish, and number-four engine touchy.
He wanted the ship worked on, wanted an instrument fit for combat.
They were put on a mission alert their second day in the field;
if Jerry Juicer could get off the ground, it was fit enough.
It took them through four missions,
through a seven-hundred-plane raid on Ploesti
where ships much newer glittered all the more for being torn into fragments.

Jerry Juicer was breached over Toulon.
Flak shattered the nose section,
cleared away the co-pilot and bombardier.
It took a skilled nurse, a determined hand, to get them back.
They put down at Foggia,
left the ancient bird to be towed to the junkpile
where it would be cannibalized and made a part of other ships.
The crew was taken by truck sixty twisting miles to their own field,
had their first real look at Italy: barren roads, sodden orchards, the dismal towns of Apulia.
They crossed the Ofanto on a pontoon bridge stretched next to a string of bombed-out arches,
came home just as the uncertain sun failed, came home to the strange corroded gullies,
the bleached stones,
the sky turned a red deeper than that on the splotched walls of Jerry Juicer.

The crew got their new luck, their new airplane.
Shining silver, it was christened Peaches,
the name running beneath the figure of a flamboyant nude with fuzzy breasts.
Their replacement bombardier was a recruit,
their co-pilot a seedy-looking second lieutenant with twelve missions.
Both were outsiders.
Although their number had been diminished, there was still a single crew.

Peaches seemed to be a lucky ship – for everyone but the ball gunner.
He was blown out over Salon.
Caesar Cantori joined them, another veteran from a broken crew,
already twenty-one missions up the ladder.
Peaches lucked them right through a Bucharest raid
where the crazy Luftwaffe put up an effort so intense they attacked the bombers over the target, braving their own flak, salvoing into the hunched formations.
The enemy fighter quit only when they were out of ammunition, low on gas.
Peaches came through it with no more than a few small holes,
but the radio operator went on sick call for the next nine consecutive mornings.
He was finally removed from flight duty.
Zimmerman, who had been flying as a temporary replacement, became a fixture.

The original crew was down to a slim six,
but they still had something of that old nostalgic hang-together.
With their fatalities already thirty percent,
they were approaching the point where the averages began to work for the survivors.
The furious Oil Campaign kinked the graph slightly;
it figured that one,
maybe two,
more would have to go to the long way before percentages swung solidly in favor of the rest.
Tough on the losers, but you couldn’t have winners without them.

They lost another charter member, but it didn’t count on the scale.
On a raid over Vienna the sky seemed to come apart and most of the controls were shot out.
Both Horton and the pilot were wounded,
the pilot stiff and bleeding at the wheel as he wrestled and coaxed the ship,
a piece of Swiss cheese hanging on shredded propellers.
It was a marvelous performance, took them all the way home.
They fell into each other’s arms, a lucky crew after all.
Horton and the pilot compared wounds.
Both showed more blood than hurt.

Jerry Juicer had made sixty-three missions, too many.
They knew it would never take them through their tour,
knew that no ship could last one hundred and thirteen missions.
Jerry Juicer was a relic, bald spots showing through its olive-drab paint,
flak patches creating crazy checkerboard patterns on the wings and empennage.
It was sure to die, to take them with it.
They needed a brand-new airplane, a new average to work against, new luck.

The seedy shavetail became a first lieutenant and the airplane commander.
They got a co-pilot from a broken crew.
The tail gunner came down with malaria just as the weather broke.
Quinn joined them fresh from the replacement point.
They were given Bawl, Buster.
The ship had made eleven runs, a good safe number.
It had enough in it to take them through their tour.

But now they had been up seven straight days without incident
and Bawl, Buster was daring them for the eighth.
And now they were no longer a crew, or lucky.
Only the navigator was left of the original officers,
of the gunners only Deacon and Horton and Fitzgerald.
The men of Bawl, Buster were sweating out individual tours,
each deep in his own net of Fifty.
They were strangers, riding strange airplanes.
Each thumbed blindly for the catch of his own release, had his own magic number.

________________________________________

Something Further to Refer to…

… The Gunner, at GoodReads

The Youngest Tigers in the Sky, by William W. Wyper – 1980 [William W. Wyper – the author as artist!]

William W. Wyper’s The Youngest Tigers in the Sky is rather unusual in terms of the book’s cover illustration, for the artist is none other than the author – William Wyper – himself.

Appropriately, the cover depicts a pair of of P-51D Mustangs bearing the markings of Wyper’s unit – the 342nd Fighter Squadron of the 348th Fighter Group – which comprised red and white rudder stripes adjacent to a blue vertical band upon the aircraft’s fin.  Similarly, I think (?) that the blue spinners may be another form of squadron identification. 

The book includes a number of small black and white pen and ink (?) drawings of aircraft and vignettes based on events during Wyper’s pilot training and combat missions.  While not shown in “this” post, these illustrations add an appropriately “light” touch to the book.

Oh, yes, as to the book itself?  

I enjoyed it, particularly in terms of how the content is divided – about half-‘n-half – between accounts of Wyper’s training in the United States, and, his actual combat service.  The text, written in a straightforward and direct style, maintains a very nice balance in covering the substantive, serious, and sometimes tragic aspects of combat flying, and equally, the sometimes ironic, odd, memorable, and (yes) occasionally humorous experiences inherent in military aviation.  And, in terms of aviation history, the book is valuable by its very nature in covering an aspect of WW II aviation history entirely other than 8th Air Force and European Theater.   

In a literary sense, the book does not have the deeply philosophical and pensive nature of such a work as John Boeman’s Morotai, but this not to its disadvantage, for I think Wyper’s intention was entirely different: To tell the story of how one became military pilot, during an era that by now – almost eight decades later, in 2021 – is largely receding from public memory.  (At least, in the United States.)  In this, the book entirely succeeds.  I do note, however, that for all those pilots who were killed in training or on combat missions, Wyper eschews mentioning their names, perhaps a measure of respecting confidentiality and privacy even decades after the war’s end.      

My one criticism – and this is actually an indirect compliment – is the book’s paucity of photographs.  (!)  Other than the two images shown below (and another, showing the author at the controls of his Beechcraft Bonanza in the 1970s), there just ain’t no other pictures!  I would liked to have seen more.

I think you’ll enjoy this one.

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“Another axiom regarding war in the air: the sky has always been the exclusive battle area of the young.  Unfortunately, all of the young men who struggled for the chance to do battle weren’t afforded the opportunity to become great aces, but they were no less tigers.  Some were killed during their struggle to become tigers.  Others were killed, not by the enemy, but by their own inability to master the unforgiving demands of their specialized profession.  This book is a reminiscence of experiences of one of those once-young tigers in the sky.  It is dedicated to all of the young men who fought in the skies, especially those who never lived to reminisce.”

Wyper’s cover art…

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The author standing before a P-40N Warhawk.  The location would be either Eagle Pass, Texas, or Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  

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The author in the cockpit of a P-51D Mustang of the 342nd Fighter Squadron.

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A little searching at Ancestry.com yielded William Wyper’s Draft Registration Card.  Note that Wyper was employed at the Douglas Aircraft Corporation in Long Beach, California.   

References

Green, William, Famous Fighters of the Second World War, Hanover House, New York, N.Y., 1958

Rust, Kenn C., Fifth Air Force Story, Historical Aviation Album, Temple City, Ca., 1973

Ward, Richard, and Shores, Christopher F., Curtiss P-40D-N Warhawk in USAAF – French and Foreign Service, Arco Publishing Company, New York, N.Y., 1969

Night Fighter, by Cecil F. “Jimmy” Rawnsley and Robert Wright – 1957 (June, 1967) [Edward I. Valigursky]

A very nice cover by Edward I. Valigursky for Ballantine Books’ 1967 edition of Cecil F. Rawnsley and Robert Wright’s Night Fighter, bearing the artist’s surname at the lower right…

Though the depicted aircraft are (in theory) Mosquito night fighters of Number 85 Squadron RAF, close (well … very, very close) inspection of the plane at the lower left reveals that it bears the code letters “ED I” on its fuselage.  Not so coincidentally, this matches the initials of the artist’s given and middle names: “Edward Ignatius”!  In reality, the squadron code carried by No. 85 Squadron’s warplanes was “VY”. 

Edward Valigursky was an enormously productive and versatile artist, his oeuvre encompassing the fields of military aviation, space exploration, and adventure.  As for the realm of science fiction, during the mid to late 1950s his work frequently appeared as cover art for Amazing Stories and Fantastic, interior art, and, the covers of Ace paperbacks.

Flight Lieutenant Cecil Frederick “Jimmy” Rawnsley

References

Hess, William N., The Allied Aces of World War II, Arco Publishing Inc., New York, N.Y., 1966

Flight Lieutenant Cecil Frederick “Jimmy” Rawnsley, at Wikipedia

Flight Lieutenant C.F. Rawnsley (portrait), at “The Royal Air Force 1939-1945, Vol. I: The Fight at Odds”, at ibiblio.org/hyperwar

Number 85 Squadron Royal Air Force, at Wikipedia

Edward I. Valigursky

Biography, at Pulp Artists

Biography, by Arnie Fenner, at Muddy Colors

Examples of his science fiction art, at 3rdART

Some GGA (“Good Girl Art”), at Grapefruit Moon Gallery

2018 08 31 – 2018 10 14

Morotai – A Memoir of War, by John S. Boeman – 1981 [Terrence Fehr]

The war was over – I had survived. 
I was home, safe in the land of my birth. 
Only my innocence had died, and with it my youth. 
Fair or not fair, right or wrong, whether I wanted it or not, whether anyone liked it or not
– I had a life to live. 
I was twenty-one.

In a number of previous posts, I presented cover art for books authored by veterans of the Second World War who’d served as combat fliers in the United States Army Air Force, and, Royal Air Force.  Regardless of the different personalities of these authors; regardless of the differences in military duties of these men and the theaters of war in which they served; regardless of their styles of literary expression, the central and consistent tone emerging from these books is one of contemplation – deep and profound contemplation – and seriousness.

For all of these men, the constant threat of injury or death, comradeship and the inevitable loss of comrades (which these men directly witnessed), the numbing routine – psychologically and physically – of combat flying, and, the inherent unpredictability of the future, were transformative at a level which the written word can sometimes express quite clearly, and at other times, only indirectly.

(But, you can even learn something from “indirection”!)

In this context, John Sigler Boeman’s memoir Morotai: A Memoir of War, is superb, in terms of military aviation history, and in a larger sense, as a work of literature.  Boeman served as a B-24 Liberator pilot in the 371st Bomb Squadron of the 13th Air Force’s 307th (“Long Rangers“) and later as a career Air Force officer, flying C-54s and B-52s, serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  He passed away at the relative young (these days) age of 74 in 1998, seventeen years after the first publication of Morotai.

Morotai is vividly descriptive, whether in “capturing” the personalities of Boeman’s crew members (the men are presented honestly and not as caricatures, as occurred – in a different vein – in the ridiculously overrated television series M*A*S*H, the animating ideology of which was always apparent…), living conditions at Morotai (an island in eastern Indonesia’s Halmahera Group), or the psychological and physical challenges and complexities of combat flying.  An unusual aspect of the book is that an underlying theme of uncertainty – about the technical skill and ability of the author and his crew; about the nature of the military effort their Squadron and Group were tasked with; about the “future” immediate and the “future” distant – hovers throughout its pages. 

The literary tone of the book probably emerged from what seems to have been Mr. Boeman’s inherently contemplative, introspective disposition.  But, it also arises from the book’s final two chapters, in which the author recounts – with utter and remarkable candor – the take-off crash of his bomber on May 29, 1945, an accident which claimed the lives of four of his crew members, and eventuated in the disbandment of his crew as a unified group of aviators.  By retelling his story chronologically and placing the jarring account of the take-off crash in the book’s final pages, one gets the impression that structuring the memoir in this manner may have been a kind of literary catharsis for Mr. Boeman: A catharsis entirely understandable, and deserving of respect.

The book ends with Boeman’s departure from the 371st Bomb Squadron and return to his home in Illinois.  There he would be, during Japan’s surrender several weeks later.  

So… the dust jacket of Morotai (Doubleday first edition) appears below.  Strangely, the illustration depicts a B-24D Liberator in desert-pink camouflage, rather than the later-model natural metal finish Liberators actually piloted by Boeman:  Ooops…  Somebody in Doubleday’s art department should have paid more attention!

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Here’s a review of Morotai by Captain Carl H. Fritsche that appeared in Aerospace Historian in Fall of 1981.

“John Boeman, a farm youth from Illinois, enlisted in the Army Air Corps and he was inducted into the military service in March 1943.  Morotai is a book of his experiences in the WW II cadet program and of his 20 combat missions as a B-24 pilot in the Southwest Pacific Area.  The book is an in-depth analysis of the author’s thoughts, hopes, frustrations, successes, and failures during the global conflict.

John Boeman is an excellent writer.  There were no 1,000-plane raids staged from the small island of Morotai, so the author takes you with him on each of his small squadron’s flights to bomb a single bridge, ship, or gun emplacement.  As Boeman gains confidence in his ability as a combat B-24 commander, his career is shattered by his own “pilot error” takeoff crash in which several of his crew members are killed.  The psychological impact of the plane crash was devastating and Boeman was sent home.  WW II ends as Boeman returns to his home town and Boeman completes the book with an excellent analysis of his success and failure in the conflict.

Morotai is a good book about one man’s life and his one failure as a plane commander.  The publisher’s note in the back of the book is important as John Boeman did not allow his own failure as a pilot to defeat him.  He returned to the military service and served many years as a B-52 plane commander as well as many other very important assignments before retiring from the Air Force in 1972.

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Morotai, first published by Doubleday in 1981, was republished in an illustrated edition by Sunflower University Press in 1989.  This second edition included several photographs from John Boeman’s personal collection, some of which are shown below:

Lieutenant John Sigler Boeman

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Lieutenant Boeman’s crew, posed on the wing of B-24J 44-40946, an aircraft of the 372nd Bomb Squadron.

The men are…

Standing (back row), left to right

1 Lt. John S. Boeman, Il. – Pilot
2 Lt. Joseph C. Miller, N.J. – Co-Pilot
F/O Alton Charles Dressler, Hershey, Pa. – Navigator, T-132887 (Killed in crash)
WW II Honoree Page by Mrs. Jean Dressler Heatwole (sister)
F/O Joseph Pasternak, St. Louis, Mo. – Bombardier

Seated (front row), left to right

S/Sgt. Arnold Jerome Shore, Philadelphia, Pa. – Waist Gunner, 33777766 (Killed in crash)
S/Sgt. William J. Harrington, Minneapolis, Mn. – Radio Operator
S/Sgt. William P. Brown, Poulsbo, Wa. – Ball Turret Gunner
S/Sgt. Leonard I. Sikorski, Milwaukee, Wi. – Flight Engineer
S/Sgt. David G. Swecker, Clarksburg, W.V. – Tail Gunner
S/Sgt. Ernest James Smieja, Minneapolis, Mn. – Nose Gunner, 37569058 (Killed in crash)

Not in photo

S/Sgt. Eppa Hunton Johnson, Alexandria, Va. – Photographer, 33540167 (Died of injuries June 1, 1945)

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This is F/O Alton Dressler’s tombstone, via FindAGrave contributor Glen Koons

And, the tombstone of S/Sgt. Arnold J. Shore.

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Another view of B-24J 44-40946

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John Boeman and his fellow Officers

Left to right
F/O Joseph Pasternak (Bombardier)
2 Lt. Joseph C. Miller (Co-Pilot)
1 Lt. John S. Boeman
F/O Alton C. Dressler (Navigator)
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Some years ago, I contacted the Air Force Historical Records Center at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, to learn more about the tragic accident that figures so prominently in John Boeman’s book.  It turns out that no Accident Report exists for this incident, that document having been lost since the Second World War, or (more likely!) never having been filed in the first place.  However, the events of May 29, 1945, are well covered in the Squadron History for that month, the pages of which are shown below.

On May 29th, tragedy struck at the 371st when six planes were lined up for an early dawn take-off.  Three planes were already airborne when Lt. Boeman in A/C #548 crashed at the end of the runway.  Within a matter of minutes, his plane burned and two of the 6 1000# GP bombs exploded and four were blown clear and did not explode.  By some unexplainable miracle of fate eight crew members out of eleven escaped this raging inferno with their lives.  Three died in the accident and were burned beyond recognition.  The following men were killed: F/O Dressler, S/Sgt. Shore and S/Sgt. Smeija.  The funeral was held for these men on the afternoon of the same day at a Cemetery on Morotai Island.  Other members of the crew are recovering from serious burns, broken limbs and severe shock.

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B-24L Liberator 44-41548, “Polly”, which would eventually be so central to John Boeman’s journeys, both life and literary.   (Images from B-24 Best Web)

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At Morotai, the funeral of Flight Officer Alton C. Dressler, from 307th Bomb Group, at Fold3.com

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Some passages from Morotai…

After dinner, Dad drove, with Mom in the seat beside him as always. 
I sat in the back seat and watched city lights fade away to country darkness. 
Near midnight, turning into our farm lane,
the car’s headlights flashed across the big white house where I was brought into the world. 
Dad stopped under the big maple tree near the front porch. 
I got out into the still, dark, warm night air among the summer cornfields. 
The urge was strong to block the past three years from my mind,
to forget it all,
as I went into the house with my parents.

“I gave Lowell your bedroom when he came to stay with us,” my mother said.
“You can sleep in the big bedroom, where your brother used to sleep.
Is that all right?”

“Oh.  Okay, sure, that’s fine,” I said, and carried my B-4 bag up the stairs.

Bogey had missed by one day.
On my first full day at home,
President Truman announced Japanese acceptance of the Potsdam surrender terms.
My mother asked me to attend special prayers with them at church.
I agreed.

I remembered that big white church on the north side of town. 
Long ago, the lady who taught Sunday school,
when she was not pumping and playing the organ,
had told me how God knew everything. 
“He knows all about each of us,”
she had said as we little boys and girls listened from straight-backed chairs. 
“He knows how many hairs we have on our head. 
He knows every time we are good and every time we are bad. 
He takes care of good little boys and girls …”
Now I listened to the pastor in that same church. 
His words, it seemed to me,
thanked God for taking care of those who were good –
by ending the war. 
I sensed, perhaps unfairly, smug satisfaction that victory had confirmed goodness. 
The pastors’ pious recitation of God’s hand,
in vindication, seemed to ignore those who, I knew,
deserved more than I to be home with loved ones.

Did God end the war? I asked myself.
If He did, did He start it?
Can we blame our enemies for the beginning and thank God for the ending?
No.
War, from the beginning to the end,
must be an affair of men,
in which God plays no favorites.
How dare we be so arrogant as to believe that God would help us,
just because we prayed for it,
to kill and defeat those whom we select as enemies?
Had there not been those among our enemies who asked God’s help, too, in their way?
Would an omnipotent God sell his favors for a few prayers?
Were my crewmates, who fell victim to my shortcomings,
less deserving of God’s help than I?

As we left the church, I had not the words to describe my feelings,
to articulate my thoughts. 
To avoid burdening my parents with my reaction to the service, I said nothing. 
On our way home, passing the village main street, I saw people gathered. 
Home, I borrowed the car and returned to town.

On the one-block main street of the village I had known as my hometown all my life,
they had built a bonfire.
While some in our town thanked God for ending the war,
others chose to vent emotions in a ritual that closing the village taverns could not inhibit.
Parked around the corner,
I got out and approached a scene that struck me as one from an old movie,
in which barbaric tribesmen were whipping themselves to frenzy.
They had sacrificed their young men to appease the demon and ward off dark evils.
Now, celebrating their success, they were giving their thanks to the Great God War for sparing them.
Flames shot up from the fire.
Amid shouts and yells, a pair of teenaged boys,
obviously drunk,
approached in an automobile.
One waved a whiskey bottle out the window while the other drove through the edge of the fire.
The crowd cheered, what, their bravery?
What are they cheering? I asked myself.
What are they celebrating?
“Hello, Johnny.”  A voice I remembered.
One of the few girls who had called me Johnny, instead of John, in school.
Once I had thought her the most beautiful creature on earth,
but had never told her so.
I had never kissed her, never asked.
There had always been another boy, regarded by our peers as her “steady.”
Conforming to the code of our time and place,
maybe from shyness,
I had tried to keep from exposing my true feelings about her.
“I heard you were coming home,” she said.
“Come on and join the snake dance.”

 

She held out her hand. 
The cool pressure of her fingers in mine excited old emotions. 
We joined the crowd forming in a line, holding hands,
to dance and run through the street and around the fire. 
I knew she had married a “steady” since I left. 
He was overseas. 
Was the invitation a friendly overture for old time’s sake,
or was it the approach of a lonely married woman yielding to temptation in the excitement?  
By the end of the dance, I was afraid to know the answer. 
Whichever, it could lead to complications I did not want to face. 
I disentangled myself and moved to the sidewalk beyond the crowd.

What are they celebrating?
I asked myself the question again.
Among them I recognized some I had known well when the decisive battles were still to be fought.  They had not seen those as their battles.
They had not sworn to obey any orders.
They had taken no oath.
They had pledged not their lives, their fortunes, nor their Sacred Honor.
Yet they accepted the victory as theirs,
as if by Divine Right, attained, by them,
simply by waiting for it.
Now they celebrated peace, their peace.

The street scene filled me with consternation equal to that I had felt in the church. 
I had known these people. 
I could put names to all their faces. 
But now they were strangers to me, living in a world apart from mine. 
I wanted their silly celebrations no more than their pious prayers. 
I wanted to run away.

I wanted to run away, but to where?
Turn my back because they prayed, or celebrated?
Should I condemn them for not seeing a world I saw?
I had been raised among them, with them, as one of them.
By what right could I now say I was not one of them?
If not one of them, who could I be?
My commitment to win the war had been total,
but if not on their behalf, then on whose?
I could not answer.

The war was over – I had survived. 
I was home, safe in the land of my birth. 
Only my innocence had died, and with it my youth. 
Fair or not fair, right or wrong, whether I wanted it or not, whether anyone liked it or not
– I had a life to live. 
I was twenty-one.

I would find new dreams, new commitments.
I locked the consternating questions within myself, without answers,
and stepped off the sidewalk into the crowd.

I joined the survivors.

______________________________

References

Boeman, John S., Morotai – A Memoir of War, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1981 (1st Edition)

Boeman, John S., Morotai – A Memoir of War, Sunflower University Press, Manhattan, Ks., 1989 (2nd Edition; Illustrated)

Fritsche, Carl H. (Book Review), Morotai – A Memoir of War by John Boeman, Aerospace Historian, V 28, N 3, Fall, 1981, p. 212

307th Bomb Group Aircraft Inventory and Air Crew Losses, at 307th BG

B-24J 44-40946 (no nickname), at B-24 Best Web

B-24L 44-41548 (Polly) – 5 images, at B-24 Best Web

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. – October, 1959 (February, 1961) [Unknown Artist]

“Maybe you’ve always thought of war as a business for the tough and the unimaginative.
It has been said that the best soldier leaves his emotions at home;
that pre-battle training is a period calculated to harden both mind and body.
But what of the boy who cannot harden?
What of the lad who cannot put his sensitivity in a suitcase and store it for the duration?
Walter Miller tells us.”
– Introduction to “Wolf Pack”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., Fantastic, September-October, 1953

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If the spirit of an age – its dreams and moods; fancies and wonders; fears and hopes – is reflected in its literature, then a prime example of such remains Walter M. Miller., Jr.’s 1959 novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Based on and derived from three short stories published in the mid-1950s – the first of which shares and perhaps inspired the novel’s title – only a decade after the development of atomic weapons and amidst the (first?) Cold War, Miller’s tale was one of many works of science-fiction that presented a vision of the world, and particularly man’s place within that world, subsequent to a global nuclear war. 

In this context, I strongly recommend the recent (October, 2020) essay about Miller’s Canticle by Pedro Blas González, “A Canticle for Leibowitz and Cyclical History“.  Therein, Dr. Gonzalez discusses Miller’s novel through the lens of Catholicism (to which Miller converted after the war), viewing the novel as an expression of Miller’s interpretation and understanding of the nature of history.  As implied (albeit not specifically mentioned) within Dr. González’s essay, and moreso readily understood through a reading of the Canticle, Miller did not view human history as being “progressive” – and thus not having an “arc” in any direction – but instead, as being cyclical, even if those cycles would occupy great intervals of time.  

Though doubtless inspired by technological developments and geopolitics of the mid-twentieth century, the two animating ideas of Miller’s novel extend well beyond science fiction, for they represent chords of thought embedded deep within the psyche of men, nations, and civilizations.  These are the idea of an apocalypse, and, the gradual and tenuous rebirth of civilization after centuries during which the collective knowledge of the past (perhaps our present?…) has become myth at best, and utterly forgotten at worst.  However, rather than concluding upon a note of redemption, the book’s final chapters leave the reader with a sense of deep ambivalence, for the novel suggests that the currents of history are by nature cyclic.

Despite the novel’s origin during the Cold War, Miller’s inspiration for A Canticle for Leibowitz seems to have arisen from something simpler, immediate, and intensely personal: His military service during the Second World War, during which he served as an aerial gunner and radio operator in the United States Army Air Force.  Specifically, the impetus for his creation of the stories and novel was his participation in a combat mission during which his bomb group participated in the destruction of the hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino.  As discussed in academic and popular literature (see Alexandra H. Olsen’s paper in Extrapolation, William Roberson’s Reference Guide to Miller’s life and fiction, and Denny Bowden’s essay at Volusia History) on a fundamental level Miller world-view was profoundly affected, if not irrevocably altered, by the experience.

Though most sources (at least, web sources) about Miller describe his military service in general terms, Roberson’s Reference Guide specifically identifies Miller’s military unit: The 489th Bombardment Squadron.  The 489th was one of the four squadrons of the 340th Bomb Group (its three brother squadrons having been the 486th, 487th, and 488th), a unit of the Mediterranean-based 12th Air Force which flew B-25 Mitchell twin-engine medium bombers.  During the time that Miller was a member of the 489th (probably late 1943 through mid-1944) the squadron was stationed at the Italian locales of San Pancrazio, Foggia, Pompeii, and the Gaudo Airfield.

The 489th’s evocative unit insignia, which doubtless adorned the leather flight jackets of many of its officers and men, is shown below…

The best resource on the web (certainly better than anything in print!) for information about the 489th and 340th is the website of the 57th Bomb Wing Association.  This resource, covering the 57th’s four bomb groups (the 310th, 319th, 321st, and 340th) gives access to an enormous amount of information, as original Army Air Force Group and Squadron histories and Mission Reports, (many of which are transcribed as PDFs), and, a plethora of photographs.  Typical of Army Air Force WW II military records, there’s a degree of variation in the quantity and depth of this information from group to group, and, squadron to squadron:  Records for some (most?) combat units are complete, though there are inevitable gaps, “here and there”.

In documents pertaining to the 489th, I’ve discovered three references to Miller’s military service.

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First, Timing: A record of combat missions flown by the 489th during the February of 1944.  For the fifteenth of that month, the record – like that for all other missions – is unsurprisingly laconic: “Benedictine Monastery, Italy.  6 planes.”

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Second, Identification: Miller’s name appears within a list of airmen who, already having received the Air Medal (for completing five combat missions), had been awarded two Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters, thus signifying the completion – by the end of February – of up to fifteen combat missions.  His name is listed eleventh from the top in the “upper” list…

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Third, Verification:  This “third” document – also found at 57th Bomb Wing – is what’s known in the parlance of the WW II Army Air Force as a “Loading List”, meaning that it lists the names of crewman assigned to specific planes during a combat mission or sortie, on an aircraft-by-aircraft basis.  This Loading List, covering 489th Bomb Squadron aircraft and crews which participated on the Cassino mission of February 15, 1944, shows that seven of the Squadron’s B-25s took part in the mission. 

Each plane is denoted by a three-digit number, which represents the last three digits of the B-25s Army Air Force serial number.  This is followed by the number “9” and a letter, the “9” representing the 489th Bomb Squadron, and the adjacent letter – a different letter for every plane in the squadron – uniquely identifying each B-25 in the squadron.  Each such number-letter combination was painted on the outer surface of the twin vertical tails of the squadron’s planes, a practice shared by the 340th’s other three squadrons.  This is followed by information about the planes’ bomb loads, which – in all cases but one – were three or four thousand-pound demolition bombs.

Then, we come to the crews themselves, which follow the same general sequence: P (Pilot), CP (Co-Pilot), B (Bombardier), R (Radio Operator), G (Aerial Gunner / Flight Engineer), and TG (Tail Gunner).

Where was Walter M. Miller, Jr.?  He’s there:  He was a radio operator in the aircraft commanded by J.M. Kirtley, B-25 “#141”, or, “9X”. 

As the 57th Bomb Wing includes Loading Lists for other missions flown by the 489th (and the 340th Bomb Group’s three brother squadrons), doubtless Miller’s name appears in these documents, as well.  But, this will suffice for now. 

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The image below may be akin to the view seen by Miller on February 15, 1944:  Captioned,”Formation of North American B-25s of the 340th Bomb Group enroute to their target – Cassino.  March 15, 1944,” the picture is United States Army Air Force photo “68261AC / A22901”, and can be found within the (appropriately) entitled collection “WW II US Air Force Photos“, at Fold3.com.  The planes are aircraft of the 488th Bomb Squadron, the “give-away” being the “8C” (“8”, for 488th) code on the vertical tail of the aircraft in the left center. 

But, Walter Miller did not participate on the day’s mission, for his name is absent from the 489th’s Loading List for March 15….

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The results of war: A view of the remnants of the town of Cassino (foreground), and the hilltop abbey (upper center), in Army Air Force Photograph 62093AC / A25003.  Curiously, the caption on the rear of the photo states, “Bomb damage to Monte di Cassino  Abbey, Cassino, Italy, after bombing attacks by Allied planes.  The centuries-old monastery had been used by the German defenders as a strong point to block the Allied drive on Rome,” but the words “Monte di Cassino Abbey” are crossed out. 

The image is undated, but it was received by the Army Air Force or War Department in November of 1944.

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As mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the novel, and, discussed by Alexandra H. Olsen, A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in October of 1959, was created by melding and altering elements, characters, concepts, and plot devices from his three previously published post-cataclysmic stories (all having appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) into a single work, and, adding passages in Latin. 

The three stories which formed the basis of the novel were:

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, published in April of 1955 (pp. 93-111)
“And the Light Is Risen”, published in August, 1956 (pp. 3-80)
“The Last Canticle”, published in February, 1957 (pp. 3-50)

A final tale in the series, “God Is Thus”, appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in November of 1997 (pp. 13-51), thirty-eight years after the novel’s publication. 

But… 

…though the motivation for the ultimate creation of Canticle of 1955 was Miller’s participation in the bombardment of Monte Cassino, evidence for the emotional impact of that is clearly evident in an earlier story of a vastly different literary nature:  This was “Wolf Pack”, which appeared in the September-October, 1953, issue of Fantastic.  Among the thirty-eight works of short fiction listed in Miller’s biographical profile at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, “Wolf Pack” was the 26th, while “Secret of the Death Dome”, published in Amazing Stories in 1951, was the first.  “Wolf Pack” appeared two years before “A Canticle for Leibowitz’s” publication, in the 1955 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 

Though I’ve thus far barely (!) skimmed the story, it seems to belong entirely to the realm of fantasy as opposed to science fiction, for it relates a combat flyer’s confrontation with his conscience – himself? – on levels symbolic, psychological, and perhaps supernatural.

Do you want to read the story?  Here’s a PDF version of “Wolf Pack”. 

As for the artistic aspects of the Fantastic story – visual art, that is! – here’s the two-page opening illustration for the tale…

…and here’s an accompanying illustration, showing representations of a B-25 bomber (viewed from above) and a bombardier peering through a generic “black box” looking bombsight (not quite a Norden bombsight!), both visual elements being surrounded by symbolic vignettes of villages.  Both pieces are by Bernard Krigstein, whose work is much more strongly associated with comic books than pulps. 

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Continuing on a theme of art, here’s the cover of Bantam Books’ 1961 paperback edition of the novel, which shows a monk against a backdrop of a destroyed city’s skyline.  Though the artist’s name isn’t listed, perhaps he was Paul Lehr, given the era of the book’s publication, and, the visual style of the composition.

In terms of Miller’s use of Latin, here’s the prayer uttered by Brother Francis Gerard of The Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz, which appears very early in the novel’s first part (“Fiat Homo”), during the Brother’s exploration of the remains of a fallout shelter somewhere in the American Southwest.  The allusions to the actuality and legacy of nuclear war are explicit and vivid, and – recited in the format of prayer rather than prose, with each of the three central groups of verses being thematically linked – powerfully expressed and visually evocative. 

A spiritu fornicationis,
Domine, libera nos.
From the lighting and the tempest,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the scourge of the earthquake,
O Lord, deliver us.
From plague, famine, and war,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the place of ground zero,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the ruin of the cobalt,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the rain of the strontium,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the fall of the cesium,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the curse of the Fallout,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the begetting of monsters,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the curse of the Misborn,
O Lord deliver us.
A morte perpetua,
Domine, libera nos.

Peccatores,
te rogamus, audi nos.
That thou wouldst spare us,
we beseech thee, hear us.
That thou wouldst pardon us,
we beseech there, hear us.
That thou wouldst bring us truly to penance,
te rogamus, audi nos.
(pp. 14-15)

(In just a moment, Brother Gerard will discover a relic from the life of Saint Leibowitz…)

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Of the larger folded papers, one was tightly rolled as well,
and it began to fall apart when he tried to unroll it;
he could make out the words RACING FORM, but nothing more. 
After returning it to the box for later restorative work,
he turned to the second folded document;
its creases were so brittle that he dared inspect only a little of it,
by parting the folds slightly and peering between them.

A diagram, it seemed, but – a diagram of white lines on dark paper!

Again he felt the thrill of discovery. 
It was clearly a blueprint
– and there was not a single original blueprint left at the abbey,
but only inked facsimiles of several such prints. 
The originals had faded long ago from overexposure to light. 
Never before had Francis seen an original,
although he had seen enough hand-painted reproductions to recognize it as a blueprint,
which, while stained and faded,
remained legible after so many centuries because of the total darkness and low humidity in the abbey.  He turned the document over – and felt brief fury:
What idiot had desecrated the priceless paper? 
Someone had sketched absent-minded geometrical figures and childish cartoon faces all over the back.  What thoughtless vandal-

The anger passed after a moment’s reflection.
At the time of the deed, blueprints had probably been as common as weeds,
and the owner of the box the probably culprit.
He shielded the print from the sun with his own shadow while trying to unfold it further.
It the lower right-hand corner was a printed rectangle containing,
in simple block-letters, various titles, dates, “patent numbers”, reference numbers, and names.
His eye traveled down the list until it encountered:
“CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”

He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head until it seemed to rattle. 
Then he looked again. 
There is was, quite plainly:

“CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”

He flipped the paper over again. 
Among the geometric figures and childish sketches,
clearly stamped in purple ink,
was the form:

The name was written in a clear feminine hand,
not in the hasty scrawl of the other notes. 
He looked again at the initialed signature of the note in the lid of the box,
I.E.L. – and again at “CIRCUIT DESIGN BY …” 
And the same initials appeared elsewhere throughout the notes.

(Proof of the Saint’s existence!  Here’s the “Circuit Design Form” bearing his signature, from page 23 of the Bantam paperback.  Absent from “Canticle” in the 1955 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in book form, it really catches the reader’s attention.) 

There had been argument, all highly conjectural,
about whether the beautiful founder of the Order, if finally canonized,
should be addressed as Saint Isaac or as Saint Edward.
Some even favored Saint Leibowitz as the proper address,
since the Beatus had, until the present, been referred to by his surname.

“Beate Leibowitz, ora pro me!” whispered Brother Francis. 
His hands were trembling so violently that they threatened to ruin the brittle documents.

He had uncovered relics of the Saint.  (pp. 22-24)

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Given the novel’s success, it’s unsurprising that it was adapted for radio broadcast.  It’s available via Archive.org, at The Classic Archives Old Time Radio Channel, and Old Time Radio Downloads. 

Created in 1981, the play is comprised of fifteen segments, each of roughly a half-hour duration.  The informational blurb at Archive.org states, “The radio drama adaptation by John Reed, and produced at WHA by Carl Schmidt and Marv Nunn.  The play was directed by Karl Schmidt, engineered by Marv Nunn with special effects by Vic Marsh.  Narrator – Carol Collins and includes Fred Coffin, Bart Hayman, Herb Hartig and Russel Horton.  Music was by Greg Fish and Bob Budney and the Edgewood College Chant Group.”

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These are covers of the three 1950’s issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in which appeared the three stories from which were derived Miller’s novel, and, the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October-November of 1997, which was the venue for the last story in the series.  Ironically, none of the four issues feature cover art actually pertaining to Miller’s stories or novel.  Much the same was so for 1951 issue of Galaxy Magazine in which appeared Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman”, later published in book form as Farhenheit 451:  That issue featured cover art by Chesley Bonestell.

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The cover of the April, 1955 issue features a close-up from Chesley Bonestell’s stunning panorama “Mars Exploration”.  Notice that the painting shows a strip of green – vegetation – at the base of weathered background hills.  Well, this was the mid-1950s, over a decade before Mariner probes revealed the true nature of the Martian surface.  Then again, maybe Mars is “green”, but a deeper, below-the-surface kind of green?

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”
April, 1955

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“Mars Exploration”, by Chesley Bonestell

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“And the Light Is Risen”
August, 1956

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“The Last Canticle”
February, 1957

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“God Is Thus”
October-November, 1997

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References, Readings, and What-Not…

57th Bomb Wing, at 57thBombWing.com

340th Bomb Group History, at 57thBombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron History, at 57thBombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron History for February, 1944 (PDF Transcript), at 57th BombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron insignia, at RedBubble.com

Bernard Krigstein, at Wikipedia

Walter M. Miller, Jr., at Wikipedia

Walter M. Miller, Jr., at Internet Speculative Fiction Database

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, at Wikipedia

“Mars Exploration” (painting), by Chesley Bonestell, at RetroFuturism (subreddit)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (covers for April, 1955, August, 1956, and October-November, 1997), at Pulp Magazine Archive (Archive.org)

Bond, Harold L., Return to Cassino, Pocket Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., March, 1965

Bowden, Denny, Secret Life / Death of the Author of the Greatest Science Fiction Novel – Born in New Smyrna, Died in Daytona Beach, at VolusiaHistory.com

Majdalany, Fred, The Battle of Cassino, Ballantine Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1957

Olsen, Alexandra H., Re-Vision: A Comparison of Canticle for Leibowitz and the Novellas Originally Published, Extrapolation, Summer, 1997

Piekalkiewicz, Janusz, Cassino – Anatomy of the Battle, Orbis Publishing, London, England, 1980

Roberson, William H., Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Reference Guide to His Fiction and His Life, McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, N.C., 2011

Webley, Kayla, Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Books: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Time, June 7, 2010