OLD AVIATORS NEVER DIE by MICHAEL JOHN CLARINGBOULD

I will never forget when Bob told me that being up by dawn was a habit for him. I had just finished interviewing him in his own home in Virginia where he had quietly welcomed me in style. It was 1985 and I was beginning to catch glimpses of a man who was a legend to the two and a half thousand or so men he had commanded in the Second big one. He was well into his mid‑seventies by then. At the age of thirty-one he had commanded the US Army Air Corps 312^th Bombardment Group from the US to Australia then onto the Philippines. He quietly made the point that his Virginia home was the first house he and his wife Betty had ever owned. The constant moves of the US Air Force had seen to that. Since World War Two Bob had been a career Air Force officer.

He had graduated from West Point, and had thus become a ‘Ring Knocker’ as they were called. It was a sobriquet generously used out of jealousy or respect, or a combination of both. He remembered well the day the war had broken out. His distinct recollection was that talk in the cadets mess was of “those crazy Europeans” who were at it again. Who could blame such a view after the atrocities of the Great War ? But Bob never judged anybody. He just did his job, and well. In those days at West Point there was no air force, but there was the Army Air Corps, and officers from its cavalry units were particularly encouraged to join. Bob did.

It is now fifty-five years ago that the second World War ended. The number does not represent one of those clean, round anniversaries which everyone likes to commemorate. Back then men like Bob were flying against real bullets, some as young as nineteen. Most came of age during the Great Depression, yet retained fond memories of that harsh era. Or was it ? Despite economic adversity there was freedom. They could traverse the creek just out of town limits to go fishing without a license. In most ways they lived a good life, unburdened with complication. I remember asking Bob the name of the street where he lived when he was a child to probe his memory. He all answers, as well as any other trivia. I knew then he was a living library.

Bob could see through anybody, especially me. He knew my motives were pure. Had they been otherwise I would not have been welcomed in his home. He still disagreed with me, and strongly so. If he considered my accounts of the history in which he had participated as inaccurate, he would tell me why, and in an authoritative language which few can command. He was usually right. Incisive as a judge, modest as a tax officer, like so many others from his era which US writer Tom Brokaw calls ‘The Greatest Generation’, Bob routinely and deliberately downplayed his own courage, his achievements and his leadership.

Bob had few regrets about the war, but forty years later there were one or two. On 13^th March 1944 he led two squadrons of A-20s to Alexishafen. His deputy, Major Selmon Wells, took flak hits and was forced to ditch. Bob took it upon himself to circle and loyally wait for a PBY to collect his wet deputy and gunner. He handed over the safety of getting the others back to Gusap to an experienced flight leader. Somewhere across the Finesterre Ranges three young pilots flew into cloud and, still in formation, impaled their A-20s into dark jagged New Guinea peaks. Back then, they were simply missing, but I told Bob one warm 1985 Virginia evening that the wreckage of one of those lost had just been located (so have the other two since then, and crew remains returned to the US). Bob was emotive, but in a way that surprised me. I can still hear the quiet and dignified anger in which rose when he described the losses as “a damned waste”. It was then I understood why he had the reputation one of the toughest commanders for discipline. Once airborne he forbid radio chatter. He expected obedience, not because he was power‑hungry, but simply because he wanted to save lives. His instructions were clear: stick with your leader, otherwise answer directly to me and your reasons had better be good ones. On 13^th March 1944 God had given him Hobson’s choice – look after two men who were in real jeopardy, or escort back the remainder who might place themselves in danger if you did not.

Did Bob make the right choice ? Of course he did, but who would dare judge from the comfort of forty years hindsight ? Well, I judged Bob, and doubted that I would have had the courage to wait for the PBY by myself in Japanese territory. As we talked more I increasingly understood why his men had followed him unquestioningly into combat with their only reservation being their own abilities. Bob led from the front, as the saying goes. By October 1944 he was the first pilot in his Group to have accumulated one hundred missions. More to the point, he had led each and every one. That’s how you define a soldier’s soldier.

I knew when his modesty was lying to me. I asked him that same evening about leading twenty‑four Douglas A‑20Gs across Babo on 9^th July 1944 and losing three aircraft to Japanese flak. Bob didn’t care to elaborate on the letters he wrote to their next‑of‑kin, but I knew exactly what he had written. I had in my possession those very letters by being beneficiary of the historical collection to which they were committed. He was a man torn between compassion on one hand, and getting on and winning the war with the other. His letters are fine pieces of writing. They are both clinical yet emotive. I still can’t figure his English syntax, why it is so clear, so communicative. It’s a compromise between the bureaucracy of the U.S Army and Shakespeare, and its good, very good.

He had an interesting modesty. One of his turret gunners would regularly take a spotted dalmation with him on missions. The enlisted man had bought the dog in Sydney, and brought the dog along for luck. It took five missions before Bob found out that it wasn’t just the two crew members of Old S leading the Group’s low‑level attacks. There was a dog too. Bob never raised the matter with the gunner. The dog wasn’t compromising safety, and it meant much to the gunner. Bob’s solution was to make sure he wasn’t around when the ground crew loaded the dog aboard prior to a mission. Bob recounted, smiling, that he never found out the name of the dog.

Bob hated hero worship, for he realized that heroes are made through circumstance, people put in the right place at the wrong time, or perhaps vice versa. Somehow and in many ways Bob was different to my generation. Even on a Sunday morning, twenty years after he had retired from Uncle Sam’s air force,  Bob would wear a tie to breakfast. His wife Betty, one of America’s finest women, didn’t blink an eye. As far as she was concerned, it was part of Bob’s life. It derived from the deep traditions of being a ‘Ringknocker’. It was a quality he would never discard, until the day he joined God’s squadron. Bob left the US Air Force in the 1960s. He never made it to the top ranks of Air Force generalship. I never asked him why, but I could not help but feel that somewhere along the way he had stood on principle which, in the end had proved a bad career move. Bob would never have let his career come in the way of principle. I barely knew him, but I certainly knew him well enough for that. Neither was he a political animal, and that does not help promotion prospects either. He would have been good at politics, but he didn’t have time. There was work to be done.

His memory was intimidating. When I was interviewing him about his wartime leadership exploits he could effortlessly recall the most insignificant minutiae, for apparently the most worthless of reasons. Or were they ? Behind his calm and measured voice he had his own reasons to which no-one was privy, and never would be. Like so many veterans, our conversations about his wartime achievements were not for his wife’s ears. Not because he didn’t respect her, but simply that it was not the sort of thing one discussed with one’s wife. That’s the way it was. He didn’t need to consult his old log books, in fact he tacitly refused to do so. His wartime logbook was somewhere around, or so he thought, perhaps somewhere in the garage. It proved unnecessary. All I had to do was mention the name of some particular target such as Hollandia, Wewak or Babo, and the accuracies would flood out. It was easy for me to tie in dates later. There were times, in that warm Virginia home, that I felt that I was the first outsider he had spoken to in forty years about his time as a Commander in New Guinea. I probably was. He enjoyed talking to a young Australian who knew the territory, and he had respect for me even though we came from different worlds, and certainly a different generation.

Leadership of a combat aerial unit had many burdens, one of the lesser known ones was the fact that if caught by the Japanese, you were unlikely to survive. There are countless cases of US airmen executed in New Guinea by the Japanese which have never received publicity. I know, because I hold the investigations records for many. Want an example ? Here is but one - Kairiru Island, off Wewak, was often the target for Bob’s A-20s. On 27^th May 1944 Thunderbolt pilot 2/Lt Robert E. Thorpe of the 39^th Fighter Squadron ditched near the island. The rescue PBY could not find him and he became just another missing U.S airman. In 1945 the Australians took surrender of the island and started asking questions. They convicted Commander Sato of the 27^th Imperial Special Naval Base for the execution, as well as several others including Hiroshi Odazawa who actually beheaded Thorpe. It turns out that Thorpe was shot in both legs before being beheaded. I have just shuffled through all twenty-one pages of the interrogation. Sato committed suicide in prison in Japan rather than face trial. So it goes, and there are hundreds of similar cases, both Australian and U.S, which have never seen light of day. In 1985 in his Virginia home, Bob appeared indifferent in knowing the ultimate fates of some of the men he had lost. Of course, he was not really disinterested, its just that he preferred not to know. He did not have to justify to me at least, his refusal to purchase Japanese‑made products since the end of the war.

After he ended his combat tour he handed over the reins of the 312^th Bombardment Group to Selmon Wells, the deputy he had helped rescue from the Alexishafen waters on that fateful day in March 1944. He left behind his trusty A-20G which, despite no formal name appearing on its side, had become known affectionately throughout the unit as ‘Old S’. It was known thus because of the large white letter S which it carried on its tail, representing Bob’s surname. Although it bore no painted name, the aircraft did carry nose art, for want of a better word, in the form a huge circular target just beneath the target. Bob’s crew chief had painted it on as a joke, so Bob left it there. He said that he figured if the Japanese were going to shoot at him they may as well have something to shoot at. Bob told me this in a complete deadpan fashion, then we moved on. It was no big deal at all. In July 1945 they were re-arming Old S on Luzon when a short‑circuit detonated the aircraft to small pieces. One of the bits which remained intact was the control column. Bob was back in the U.S by then, but his men had not forgot him. They wrapped up the column and posted it back to him a souvenir. Bob chuckled when he recalled arriving at the post office to receive a large brown package and wondering what the hell it was.

Whenever I wake at sunrise, which is not often, I sometimes think of Bob and the era of aviators from which he came. I think of his dry humour, his insightfulness, and the heavy responsibility he bore at age thirty‑one. I think of a man who made no compromise to morality, who placed ethical dignity before career. Ironically, it was a dignity he had acquired from the very institution which failed to promote him. I doubt that the irony ever bothered him for he had a life to get on with, and rewarding memories of silent achievement. Bob neither wanted nor sought publicity, in fact he despised it, and that is why I debated whether to give his surname in this article. Its easy to understand why, for Bob understood that those who achieve most in life have the least reason to say it. For the record, Colonel Robert H. Strauss was the first Commanding Officer of the 312^th Bombardment Group (Light) in WW2.

We don't have much time to wait. Look past the recent tributes to the Second big fiasco such as Memphis Belle, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, and it is clear that the sixteen million Americans and nearly one million Australians who served in World War II are heading to the final winter of their achievements. Halfway across the world still lie the green West Point ovals where many from Bob’s generation were turned into pilots, and where in September 1941 there was excited talk of “those crazy Europeans” stirring up another war. How ironic that, as a result, US cavalry officers wound up flying bombers in New Guinea. How much the poorer will we all be when the last of Bob’s generation finally join that big outfit in the sky. In the little meantime they have left with us, we can but learn from their lives.

This article was published in the Fall 2000 edition of Flightpath magazine.

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