The Man Called Brown Condor (30 page)

He heard Dr. Savory laugh. “You sure beat all, Colonel. You go halfway around the world to fly for an emperor, get shot at and make world headlines, then you come home and get nervous over accepting credit from your people. Everything will be fine. You won't need a speech. They just want to hear a few words from you and thank you for what you have done. Take your time. I'll be in the lobby. It's your night, Colonel Robinson.”

John hung up the phone.

Momma, you ought to see your boy now.

He started to get up, stopped, picked up the phone, and asked to be connected to Western Union. “I want to send a telegram to Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Cobb please, at 1905 Thirty-First Avenue in Gulfport, Mississippi.” The message told his folks that he was fine, that he had several meetings in New York, and would let them know when he could get home and not to worry. Then he shaved, got dressed, and checked himself in the mirror.
Well here you go, Johnny, ready or not.

In the car, Dr. Savory explained that he and a group of businessmen were arranging a speaking tour and that John would be paid well from his share of ticket sales to the events. “We'll raise enough money so you won't have to worry about starting a new school of aviation back in Chicago.”

John didn't know what to say. He felt enormous relief. “I'll be able to pay back my partner. He sent the money to get me home. I owe him five hundred dollars.”

“Yes, we learned about that. Coffey is waiting to meet you in Chicago. You'll have more than enough to get started again. People are willing to pay to hear you. You'll see. There'll be plenty for you after we take out expenses.”

The car pulled up to a side entrance to Rockland Palace. The enormous hall was filled with five thousand enthusiastic supporters. It was the largest room full of people John had ever seen. He was led by Dr. Savory to the head table where he was greeted by Dr. William Jay Schieffelin, chairman of the board of trustees of Tuskegee Institute, and Claude A. Barnett, director of the American Negro Press and leader of a large delegation from Chicago, the city that had adopted John Robinson as its own.

The only one at the table John knew besides Dr. Savory was Claude Barnett. It had been Barnett that had arranged for the first meeting between Robinson and Malaku Bayen that resulted in John volunteering to go to Ethiopia. John was introduced to other civic and business leaders, both black and white, that were also seated at the head table. Several of them made speeches, noting that John had been the commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Corps, that he had been Haile Selassie's personal pilot, flying him to and from the front lines, and that John had been wounded in the air by Italian fighters. The speeches, one reporter would write, “paid tribute to Colonel John Robinson's great contribution to Negro America.”

I wonder if they gonna leave anything for me to say.

When at last asked to speak, John thanked the audience for giving him such a welcome and told them that he was both humbled and honored. He then gave a brief account of the war, calling the Italian invasion, mass slaughter of Ethiopians, a disgrace to civilization and the League of Nations. He talked about the courage of the Ethiopian soldiers. He said that all but two of the Ethiopian aircraft had been shot down or destroyed on the ground, but did not speak of himself or the role he had played. He described how the government staff and army chiefs had to persuade Haile Selassie not to stay and fight to the last. How they had to convince him to take the Ethiopian government into exile and, by doing so, continue Ethiopia's long history of unbowed self-rule. He said Ethiopia had not and never would surrender. When he finished, the audience gave him a fifteen-minute standing ovation.

During the ride back to the hotel, Dr. Savory informed John that Claude Barnett would call for him in the morning. “You and Claude are flying to Chicago tomorrow where another reception has been arranged for you.”

What in the world have they gotten me into?

John nodded his head. “Yes, sir. What time should I be ready?”

If John thought nothing could compare with the welcome he received at New York, he was in for a surprise. Barnett and Robinson landed in Chicago on Sunday aboard a brand new Transcontinental and Western Airline (TWA) Douglas DC-3, which at the time was the newest and most modern airliner in the world. When Robinson appeared at the doorway, an enthusiastic crowd of three thousand cheering supporters were there to meet him. Hundreds broke through police lines to surround the plane. Janet Waterford Bragg, Willa Brown, and other female members of the Challenger Air Pilots Association John had founded in 1932 presented him with flowers as he stepped off the plane. Officers of the Eighth Infantry of the Illinois National Guard, members of the United Aid for Ethiopia, dignitaries including Robert Abbott, editor of the
Chicago Defender
, and former representatives Oscar de Priest and W. T. Brown took part in Chicago's welcoming party. John saw his old friends, Cornelius Coffey, Harold Hurd, and Grover Nash in the crowd, and although he waved he hardly had time to say hello before he was whisked away to a limousine that led a parade of five hundred automobiles from the airport to the south side of Chicago. It was estimated that as many as twenty thousand people lined the route. From the balcony of the Grand Hotel, John Robinson addressed a crowd of eight thousand people standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the hotel and completely filling the intersection of Fiftieth and South Park Avenue.

The
Chicago Defender
newspaper stated, “There has never been such a demonstration as was accorded the thirty-one-year-old Chicago aviator who left the United States thirteen months ago and literally covered himself in glory trying to preserve the independence of the last African empire. There are reports that he will be joining the faculty of Tuskegee Institute to teach aviation.” Three thousand newspapers throughout the country carried stories and printed pictures about the Brown Condor's return.

There was a huge banquet held in his honor similar to the one in New York. Again speeches were given and he was asked to speak. It was just the beginning of a pre-arranged tour that would raise money for John . . . and for the more than a dozen sponsoring organizations.

In spite of all the attention, John retained his quiet, almost shy manner. He smiled often, traveled to cities, and made talks wherever he was asked. He truly felt honored, but he was tired even before the whirlwind speaking engagements began. John found himself saying the same things over and over. His audiences wanted to hear about the war, but he knew, as every man who has seen war knows, they didn't want the true reality of it, the horror. They wanted to hear a story about a great adventure, the flying, how he escaped the Italian fighters, but these were the things he wanted to talk about the least. His audiences wanted to hear only about the war— it's what they'd paid to hear—but what John wanted to talk about was the continued need for creating opportunities for blacks in aviation.

The more questions he was asked, the more he realized there is no way to convey to those who have not experience war what it is like.

How could I tell them about the fear; how it feels to be shot at, what it's like to duck into a cloud and suddenly see a rock wall just in time to avoid it, or not, the relief that comes with surviving another day, the restless nights knowing you would go up the next morning and do it all over again. How, after landing, you put on an act as if there's nothing to it and laugh at being alive even if you are shaking so much, you need help to get out of the cockpit. How you discover that a simple hot meal cooked over a small fire under a straw roof in the rain is the best tasting meal you can remember. How you react when news comes that another friend hasn't returned and never will— how at first you hardly acknowledge the message, you act too busy to dwell on it, and maybe you are too busy. It has happened before, it is happening all around, maybe you're next. And then later, maybe days later, you have to face what it really means, that you will never share the gift of your friend's unique company, his smile, voice, handshake, the simple treasures of his fellowship. You walk off to be alone, so heavily alone, but only for a moment for there is another flight to make.

How am I supposed to explain all that to all those folks in the audience? How do I tell them that I faced every flight in dreadful anticipation, but that during the flight things happen too fast to think of anything but the flying, that it's only later that fear catches up and you think about what could have happened but didn't . . . this time. How do you explain what it's like to pick up a fallen child from the street while you are running for your life only to find, when the bombing is over and you are safe, that the child has bled to death while you were running with it in your arms? How do you describe the smell of burning flesh?

No, the audience doesn't really want to hear 'bout that. They couldn't understand unless they lived it. Maybe that's why wars keep happening, why some new leader can talk a new generation into war. They don't forget what the last war was like—they can't, 'cause they never knew it in the first place
.

Colonel Robinson was grateful when the banquets and parades and speeches were over. He had refused no invitation, but he had been uncomfortable. “I'm no hero. I just did what I could to help and somehow survived,” he repeated often.

News John didn't want to hear filtered in, news about Ethiopia. He knew it would all be bad, and it was. Information arrived in bits and pieces, bits and pieces Italy didn't want released. Ras Desta was fighting an effective guerrilla war from the hills. The Italians had hunted down his sons and executed them. Three sons of Ras Kassa were executed after surrendering. Mussolini had given Marshall Graziani the title of viceroy of Ethiopia. John learned that prior to Ethiopia, Graziani had been dubbed the Hyena of Libya for his cruelty.

The new viceroy ordered all captured rebels shot and had the head of the Coptic Church executed. Then came news that was even worse. After an attempt on his life, Graziani allowed his soldiers and Libyan askaris to embark on a systematic massacre, setting native houses on fire with gasoline and then shooting the inhabitants as they fled the flames. During the following weeks, it is estimated that thirty thousand Ethiopians, including half the younger educated population, were executed in retaliation.

John tried many times, but was never able to contact or learn the fate of his weisero—the widow he had befriended.

The Brown Condor was welcomed home to national attention in mid-May. An event in July 1936 wiped both John Robinson and the plight of Ethiopia from the pages of newspapers and news broadcasts on national radio. In Spain on the May 10, 1936 the conservative Niceto Alcala Zamora was ousted as president of Spain and replaced by left-wing Manuel Azaña backed by a consortium of socialists and communists to form what was called the Second Republic of Spain. As a result, a group of Nationalist Spanish Army officers, including Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco, Juan Yague, Gonalo Queipo de Llano, and Josè Sanjurjo attempted a coup d'état. The result was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on July 17, 1936. The tragedy and suffering of Ethiopia and the exploits of John Charles Robinson were suddenly old news.

J
OHN DIDN'T MISS THE ATTENTION
. F
REE OF THE SPOTLIGHT, HE
could get on with his life. With funds raised during his speaking tour, John, with his old partner, Cornelius Coffey, put his flying school back in business. A new economical trainer was on the market. It was called the J-2 Cub and cost $1,470. It was underpowered with an engine with only 37 horsepower, but would do fine for primary flight training. The partners paid $668 down and were in business again. The little plane cost them $1.98 an hour to operate including gas, oil, hangar rent, and insurance. They paid off the balance in six months.

At last, John's personal business was in order. His obligations to the many groups who had sponsored him, or whose causes his appearances had aided, were complete. At long last he could go home to visit his parents. Home! Once again he would sleep in the house in which he had grown up, take in the wonderful aroma of his mother's kitchen, go fishing with Daddy Cobb, visit the Mississippi town of his boyhood, the things he dreamed of while far away at war.

John would go home in style. He had enough money left over to make a down payment on a new 1936 gull-wing Stinson SR 8 B Reliant, registered NC 16161. It was a five-place, high wing, cabin monoplane, expensive but reliable and fast—165 miles per hour cruise with its 250-horsepower Lycoming R680B6, nine cylinder, radial engine. The Stinson Reliant and the Beechcraft Stagerwing were the executive planes of their day. The Stinson, painted a beautiful blue with silver-gray trim, had graceful elliptical wings. Robinson had chosen the Stinson because it could perform so many roles. It could carry pilot and four paying passengers in comfortable leather seats and had a heated cabin. With the seats removed he could carry cargo. It had an electrical starter, carried seventy-six gallons of fuel and could fly up to six hundred miles without refueling. It was a stable, easy-to-fly plane that would draw students to his school for advanced flight training. John was rightly proud of it.

Lake Michigan and the sprawling metropolis of Chicago slipped behind him as he lifted into the cool air of early morning and pointed the Stinson southward. He was where he most loved to be: alone in the sky with all the earth spread out before him. He felt happy and relaxed. Scanning the sky out of habit, his reverie was interrupted. In the distance he spotted a formation of five planes, little more than dots off his right wing. For a moment, the chill of war raised the hair on the back of his neck. Keeping his eyes on the formation, his palms began to sweat.

What's the matter with you? There are no enemy aircraft in the peaceful skies of America.
His instinctive, instant assessment had been correct. The biplanes were military fighters, but they continued on their way, crossing his path well behind him.
Just a training flight. You best settle down there, Colonel. You home now.