To Kingdom Come (40 page)

“Why don’t your men eat at the mess hall over here?” Warren asked.

“We’re not welcome over here,” the noncom told him.

It was an unwritten law on the base that the black airmen ate in segregated mess halls. Although segregation was illegal under air force code, the base’s senior commanders did not want to arouse the resentment of the older, white, noncommissioned officers who had lived and worked under segregated conditions for most of their careers. It was easier to look the other way.

“From now on,” Warren told the black noncom, “you tell your men to eat at whichever mess hall is closest to their work area. If you run into any problems, you have that mess sergeant call Major Laws. I’ll take care of it.”

That ended it.

Warren had done what he thought was good for the air force. His decision earned the admiration of the black airmen under his command, but it did not lead to further promotion.

He retired in 1963, and moved back to Danbury, Connecticut. After taking graduate courses at Columbia University, he began a job teaching in the Danbury school system.

In 1969, his son, Warren, Jr., graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and followed him into a military career. Warren, Sr., swore him in to active duty at his commissioning ceremony.

That same year, Warren was diagnosed with colon cancer. Shortly before he died at West Point Hospital in 1970, he dictated a detailed account of his mission to Stuttgart, Germany, in 1943. He was fifty-one years old.

Braxton Wilken Robinson

In 1944, Braxton’s friend Jane Eaglesham began dating an Australian army officer who was temporarily stationed in New York. At one point, he told Jane that a friend of his was about to arrive from Europe.

His name was Ivor “Rob” Robinson, and he also served in the Royal Australian Air Force. His most recent assignment had been doing secret work adapting the Norden bombsight for the Dutch air force in England. When Rob reached New York, he contacted Jane, who invited him to come for dinner. Jane also invited Braxton.

The tall Australian was unlike anyone Braxton had ever met, an untamed outdoorsman who had lived in the outback and regaled her with tales of his fabled land of Oz.

Rob had been assigned to work with U.S. Army Air Force engineers on improvements to the Norden bombsight, and he planned to remain until the project was completed. As the project drew to an end, he proposed marriage to Braxton and asked her to go back to live in Australia with him. Although it meant leaving behind everything she had known, she never hesitated in her decision.

On a chilly fall afternoon in October 1946, the football field at Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, was dedicated in Ted Wilken’s honor. As the Choate and Lawrenceville football teams stood in formation along the right sideline, Choate’s headmaster, Seymour St. John, spoke to the crowd assembled for the dedication ceremony.

“There could be no occasion more fitting than this to do honor to one of Choate’s greatest athletes, Ray Theodore Wilken. Ted excelled in every pursuit he undertook to learn. The men of Lawrenceville knew what it was to meet the teams captained by him. Today, Ted Wilken lies with his fellow crew members in Épinal military cemetery in France. But the spirit of Ted Wilken is here at Choate. We dedicate ourselves to all that Ted Wilken stood for—to his respect for a worthy opponent, to his sense of fair play, to his complete self-sacrifice to a cause he believed in. In honor then of Ted Wilken, a name and an ideal, we dedicate this field.”

Braxton and Rob were married for almost seventy years, living in Perth, Australia, before moving back to the United States. They had three daughters together. Rob passed away in March 2009. Kathy Wilken married University of Michigan professor Bill Ribben, and they have two children. Kathy inherited the life-size oil painting of her father commissioned by Ted’s mother shortly after his death.

Joe Schwartzkopf

After his successful escape from Europe on the same escape line used by Warren Laws, Joe returned to the United States and enjoyed a month of home leave in Buffalo, New York. For the remainder of the war, he served as a radio instructor at Drew Field in Tampa, Florida, training young radio operators on multiengine military aircraft.

With the end of the war, he went to work for the General Electric Corporation, staying with the company for seventeen years. In 1962, he moved back to Tampa, Florida, and finished his career as a company supervisor at the Treasure Isle Seafood Co. in Plant City, Florida.

Of Hungarian ancestry, he loved to cook spicy family recipes, and was also partial to pickled eggs, Limburger cheese, and pickled pig’s feet, which horrified his six daughters.

Joe didn’t trust medical practitioners any more than parachutes, and refused to go to a doctor when it became obvious he was suffering from the onset of heart disease. He lived life on his own terms, and often said he was living on borrowed time. He died of heart failure in 1979. According to his youngest daughter, Lori, he died a happy man.

He was fifty-seven years old.

Robert Falligant “Bob” Travis

After completing his combat tour with the Eighth Air Force in September 1944, Bob Travis enjoyed a month of home leave before being named commanding general of the Seventeenth Bomber Operational Training Wing, at Grand Island, Nebraska.

Shortly after the war, General Travis received a coveted appointment to the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Only officers expected to be promoted to the most senior ranks were selected. After graduating from the college in June 1947, he became the chief of staff of the Seventh Air Force at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.

While serving in this command, he received disturbing news. After holding the temporary rank of brigadier general since 1943, Bob Travis learned that he was about to be demoted to the regular rank of colonel again. It was tantamount to a death blow to his ambitions.

The first step he took was to write a letter to his father.

23 December 1947

Dear Father,

I have some additional information about my probable reduction, and I must warn you that this information was given to General Wooten as top secret, so if you pass it on to the congressman or other influential friends, I ask you to caution them....

General Wooten states that Lt. General Idwal Edwards, who heads Personnel of the Air Force, made this statement to him. “The chief reason why Travis is being reduced is because he was relieved of his command for cause.” As you know, the record of my 41st Combat Wing, which I built from nothing, was the outstanding record of any such unit in the Eighth Air Force.

I am writing a letter to General Williams asking him to immediately write to General Edwards and straighten out the misunderstanding.... I am certain that I can get the record straightened out, but I greatly fear that it will be too late for my reduction as the announcements are intended for publication prior to 1 January. Dearest Love from your son, Bob

Bob Travis had clearly made some enemies in the air force, and they were at work behind the scenes. In spite of his having been the only general officer in the Eighth Air Force to complete a combat tour, and his being its most decorated senior officer, the detractors were making the specious case to General Edwards that he had been relieved of his command “for cause.” If General Wooten, Travis’s commanding officer in Hawaii, had not confided the false charges to him, his career would have been derailed.

In a follow-up letter to his father four days later, Bob Travis wrote:

General Wooten is scared because he gave me the info on my demotion. He says it was “secret” and that I should have told no one. Let me caution you again to take any actions very cautiously.... Bob

By then, Bob’s father, retired Major General Robert Jesse Travis, had written a three-page single-spaced letter to U.S. Senator W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel of Texas, as well as five other members of Congress. It was neither cautious nor discreet.

My dear Senator:

The state of Texas, on account of the Alamo, owes my family an obligation ... and I am calling on you as a Texan to take immediate steps from preventing a terrible mistake being made....

My son, Robert F. Travis, who has been a Brigadier General (temporary) for over four and a half years ... has had his name removed from the promotion list and will be reduced in rank because the board found that just before Germany folded up he had been relieved from his command....

An investigation of his record will disclose that no officer contributed more to the success of the Air Force than he.... From this government, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star ... several times, and the DFC several times, the Purple Heart....

You have the reputation of fighting for Texans and their families. Please see to it that no injustice is done in this matter. . . . Sincerely yours, Robert J. Travis

The matter of the promotion was settled when General Robert Williams, who had been Bob Travis’s division commander in England, took up his cause in a letter to General Edwards.

Dear Idwal,

It is not my desire to interfere in any way with the personnel policies of the U.S.A.F., but in order to clear the record of an officer who performed brilliantly in combat, I believe this erroneous statement should be cleared up.

General Travis is the only general officer I know who completed ... a combat tour. He didn’t pick the milk runs, either. He led some of the toughest and most successful missions conducted by the Eighth Air Force. His 41st Wing ... was certainly the most outstanding wing in my division ... with the best operational results in the entire Eighth Air Force.

That would have been the end of it except for the fact that several members of Congress were now demanding to know why the injustice had occurred. The congressional interference infuriated General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, who had replaced Hap Arnold as commanding general of the army air forces.

There was no way to deny promotion to Bob Travis. Instead, the retribution fell on General Ralph Wooten, who had confided the news to Travis about his demotion. General Wooten was passed over for promotion.

In September 1948, Bob Travis was appointed commanding general of the Pacific Air Command. Less than a year later, he became the commanding general of the Ninth Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California.

Late on the night of August 5, 1950, Bob Travis took off on a training mission in a B-29 Superfortress. The pilot at the controls of the bomber was Captain Eugene Steffes. Travis was commanding the mission from the copilot’s seat.

Just as the plane was about to lift off the runway, the left inboard engine propeller malfunctioned and Captain Steffes had to feather it. Once in the air, he attempted to retract the landing gear, but the activating switch was inoperative and the wheels would not retract.

Due to the increased drag of the landing gear, and with his thrust reduced to three engines, Captain Steffes turned back to land at the Fairfield-Suisan air base. Coming in, he had to maneuver the Superfortress away from a trailer park located near the field.

The B-29 struck the ground at a speed of 120 miles an hour with its left wing down. The subsequent explosion killed ten crewmen and passengers in the rear of the plane. All but two of the ten crewmen and passengers in the forward compartment escaped with minor injuries.

Bob Travis was one of the two men killed. Twenty minutes after his body was removed, high explosives in the bomb casings inside the bomb bay ignited. The subsequent blast was felt more than thirty miles away.

On August 14, 1950, General Robert Travis was laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery. An honor guard of two hundred soldiers and an army band escorted his coffin from Fort Myer Chapel to the grave site.

Six months later, the Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California was renamed Travis Air Force Base in his honor. At the official ceremony marking the dedication on April 20, 1951, a life-size oil painting of the general was unveiled by his wife and Governor Earl Warren at the officers’ club.

One night after the club had closed for the evening, the painting was slashed to pieces by a vandal. The lower half of the painting could not be restored. After the upper half was repaired and hung again in the club, the painting disappeared. It was eventually found in a storeroom on the base.

Bob Travis was forty-five years old at the time of his death.

Readers are invited to contact the author at [email protected] if they have any questions or comments related to the people and events recounted in this book.

APPENDIX

No one will ever know why General Robert Travis decided to lead his bomb wing around Stuttgart three times on September 6, 1943, or whether he might have gone around a fourth time if his lead bombardier hadn’t accidentally released their bomb load.

Certainly, the decision led to important consequences for the crews flying the mission behind him, particularly those whose Fortresses were not equipped with Tokyo tanks. Some of the pilots who flew with him that day never forgave him for a decision they believe contributed to the loss of so many crews.

Some of the pilots who flew with him on subsequent missions had equally negative impressions of his “press on, regardless” brand of combat leadership. It led to a bitterness toward him that lingered long past his death in August 1950.

After leading a bombing mission to Oschersleben, Germany, on January 11, 1944, in which sixty bombers were lost, General Travis wrote a letter describing the mission to the wife of Second Lieutenant William A. Fisher, the copilot of a Fortress named
Bad Check
, who was killed that day along with his pilot.

General Travis’s account provides some valuable insight into his personality. Considering the level of detail in the letter, it’s clear that the ultimate audience was intended to be greater than a single widow. In letters to his father while serving as commander of the Forty-first Combat Wing, General Travis indicated that he had drafted similar accounts of other important missions. To the author’s knowledge, they have not been published.