To Kingdom Come Page 6

  Like General Ira Eaker, he enjoyed playing high-stakes poker. Unlike Eaker, Bob Travis preferred to play with junior officers. At his Gowen Field training command, he would often appear at the officers’ club when the games were in full swing, and politely ask the lieutenants around an open table if he could join them. He was never turned down. Whether he won or lost, he was always affable and polite.

  To his friends, he was a model of Southern courtesy, especially around women. His wife, Frances Jane, was a superb helpmate, organizing the family moves to each new army post with efficiency and skill.

  Bob Travis’s affable demeanor masked a burning desire to succeed. Success in the army was measured by promotions and combat decorations. Unfortunately, he couldn’t earn battle stars running a training command in Boise, Idaho.

  Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was promoted to group commander, and in September 1942, wing commander of a stateside training command. He put in for a combat assignment over and over again.

  A year later, he finally received orders to take over the Forty-first Combat Wing of the Eighth Air Force. It was the plum job he had been yearning for. Bob Travis would be commanding three bomb groups in the air war over Germany. He planned to make the most of it.

  More than almost anything, Bob Travis wanted to make his father proud.

  Major General Robert Jesse Travis was an extraordinary man. Born in 1877, the elder Travis had received no formal education until the age of twelve, later attending Emory College in Georgia and graduating with first honors in 1897. While at Emory, Travis distinguished himself as a champion debater, and received scholastic medals in Greek and Latin. He then earned a law degree at the University of Georgia, before beginning his military career in 1899 with the First Georgia Infantry.

  In World War I, Travis had commanded the 118th Field Artillery. After the war, he had returned to embark on what became a long and prestigious law career in Savannah, finding the time to also become an award-winning historian and the Grand Master of the Georgia Masons. He was one of the most respected men in the state, and maintained a friendship with many of the officers he had served with in the army, some of whom were now senior generals.

  He was deeply proud of his son Bob as he assumed his first combat command.

  After his arrival in England, Bob Travis began to take the measure of the other officers who shared his rank in the Eighth Air Force. Privately, he concluded that Brigadier General August “Aug” Kissner, who had become the chief of staff of the Fourth Bomb Wing, was “a cocktail hour playboy who attached himself to Curtis LeMay . . . and had no leadership abilities whatsoever....” Brigadier General Herb Thatcher, who commanded a bomb wing, “had a good combat record, but is undeveloped, immature, and has poor leadership qualities.”

  In just that first week in England, he had come to the conclusion that the Forty-first Combat Wing was lax, inefficient, poorly led, and needed a tough hand at the helm. He would be that tough hand, molding it by personal example into the finest combat unit in the Eighth Air Force.

  After flying as an observer on his first three combat missions, Bob Travis wrote a letter to one of his former subordinates, Colonel “Pop” Arnold, who was serving in Travis’s former training command at Gowen Field in Idaho.

  September 2, 1943

  Dear Pop,

  Get Hank to show you his letter. I asked for you both. Have been too busy to see many of the boys yet, going on 3 missions my first 4 days here. Will slow down now that I have assumed command. You will like it here. We eat and sleep well. No time off but you are used to that. Don’t even have time to spend any money. Bring silk stockings, bourbon whiskey, lip stick, 2 lighters, several sweaters, only woolen uniforms (greens preferred), raincoat, good overcoat. You are allowed 55. All you can carry (such as a case of 4 qts whiskey in it and overcoat over your arm) is not counted.

  Pop, anything said about gunnery in the past was not enough. The air is full of Bosche sometimes 2 to 300 and they are shooting real bullets. We have to fight our way in and out. We are paying with lots of crews because our gunners can’t shoot. I could have got one bastard with a skeet gun that my nose gunner missed yesterday. They come close but the boys won’t lead and swing through. My best to you. Bob

  Bob Travis was prepared and ready to become the finest combat leader in the Eighth Air Force, starting with the mission to Stuttgart, Germany, on the morning of September 6.

  After the predawn briefing to the men of the 303rd at Molesworth, he rode out to the hardstand where Satan’s Workshop was parked. There, he was introduced to the pilot who would be flying the lead plane of the 303rd Bomb Group.

  Major Lewis Lyle was a seasoned veteran of the air war over Europe, and now commanded one of the 303rd’s four bomb squadrons. He had already completed one twenty-five-mission tour as a pilot, and was five missions into his second tour. He was a tough, no-nonsense flight leader, with an intentionally gruff manner that kept his crew focused on their job in the air.

  After meeting Major Lyle, the general shook hands with each member of crew, and then made a brief inspection of the plane. Satan’s Workshop was a newer-model Fortress equipped with nine self-sealing Tokyo tanks that were mounted inside each wing and provided an additional thousand gallons of fuel.

  The general pronounced himself pleased with the plane and the crew.

  On a nearby hardstand, Lieutenant Bud Klint and his crew had just arrived to board their own Fortress, the Luscious Lady. Like Satan’s Workshop, it was a new B-17 with Tokyo tanks. Over the past month, Bud had amassed a lot of confidence in the ship. It had brought them home from Schweinfurt peppered with bullet holes from nose to tail.

  Judging from the length of yarn on the big map at the briefing, Stuttgart was even farther away from their base than Schweinfurt, which meant more time for the enemy fighters to maul them on their way into Germany, and on the long route back across France.

  At the age of twenty-four, Bud Klint didn’t know if they were going to change the course of history that day. What he did know was that a lot of fliers had paid the ultimate price over Schweinfurt. He hoped that Stuttgart would be a lot less costly. Maybe the dashing new brigadier general who was leading them that day would bring them some good luck.

  When he and his pilot, Bob Hullar, attempted to start the engines, the inboard motor on Luscious Lady’s left wing wouldn’t turn over. Repeated efforts failed to get it started. Finally, the crew was ordered to fly the spare plane in the group. It was an older-model B-17, with no supplemental gas tanks.

  The ship was named Old Squaw. They had just started the engines when Bud saw the flare guns go off near the control tower, signaling the order to assemble for takeoff.

  Ted

  Sunday, 5 September 1943

  388th Bomb Group

  Knettishall, England

  Second Lieutenant Ray Theodore “Ted” Wilken

  2300

  It had rained all that Sunday and well into the night, keeping the flight crews inside on ground duties, and cloaking the air base in swirling fog. A new movie, The More the Merrier, starring Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, was shown at 1500 hours in the base theater.

  In the evening, there had been a basketball game between two of the squadron teams. The incessant rain had put many of the men in a reflective mood. When the mission alert arrived from High Wycombe at 2240, Second Lieutenant Ted Wilken was finishing his nightly v-mail letter to Braxton.

  Life in wartime England was definitely different for the married men, at least those who were faithful to their wives. For Ted, it was an easy choice. He had been blessed to find the young woman who made his life complete.

  Ted hadn’t expected to miss her so deeply. His longing was compounded by the news a month earlier that she had given birth to their first child, Katherine Ann. Whatever he was doing, wherever he was, particularly during the long combat missions, sudden images of Braxton would invade his mind, momentarily transporting him away from the war, giving him a brief sen
se of tranquility. He had tried to explain it in his nightly letters to her. Hopefully, she understood.

  Ted was born to privilege and wealth in 1920; his forebears were Old Dutch, the people who had founded New Amsterdam, later to become New York City. He had grown up in a fifty-room mansion in Bronxville, New York, and was driven by the family chauffeur each morning to Riverdale Country Day School.

  An only child, he had enjoyed a golden youth, marked by triumph and accomplishment. A gifted horseman, he was equally adept at polo, dressage, and jumping, medaling at the age of twelve in the equestrian championships at Madison Square Garden.

  After attending Riverdale, he was enrolled by his parents at Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. There, it seemed he did everything well, academics, tennis, football, baseball, debating, or bridge.

  Elected captain of the football team, he led Choate to an undefeated season and earned the Prize Day Award as the finest athlete in the school. Of his contribution to the football team, his coach, John Maher, wrote, “Ted Wilken now takes his place in the hall of fame of the great Choate captains. He is one of the immortals—not only for the quality of his play, but also for the leadership and spirit he instilled into his team. There is about him a bond of sympathy, a spirit of camaraderie, and a determination for perfection.” In his senior year, Ted was chosen All-American.

  Ted had been accepted at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, but chose instead to attend Dartmouth, where his two closest friends were going. There, he discovered that he preferred partying, dancing, and skiing to organic chemistry.

  He had been raised to aim for perfection in every challenge he undertook, but in college he burned out. It was a great blow to his parents when he and a close friend left Dartmouth in his second year to join the crew of a sailing yacht owned by Otto Harbach, the famous lyricist of songs like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Roberta.”

  One summer evening, the boat was tied up at the dock of the Larchmont Yacht Club. That was the night he met Braxton Nicholson. She was born in Edgefield, South Carolina; her mother, Nelle, was a classic Southern belle, and reveled in the culture and traditions of the Old South immortalized in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. She named her daughter after Confederate General Braxton Bragg.

  From an early age, Braxton was committed to breaking the mold. A free spirit, she grew up a Southern rebel, but it was in rebellion from the social dictates of the South, including its prevailing racial attitudes. She steadfastly refused to become the coquettish, simpering belle her mother had tried so hard to raise.

  After leaving South Carolina as a teenager to attend the Bennett School for Girls in Millbrook, New York, she dropped out two years later to become an instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in hopes of pursuing a career as a professional dancer. Along the way, she dropped the name Braxton in favor of Betsy, or “Battling Betsy,” as she was quickly nicknamed within the family.

  One evening in July 1941, she had gone with several girlfriends to hear the new orchestra appearing at the Larchmont Yacht Club, and was watching the couples spinning across the floor when her eyes were drawn to a tall young man dancing with a blond girl.

  At first, she thought he might be a professional. As a dance instructor, she could appreciate the gift, and silently wished he would ask her to dance with him. When the orchestra took a break, he and his dance partner were joined by two other couples. As Braxton watched them chatting, another member of the club stopped by her table to say hello. She found herself asking him who the young man was on the dance floor.

  He immediately went over to the group and said in a booming voice, “Say, Ted ... there’s a girl over there who wants to dance with you.”

  Red-faced with embarrassment, she watched as he came over and politely asked her to dance. The orchestra began again with a rumba, the complex and energetic dance that required a solid dose of natural grace. They ended up dancing together the rest of the night. When she was about to leave, Ted asked to see her again.

  In the months that followed, Ted came to see her as a “wonderful freak of nature.”

  The formal celebration of their engagement took place on a Sunday evening at the American Yacht Club in Rye, New York. She had bought a new dress for the occasion. Ted’s mother had just picked her up to take her to the club.

  “Have you heard the news, Braxton?” she said. “We’ve been attacked by the Japanese in Hawaii.”

  It was December 7, 1941.

  The engagement party was only a few minutes old when their guests began leaving the celebration to cluster around the radio in the bar to hear the latest updates of the Pearl Harbor disaster.

  On December 8, the same day President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Japanese, Ted went down to the army recruiting office in Manhattan and enlisted in the army air corps.

  Ted and Braxton were to be married the following summer in Scarsdale. Their mothers were already planning the celebration. The two women hoped it would be the society wedding of the year.

  In February, Ted began air force training at Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama. A few weeks later, he wrote to Braxton and asked her to visit him on Easter weekend. When she arrived, Ted said he wanted to get married right away. Braxton told him that their mothers would have a conniption. Ted said he didn’t care. He didn’t want to wait any longer to start their lives together.

  After briefly returning to New York, Braxton crammed everything she needed into one suitcase, and rode by train down to Ocala, Florida, where Ted had begun primary flight training. She took a room near the base, staying with him until he moved on to basic flight training at Greenville, Mississippi.

  There, an incident occurred that threatened his air force career.

  After Ted allegedly allowed the cadet in the chair next to him to copy his work during an examination on radio procedure, both cadets were grounded from flying and suspended from the course, pending an investigation.

  Almost insane with worry, Braxton decided she had to act. Scouring her meager wardrobe, she put on a gray dress and walked to the base home of the colonel in charge of the training command.

  “I have to talk to you, sir,” she said when he came to the door. “Ted Wilken is not a cheat. He is the most honorable man I’ve ever known, and you can’t let his life be ruined.”

  The words were flooding out before she suddenly remembered that under air force regulations, they weren’t even supposed to be married. It was too late now. At one point during her desperate plea, he had to turn away, and she saw that he was smiling.

  “I’ll think about it,” he told her finally.

  “That is all I can ask,” she said, before adding, “If it ever gets back to Ted that you talked to me, you won’t live to see another day.”

  He burst out laughing.

  “This is between you and me,” she pressed on. “Swear?”

  He nodded.

  Ted was required to take the course all over again. The cadet who had copied his work was expelled from the program.

  They had moved on to Nashville for heavy bomber training when Braxton realized she was pregnant. Ted was overjoyed. He would probably be overseas when the baby arrived, but would be awaiting word.

  Shortly before Christmas, the couple received a harsh note from Ted’s mother expressing her disappointment at their lack of responsibility in saving money for the future. She had lavished a large cash wedding gift on them, and Ted was spending it in ways that she didn’t support, including lending money to other young married couples who were in training with them, and living on a shoestring.

  Braxton wrote back on behalf of both of them.

  Dear Helen,

  Teddy will probably be on combat in July. We have enough love and faith in each other to get through this. I utterly refuse to become a moaning war bride. It’s going to be hard on all of us who adore and worship Teddy to have to sit and wait at home.

  I haven’t felt too badly—no early morning sickness (I ju
st get sick in the morning and stay sick ’til evening). I know every inch of the bathroom quite intimately. Seems to me I can vaguely remember liking food....

  As for our financial discussion, I’m sorry if we appeared uppity when you advised us to save. I really believe that Teddy must take his own responsibilities now. We don’t resent advice—please believe that. It’s just that we feel now is the all important time in our lives. In the Air Corps you learn to live from day to day. To you that may seem a pointless philosophy. But to us who may never know a tomorrow, it is the only way to find peace and contentment. Money, now, is the most unimportant thing in our lives. You see, there is always the chance that this may be all the married life Ted and I will ever know—all there ever will be.

  Don’t you see, this is our rainy day. The wettest, stormiest, most hellish rainy day Teddy and I will ever know. I’m not writing this in a morbid or complaining way—I have thanked God every day for the privilege of being with him. I just wanted you to know how and why we reason like we do. It’s just trying to live a lifetime in a little while. I guess war has made us a very hardened and practical lot. We saw that when Mil Stevens was killed at George Field. You learn to be thrifty with your emotions. Teddy has a dangerous job to do and it must not be cluttered with emotions. That’s the hardest thing all of us Air Corps families have had to learn—to accept—not to question.

  When Teddy goes on combat, I want him to remember how much we love him so he will have twice the incentive that anyone else has to be courageous and do his job uncomplainingly and with honor. It’s an awful easy thing to die, but sometimes to live and do it gracefully is the seemingly impossible thing.