B-17 Navigator

- 26 –

        That was the last letter I wrote from Ellington Field.  Our last week was extremely busy.  We crowded in the last flight we needed and did all the paper work that was necessary before graduation.  There was a celebratory dance at the Rice Hotel, where Lois and I, inexperienced drinkers, drank brandy and coke and danced to the great music of the big band era.

        Immediately after the graduation ceremony, we were discharged from the Army, and immediately after that we were sworn back in as Army Air Corps officers.  So our military records give each of us two serial numbers, one as enlisted men and the other as officers.

        My Grandma Robert did take the train south from Caney, Kansas, to be present with Lois at my graduation.  As the oldest grandchild, I had always been the apple of Grandma’s eye, and I doubt if either Lois or my mother was as proud of me as she was.

        And we were a proud bunch, second lieutenants with big silver wings on the chest of our new uniforms, the much coveted pinks and greens, so called because of the dark green blouse and beige trousers with perhaps a very slight tinge of pink in them.

        It turned out that we didn’t have to take the train home after all.  Another airman’s tragedy brought about a bit of good luck for us.  Graduation day, or perhaps the day before, one of my instructors told me that a pilot had been killed and they were looking for someone to drive his nearly new Pontiac to Sacramento and deliver it to his widow.  Would I be interested?  I was, and we drove home in style, then made the sad, short trip to Sacramento to deliver the car.

        Gasoline was still rationed, and arrangements were made for me to be able to buy gas on the way home.

        A curious thing happened before we left.  As always, I was short of money.  I went to a bank and asked to borrow $50—not a scrap of collateral, about to leave Texas forever, as far as the banker and I knew.  And, naturally, he demurred. 

        I persisted.

        “But, Sir, I am an officer and a gentlemen.  My word is my collateral.”  High-ranking military officers pretended that becoming officers automatically made us gentlemen and, therefore, trustworthy.

        Astounded, perhaps, at my innocence and evident sincerity, he lent me the $50.  Bear in mind that $50 then was roughly the equivalent of six hundred today.

        When a check for my first pay as an officer arrived at my next base, I promptly mailed the $50 to the bank.

        The banker made my parents more proud, perhaps, than my graduation when he mailed them a letter about it.