To Kingdom Come

by Robert J. Mrazek

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 malfunctio
ned 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 rjmrazek1942@gmail.com 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.

  OSCHERSLEBEN—January 11, ’44

  by Brigadier General Robert F. Travis

  We were seated on hard chairs in the base movie at Molesworth. It was a cold damp evening and darkness had come on prematurely due to the overcast, which was now breaking into low scudding clouds, and giving some promise of improving weather for the morrow. The theater consisted of a Nissen hut with a concrete floor, and was unheated and poorly ventilated; the only heat coming from the bodies of the military personnel present, which also exuded a distinct masculine odor. Seated next to me were Lt. Colonel William R. Calhoun, Operations Officer of the 41st Combat Wing; Major William R. Thompson, Intelligence; and Captain Dan E. Baker, Adjutant and Aide-de-Camp.

  The picture had just gotten well started when one of our interruptions occurred, being caused by a Sergeant who shouted above the sound of the movie, “All maintenance and gunnery personnel of the 341st Squadron report to your organization immediately.” Cal turned to me and said, “It looks like we’re up for tomorrow.” Other such interruptions occurred successively as each organization was called to duty.

  For some time we had been expecting orders to make our first attack on Berlin, and the weather map indicated a possibility of this mission being put on on the succeeding day. I knew that the men had been called out on the Alert Order and that the regular Field Orders would not arrive for some time; yet, I lost interest in the movie and shortly thereafter departed with my staff for our headquarters to see if any premature information had been released.

  With our headlights dimmed, we drove a mile and a half over narrow roads beneath concealing trees to the oblong one-story brick building which served as our headquarters. The duty officer had only received the Battle Order and bomb and gasoline loadings, but from this information we could see that it would be a deep penetration, a visual target, and that my Combat Wing was to lead.

  I immediately got on the phone and called “Chuck” Merwin, Operations Officer of the Division, and asked if there was a possibility of my leading the division. He could not give me the target over the telephone, but indicated that it was extremely important; and he believed that General Williams would let me go as it was about my turn. There was nothing more that we could do until the Field Orders began to arrive so I stepped out into the darkness to look at the weather. Stars were beginning to break through and the scud was only a few hundred feet thick in patches. Activity was apparent over the entire area covered by our dispersal aircraft. Portable electric units furnished light for the maintenance crews who were feverishly trying to get the maximum number of aircraft available for the morning mission. Trailers loaded with 500-pound demolition bombs were creeping slowly toward the aircraft that would swallow up their loads. Overhead one or two Mosquitoes could be heard droning as they climbed toward altitude and reconnaissance flight over the Continent. Far off to the east could be seen occasional flashes, where the British were practicing night bombing or a Jerry was putting on a nuisance raid. Search lights came on for short periods, fingered the sky, and disappeared into oblivion.

  I was recalled to the office by the sudden chattering of the Teletype machines as the Field Orders began to arrive. Looking over the shoulder of the operator, I obtained the code letters from which I could look in the Intelligence File and pick out the target. It was to be the Focke-Wulf plant at Oschersleben, just south of Berlin, which so far had been untouched by our bombers. To reach this objective meant breaking through the concentric rings of fighter interceptors which the Hun had placed about Berlin and her important industries. We were to have some fighter support, but not nearly enough. Flak was sure to be intense and accurate at many places along the route as well as in the target area.

  As soon as I had grasped the essentials of the mission and seen my name commanding the division, I went home to get a few hours’ sleep before the early briefing, leaving the essentials of getting our Supplementary Field Orders to my staff.

  From experience I had found it necessary to lay out all the equipment which I intended to use the succeeding morning where I could quickly get into it and not forget some necessary item. On the table I placed my escape kit, emergency rations, identification tags, silk muffler to protect my face from freezing should the windshield be shot out, cigarettes, and a clean handkerchief. On the floor I piled a clean suit of winter underwear, my electric flying suit, boots, gloves, special helmet with oxygen mask, flak helmet, and vest. Alongside of this flying equipment was a special target folder in which my Intelligence Officer had placed a route to and from the target with check points and fighter rendezvous points marked thereon. Also was included aerial maps of the area and large sca
le identification photographs of the actual target.

  Warning Sgt. Deldoso to awaken me at 3:30 I climbed into my G.I. bed and started my usual battle with sleep. This is the time when I get scared, not on the mission. Lying there in my bed and attempting to relax, my imagination runs wild. Being aware of the opposition and the problems of such a mission, I start thinking of all the things which can go wrong. I remembered that I volunteered for the damn mission and that it was not necessary for me to go at all as I had already done more than my share. I remembered my duty to my wife and children and how little money they will get in case I am killed. I wonder whether my sense of duty has caused me to go, and not just the desire for excitement and adventure. The net result is that I never sleep soundly but toss from one side to another in the bed until I hear the approaching feet of the Charge of Quarters to tell me it is time to arise.

  Once I wash and dress this is all behind me. I am then ready and eager, and my only worry is that the mission will be scrubbed at the last moment due to adverse weather.

  I left my quarters and drove to the 303rd mess. As a special treat for the combat crews going on the mission, fresh eggs were served. I always eat a hearty breakfast, for once forgetting my tendency toward obesity, as I am pessimistic enough to realize that it may be a long time, maybe the duration of the war, before I get another good meal.

  Driving through the darkness, I arrived at the briefing room of the Group. The crews ahead of me had assembled in front of the big wall map where the briefing would be given. The target and route are temporarily concealed by a curtain and much conjecture is going on as to where we are to be sent. One young pilot saw me enter the room, and realizing that I only went on visual missions of great importance that involved deep penetration, said, “We have had it. The Old Man is going.” Everyone took their seats with a sense of expectancy. The room was bitterly cold and damp. In the far corner one Sibly stove struggled valiantly against the winter climate of England. Many of the crews were suffering from colds as was apparent from their almost constant coughing. Colonel Lyle, Operations Officer of the 303rd, took his position and raised the curtain. Immediately a sigh of intense expectancy and trepidation arose from the entire room as they saw our route northeast across the North Sea, Holland, and on into Germany. All data pertinent to the mission were given to the crews; escape procedure, in case they were shot down, was covered in detail; methods of assembly; identification flares; what they should do in various emergencies; and every conceivable question which might be in their minds was answered. Slides showing the initial point, route to the target, and the target itself were thrown on the screen and discussed in detail. Great emphasis was placed upon the importance of destroying this target. An explanation was made to the crews as to what great bearing it would have upon the ultimate defeat of Germany. We knew that to get this target would cost us a great price and these boys must be convinced that the loss of life and aircraft was well worth what we hoped to accomplish.