To Kingdom Come (27 page)

Nine days later, completely out of the blue, the official reprimand arrived from Ira Eaker, the commanding general of the Eighth Air Force, at Travis’s Forty-first Combat Wing headquarters in Molesworth.

Some bastard was obviously gunning for him.

HEADQUARTERS
EIGHTH AIR FORCE
ETOUSA

11 September, 1943

SUBJECT: REPRIMAND
TO: BRIGADIER GENERAL R.F. TRAVIS

Through Commanding General, VIII BOMBER COMMAND

1. Enclosed herewith is a letter which you apparently wrote and which was picked up by the ETO censors.

2. The censor showed good judgment in stopping your letter. It contained a base slander of the fighting men of the Eighth Air Force which was wholly unwarranted and unjustified. The wording of this letter is a very poor start for you in this air force and your sending of it indicates a lack of familiarity on your part with existing security and postal regulations.

3. I believe that you probably mean to imply that the state of qualification of our gunners is not as high as we would like to have it. We have always said that one of our gravest concerns is to improve the accuracy of our gunners and we have done everything possible in all echelons to improve it as rapidly as possible. But that is certainly not what you have said. The statement that our gunners cannot shoot is, of course, not true as is demonstrated by the great success they have had in destroying a large number of enemy aircraft.

4. An acknowledgment is desired from you without delay upon receipt of this communication, and any explanation you desire to make will be carefully considered.

/s/ Ira C. Eaker
Major General, USA
Commanding

General Travis was still working on his response to General Eaker when the next blow fell. On September 18, he was charged with another violation of security by General Fred Anderson, the head of bomber command.

The new violation involved two more letters he had sent to officers who would soon be joining him at the Forty-first Combat Wing. The first was to Colonel Robert Warren at the Fifteenth Wing in Boise, Idaho.

Dear Bob,

Have asked for you. Will keep asking. You can let up on bombing and navigation ... but for God’s sake teach them to shoot.... Our gunners are not worth a damn. None of us have been impressed sufficiently with our weakness there....

Travis’s second letter had included equally provocative comments and had been addressed to Colonel A. F. Hegenberger, another former subordinate, who now commanded the Twenty-first Bomb Wing at Salina, Kansas.

The only thing that slows us up is the arrival of crews. We expend them as fast as you can send them.... Anything that has been said about our gunnery is an understatement.... If we do not teach them to respect our gunnery more, our losses will increase and they are too high now. Our fighters have been giving us rather poor support but we hope for better with Keppner at the helm. Best regards, Bob Travis

After personally reviewing those two letters, Fred Anderson, the head of bomber command, unloaded on him through his division commander, General Robert B. Williams.

HEADQUARTERS
EIGHTH AIR FORCE
APO 633

18 September, 1943

SUBJECT: Violation of Security
Hq. VIII Bomber Command, APO 634
TO: Commanding General, Hq. 1st Bombardment Division, APO
634. U.S. Army

1. The attached correspondence is self-explanatory. It is evident that Brig. General Travis does not appreciate the seriousness of his violation of security. His position in this Theater has become very precarious because of this and a previously reported violation....

/S/ F.L. ANDERSON
Brigadier General, U.S. Army
Commanding

As far as Bob Travis was concerned, they were threatening to throw him out because he had told the truth, and it was increasingly obvious they didn’t want anyone back in the States to know what was really going on. He would have to curb his tongue in the future.

In the meantime, he had to eat crow to save his job. On September 23, he officially responded to the charge of “base slander” leveled by Ira Eaker, as well as the other infractions that made his continued service with the Eighth Air Force precarious.

HEADQUARTERS, 41
^ST
COMBAT BOMBARDMENT WING
APO 634, United States Army,

23 September 1943

TO: The Command General, Eighth Air Force

1. The letters referred to in the basic communication were addressed to a parent group commander and the executive officer of the 15th Wing, both of whom have been after my direct command. They are responsible for training a large portion of the crews arriving in this theatre. Anything I say on what phases of training should be given emphasis will bear great weight with these officers as they have had no combat experience and hold my opinions in respect, having served with me for two and three years respectively.

2. In the 2nd Air Force training facilities for gunnery, such requisites as two target ships, air to air ranges, instructors, etc., are still too limited to do the job. By my comments I hoped to spur these officers into making greater efforts in their procurement and to supply you with better gunners.

3. Doubtless you have sent back many letters in which you have stressed the type of training you desired your crews to get, yet I can assure you there is still a question as to where the emphasis in training should be placed.... It was my intention to write a voluminous letter to the staff of the 1st Bomber Command, which unit I last commanded, and enumerate all the weaknesses that our crews have. Should you have no objection I will still do this, but forward the communication through your headquarters for approval and to prevent any further breach of security measures on my part.

4. No slander was meant of 8th Air Force personnel. If criticism was made, it was of myself, as I trained the groups with which I have ridden.

5. If I have made a bad start in the 8th Air Force, I am sincerely sorry as I have never had an assignment on which I was more anxious to do my duty.

/s/ Robert F. Travis
Brigadier General, U.S.A.
Commanding

Travis’s letter was forwarded through channels to the commanding general of the Eighth Air Force. A few days later, Bob Travis received a copy of the communication sent by General Fred Anderson to Ira Eaker. In it, Anderson outlined his recommended punishment, which was that no further action be taken since “his serious breach of security” had already resulted in an official reprimand by the commanding general, Eighth Air Force, and a verbal reprimand by the commanding general, First Bombardment Division.

That wasn’t the end of it. Privately, several senior officers did not see Bob Travis as either a team player or an officer deserving of higher promotion. They had long memories, and the war was going to last a long time.

The official reprimand only inflamed Bob Travis’s desire to do whatever was needed to achieve his goals for success in the army air forces. For now, there was only one way to accomplish it.

He would prove himself in air combat.

Interlude

Thursday, 23 September 1943
Tricqueville Air Base
Normandy, France
Jagdgeschwader 2 “Richthofen”
Major Egon “Connie” Mayer

C
ould the bomber offensive against the Fatherland really be over?

Since the mauling the Luftwaffe had given the Eighth Air Force bombers when they attacked Stuttgart on September 6, the Americans had confined their raids to military targets inside France.

On the sixth, Connie Mayer had enjoyed one of his finest days in the air. As the fragmented bomb groups and squadrons that attacked Stuttgart tried to make their escape back to England, he had personally shot down three of them in less than thirty minutes. The victories had raised the total number of four-engine aircraft he had destroyed so far to twenty.

Now that the Americans were limiting their attacks inside France, the bombers were accompanied all the way to the targets and back by the growing arsenal of American and British fighter planes. It made the task of penetrating the fighter screens and knocking down the Fortresses more difficult. On the positive side, the Americans had obviously called off their air offensive against the Fatherland, at least temporarily.

On the evening of September 22, he and his staffeln had engaged a squadron of Spitfires that were escorting a force of American medium bombers near Évreux. It turned into an old-fashioned dogfight of the type he had excelled in before becoming the preeminent bomber killer in the Luftwaffe. In four minutes, he shot down two Spitfires, bringing his total number of victories to eighty-two, all of them on the western front against the British and Americans.

Although some of his fellow Luftwaffe frontline commanders wanted to believe that the Americans had given up their plan of attacking the Fatherland, Connie Mayer wasn’t one of them.

He believed the Americans were simply licking their wounds, making good their lost aircraft and crews with the seemingly endless stream of replacements coming from the United States. They would be back, and once the Americans had long-range fighters, they would be unstoppable.

In the meantime, it was necessary for the Luftwaffe to husband its resources, continuing to inflict grievous wounds on the Americans whenever an opportunity presented itself.

Friday, 24 September 1943
Paris, France
Luftwaffe Military Hospital
Sergeant Olen “Reb” Grant

At first, Reb had no idea where he was.

When he regained consciousness again, his head was wrapped in several layers of white gauze bandages. They covered every part of his face except for his left eye and mouth. He cautiously opened his eye and saw that he was lying in a hospital bed in a sun-filled, highceilinged ward.

There were beds on both sides of him, and a man was lying in each one. For a few moments, he thought he might be back in England. Then he looked up and saw the photograph of a fierce-looking Adolf Hitler hanging above the entrance to the ward.

He tried to reconstruct the few fleeting memories he still retained of the last day he could remember. It was after
Yankee Raider
had gone down somewhere over France. He had been aboard all the way.

Reb remembered waking up in what he thought was someone’s cellar. It was very cold in the room, and he had been as naked as a jaybird. Then he had fallen away again.

His next memory was regaining consciousness in an ambulance. It was very old, the kind they had in World War I, with a shrill, rackety little engine. He was lying on one of the stretcher racks, his head to the rear. A German soldier was sitting next to him on the bed of the ambulance with his feet hanging off the back. He was eating grapes. Seeing the bandaged Reb looking at him out of his left eye, he offered him one.

Reb faded out again.

His last memory was coming awake on a metal operating table. He was lying on his back surrounded by white-gowned figures whose faces were hidden by masks. He tried to speak as a nurse stepped forward and injected him in the upper thigh. Then he was gone again.

How long have I been here? he wondered. He could hear the wounded men lying in the beds next to him joking about something. He didn’t understand the joke because they were both speaking German.

A nurse passed by and he called out to her. When she approached him, he asked her where he was, but she couldn’t understand him. A German nurse who spoke English told him that he was fortunate to be in a German military hospital in Paris, where they treated captured soldiers as well as their own. He had been in a coma since being admitted to the hospital. It was a miracle that he was still alive, she told him, but he already knew that.

He had been unconscious for more than two weeks.

Later in the morning, the nurses transferred him from his bed to a hospital gurney, and he was wheeled out of the ward to a large elevator. It stopped on the main floor, and he was transported across an elegant lobby at least two stories high and draped with red swastika flags. Another angry portrait of Adolf Hitler, this one life-sized, dominated one wall.

They took him into an examination room, where a doctor began to gently clip off the bandages around his head. In fairly good English, the doctor explained that the cannon round had hit him between his right eye and ear, gone through his skull, and come out the front, taking his eye and most of his cheekbone.

It had become badly infected, probably because he had been wearing his leather sheepskin-lined helmet. Many of its fragments were still inside the wound, along with pieces of shrapnel. If they were unable to control the infection, the doctor told him that his prospects for survival weren’t good. In any event, the hospital would be his home for the next month or two. Before putting on a new set of bandages, the doctor liberally dosed the open wound with sulfur powder.

Reb had no doubt he would live. After everything he had already survived, he was home free. His principal concern was his mother’s weak heart. He hoped that when she received the telegram that he was missing in action, she would somehow know he was all right.

Saturday, 25 September 1943
Paris, France
Second Lieutenant Demetrios Karnezis

The morning after his first and only parachute jump, the Greek’s coccyx was so sore he could barely move. If his benefactress had wanted to turn him in to the Gestapo, there was nothing he could do about it but lie there and wait.

He was willing to bet his life that she wouldn’t.

Her name was Marcelle Andre, and both she and Marie Therese, her seventeen-year-old daughter, were unbelievably kind. He knew the two women faced a possible death sentence if he was found hiding there.