DR. BAYEN MADE ALL THE ARRANGEMENTS FOR ROBINSON’S TRIP, helping him secure a passport and visa. The passport had presented a challenge. Robinson certainly could not say the reason for the trip was to become a member of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force. It was and is against US law for an American citizen to serve in the armed forces of another country, particularly one at war, which worried Robinson. He did not want to lose his citizenship. On his application, John had to fib a little. He stated the reason for his travel to Ethiopia was business. He claimed he was going abroad to sell unarmed, civilian aircraft to the Ethiopian government, aircraft manufactured by a new, small company named Beechcraft (which would turn out not to be a complete lie).
As for war, John still hoped that the League of Nations would somehow prevent it. After all, wasn’t that the main purpose for which it had been established after the Great War—the war to end all wars?
The United States, which had refused to join the League of Nations, decided to remain neutral and follow the initiative of the League to put an embargo on the sale of military arms to either Italy or Ethiopia. This diplomatic gesture of neutrality by the League of Nations and the United States hurt only Ethiopia; Italy had the ability to manufacture all the guns, bombs, ammunition, artillery, planes, and tanks it needed, whereas Ethiopia had no means whatsoever to manufacture modern weapons.
Bayen met John in New York and assured him that all the tasks that needed to be accomplished before he could go had been completed, right down to the delivery of his steamer trunk to his cabin. Bayen provided Robinson with a first-class ticket for the Atlantic crossing and beyond, checked his papers a final time, handed him an envelope containing cash for expenses, and accompanied him to Pier 57 in New York, used by both Grace Lines and French Lines. The French liner’s officer receiving passengers aboard seemed a little taken aback; he checked John’s papers twice to be sure the black man was indeed booked first class on the luxury liner outward bound for Marseille via the Strait of Gibraltar.
On that late afternoon in May 1935, passengers lining the rail of the French ship watched the skyline of New York slowly descend toward the western horizon. Among them, standing alone, was a slim, brown-skinned young man.
The chilled evening breeze smelled of the sea, taking Robinson back to his childhood in Gulfport on the Mississippi shore of the Gulf of Mexico. He thought of his mother’s seafood gumbo, flying kites, and fishing with his father. How far away those days now seemed. When his mother learned her only son was headed halfway round the world to an African country threatened by war, she had cried and begged him not to go. He had asked himself a dozen times, was he choosing or being chosen? Had he deliberately set a course, or was he being swept along by Fate’s troubled times and tides?
The glow from the bright lights of New York followed the sun beyond the horizon, leaving the ship in darkness to slice its way cleanly through the ocean. John left the liner’s rail and walked to his cabin.
Dressed formally in black tie, John Robinson garnered curious glances as he followed a waiter across the lavishly decorated dining salon to his assigned table. Conversation paused as he was seated. He smiled and nodded to those at the table. A few nodded in return, but when conversation resumed, he was ignored. Nervous about proper dining etiquette, he carefully spread his napkin in his lap and followed the silverware selections and manners of his fellow diners as he ate his meal in silence. It was the first five-course dinner he had ever experienced. He spoke only once, excusing himself from the table.
By lunch the next day, some at his table were more friendly, intrigued by rumors that originated, it was said, with the ship’s purser, and before him the equally curious black baggage handlers in New York. Who was the mysterious black passenger in first class? Word spread that he was a pilot and soldier of fortune. To his embarrassment, John became somewhat of a celebrity to many fellow passengers. There were also some aboard who made no secret of their disgust at booking expensive first-class passage only to find “a damn Chicago nigger” enjoying the same privileges. A group of German businessmen did not miss the opportunity to discuss the Nazi theory of a superior race when they were sure Robinson could not help but overhear.
Most of the first-class passengers were American vacationers of old money, the class that is usually hurt least by monetary Depression, and which generally is the last to change lifestyles. Among them was a former pilot who had flown with the 94th Aero Squadron in the Great War. He approached John on the second afternoon of the crossing.
“Robinson, I hear you’ve done a little flying. Is that true?”
“That’s right. I’ve done a little.”
“Heard you’re from Chicago, but you don’t sound like a native of the Windy City.”
“I was raised on the Mississippi coast. You don’t sound like a Northerner yourself, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“No. I’m from the Carolina coast. Charleston. Is it true you are headed for Ethiopia and the mess that’s fixin’ to happen over there?”
“I’ve accepted their invitation. I still hope the mess, as you put it, can be avoided.”
“I made the same mistake in 1917. I suppose you’ve been told you’re crazy enough times already. Why don’t you and I go to the bar and talk about flying. I’m already damn tired of bridge, my children are driving me crazy, and my wife stays seasick in her cabin, or so she tells me. I haven’t done any flying for a while. I’m forty-one and am constantly reminded that I should be wiser at my age, but I miss it.”
The two men spent much of the remainder of the cruise walking the decks or sharing a table at the bar while exchanging flying stories. To most passengers, especially Northern Americans, their apparent ease with one another seemed ironic, a white Southerner and a Negro. It was not strange to either man. In the segregated society in which they both grew up, such relationships were often black employee to white employer, the former subservient, the latter patronizing. Nonetheless, both John and the Carolinian were at ease with one another in a way peculiar to the South, a way John had not found prevalent in the Northern urban centers of Detroit and Chicago.
The Carolinian said he had first been assigned to fly a slow, lumbering observation plane that seemed to be the prey of every German flyer.
“I spent most of the war running like crazy. I learned to love the clouds. If you get in trouble in Ethiopia, clouds may be your best bet. If I found myself with Germans all around, I flew flat-out crazy, tried everything I knew, made up stuff, all the time running for the clouds if there were any. Once inside a cloud, I couldn’t tell up from down, but the pursuit ships were afraid to follow, afraid of a midair collision with me or each other. In clouds, they couldn’t tell up from down either. Even if they tried, they couldn’t find me. Hell, I couldn’t find me till I broke out the other side or spun out the bottom. Many a time I would deliberately go into a spin hoping I came out the bottom with enough altitude to pull out. I stayed alive and got my observer and the information through all but once. I crash-landed just behind my own lines, but my observer was already dead, shot right through the heart. I finally got my wish, got assigned to a pursuit squadron. I thought that would be great after flying a slow observation craft, but hell, I had more close calls than before. It really wasn’t much fun, John, the war I mean, but I miss the flying.”
Robinson took the Great War flyer’s knowledge and instruction in aerial combat seriously. He filled a journal with notes and sketches of maneuvers the slow-talking Carolinian patiently explained to him. John had taken instruction in basic aerobatics, loops, rolls, Cuban-eights and the like, but he had never thought of them in terms of evasive or aggressive tactics. He did now.
John enjoyed the man’s company, the only company he had on the voyage. In turn, his new acquaintance from South Carolina seemed to enjoy the chance to talk about the flying he missed and take it upon himself to do all he could to improve Robinson’s chances at survival in a conflict he believed, from what he had read in recent newspapers, was sure to come.
The two did not limit their conversations to serious matters. Both shared funny stories about their flying. The Carolinian told of landing an old Jenny one day with a whole line of women’s laundry tangled in his undercarriage and streaming out behind—bloomers, nightgowns, and other unmentionables. He told John, “I had buzzed my girlfriend’s place right between the back porch and the barn. I caught plenty of hell from my instructor, but not near as much as I caught from the mother of a girl who quickly became my ex-girlfriend.”
The greatest laugh they had together was when John told of the Decatur Country Club and the destruction of Janet Bragg’s OX-5 biplane. The Carolinian laughed until tears ran down his cheeks.
“It wasn’t very funny at the time, I tell you.” John laughed. “No, sir! It was not funny at all. It did no good for Coffey and I to try and blame each other. We thought that woman was going to kill us both. It took us a year and a half to pay for the plane. ”
John knew he needed a little laughter. His pilot friend was the only fellow passenger who spoke more than a few words to him. Most ignored his presence. Some shunned him altogether.
I guess these white folks never saw a black man in first class, at least one who wasn’t waitin’ tables, making beds, or cleanin’ up after ’em.
Late at night in the dark of his cabin, self-doubt crept in to taunt John. The faintly detectable rhythm of the ship’s engines reminded him of the ever-increasing miles separating him from home. Once, when the liner was in the middle of the ocean, he followed the promenade deck all the way aft to stand at the stern and watch the ship’s frothy wake stretch into the distance and fade away.
It was a grand ship, but for the most part, a lonely voyage for Robinson.