The three young men from the Lewiston-Clarkston valley who joined the Army Air Corps in the spring of 1942 all began their service in the same way, but traveled vastly different paths, with ends that could not be predicted but were yet all too familiar.
Ralph Nichols became a C-47 pilot, flew with distinction, and was awarded service medals in recognition of his contribution to the war effort.
Leonard Richardson washed out of pilot school, became a navigator, and served with a C-47 group in the South Pacific in the early days of America’s island-hopping northward. His brief period of overseas service ended with a plane crash in mid-September 1943, and the story of his ordeal is told in an unpublished 2012 manuscript, “A Mustering of Heroes.”
Allan Knepper became a P-38 fighter pilot in North Africa. As reported in Richardson’s brief memoir: “Al and I both went missing, and they never found Al.” It was from this short phrase that the search for Allan Knepper was begun in 2011.
Allan’s story is told imperfectly in the present book. Relating his service, and the circumstances of his loss, has been complicated by the almost total lack of surviving personal communication. One letter, written on his arrival in North Africa as he traveled to join his P-38 squadron, is all that has been recovered. So telling Lieutenant Knepper’s story has required an exhaustive review of army documents, a thorough search for contemporaries, and a careful reading of historical literature.
The book was written for an audience of one: Allan’s half-sister, Shirley Finn. Though she was born after Allan’s death, through the stories and memoirs that spoke of the enduring loss felt by his family, his life became a part of her own. Although many years have passed since his death, Shirley and her family continue to wonder about his loss and to wish that more could be known about how he came to be in North Africa, who he fought, and who he fought alongside, and how and where he died. This book was written to answer those questions, and the chief regret of the author is that it comes too late for many of Shirley’s kin.
Astonishingly, two pilots who participated in Allan’s last mission were located and have made extensive contributions to this writing: William Gregory and Harold Harper. Both have vivid memories of their time of service in North Africa, and of this specific mission. Their recollections and confirming documents have been of inestimable help in completing the narrative of Lieutenant Knepper’s service.
Allan, Ralph, and Leonard are clear examples of what has come to be called “the Greatest Generation”—three men responding to their country’s call to arms, willing to leave their homes and loved ones to take paths that all three knew would be life-changing. They knew that their lives would be forever altered by the horrible conflict they were entering, that they were entering a branch of service known to be inherently dangerous, and also that others of their generation had already responded to their nation’s call, young men and women whose sacrifice “humbles the undertakings of most men.”
This quote is taken from the certificate the Knepper family received from President Roosevelt. The full text reads as follows:
In grateful memory of Second Lieutenant Allan W. Knepper, A.S.No. 0-737801, who died in the service of his country in the North African Area, July 11, 1944. He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live, and grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through it he lives—in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.
The date given for his death is one year and a day after his actual loss. This was standard practice for the army at that time, in the belief that if he did not appear after one year, he had most probably been killed in action.
I presume that this same certificate was sent by the president to the next-of-kin to all servicemen who were killed in action, and is in addition to the Purple Heart award that Allan’s family received.
Allan was killed on his fifth combat mission, but this should not suggest that he was unprepared for battle. At the time of his loss, he and his squadron mates were the most feared warriors history had ever produced, wielding the most devastating and technologically advanced weapons systems ever devised, ably prepared for precisely the sort of mission that would sadly take his life.
Had his formation been just slightly higher or lower, or moving just a bit faster or farther to the east or west, he might have survived the mission. One can just as easily imagine him completing his fifty combat missions and returning home to his loving family, with a chest full of medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Home to a life perhaps like his own brother’s, when he returned from the war—a wife, children, and a career.
It is also easy to imagine that, coming home, Allan would have had the same reticence as his fellow pilots, men who had themselves lost many friends, had seen the terrible devastation of the war, and had come to understand the tragic losses on all sides among both combatants and civilians. For Allan, as with the young men with whom he flew, there was honor but no glamour. Those who survived combat and returned home, their duty fulfilled, could reflect that they had taken their piece of the action and that no one had shouldered their part of the load. They had earned the sense of pride that comes after a job well done.
The story of Lieutenant Knepper’s brief career as an Army Air Forces pilot may be of no great significance in the context of the vast slaughter of that war, except to his family. But the arc of his life, from schoolteacher in rural Idaho to front-line aerial combat against the Luftwaffe, mirrors the lives of so many other young men of his generation. And the loss to his family is surely representative of the losses felt in countless homes around the country, and around the world, during the war.
There is satisfaction in telling Allan Knepper’s story, but more gratifying is the possibility that his crash site may have finally been located on Sicily, with the hope that his remains will ultimately be found and repatriated to Lewiston. Allan Knepper, an admirable young man, deserves this effort, and more. His was a short life well-lived, remembered with love by his family and those who came to call him friend.