End of August 1944
Union Square, San Francisco, California
Maj. Richard Bong stood in Union Square, no longer anonymous, no longer the Midwest farm boy. The regal edifice of the St. Francis rose before him as it had when he first arrived in San Francisco two years ago. Back then, his wallet held the last nineteen dollars to his name. This summer, when he flew back to Poplar at the end of July for his parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, he paid off their mortgage on the farm—two grand—as his gift to them. Even the majestic view of St. Francis felt par for the course now, after staying at the Plaza and the finest hotels in D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles.
The styles hadn’t changed much. As he watched people coming and going through the square, he saw perhaps more men wearing cuffed pants. It was one of many little signs that signaled the home front was getting restless, and the sacrifices made for victory would not be tolerated forever. He’d seen those little signs all over the country that summer when he gave speeches on his bond tour.
People needed to be reminded that for all the dear-won Allied victories, the Germans and Japanese still had plenty of fight. It would take the country’s full measure to get tanks to Berlin and Tokyo. He understood his role in that. He was a symbol whose words, however awkwardly delivered, carried heft to his audiences.
He headed for the St. Francis. The Mural Room, once long out of his price range, awaited. He was so famous now that he used a pseudonym when he checked into a new hotel, hoping that would throw the media off. It didn’t really work. His baby face and boyish grin were known from coast to coast. Crowds mobbed him for autographs wherever he went. He couldn’t eat dinner in a Hollywood club without being pulled onstage and kissed by a starlet.
On Mother’s Day in Chicago, he did a radio show with his mom. Robert Johnson’s and Don Gentile’s moms were also guests. It was a trifecta of the best combat aviators and their mothers saluting the familial bonds that would sweep America to final victory. Dick sounded stilted as he read his lines. He was no actor, but most saw that as part of his charm.
He walked into the St. Francis, people bustling this way and that. Most men wore the uniform now. The hotel became the hub of last hurrahs after Pearl Harbor, and as the ranks swelled with draftees, so did the men bound for combat wanting a last memory of home in this amazing place. Those who couldn’t afford a room came to simply ride the elevators to take in the view of the city.
He didn’t really want to return to combat. This summer had been the happiest of his life. At least the parts at home were. He carried the memories without nostalgia—he was too much of an internalizing Midwestern Swede for such sentimentality. But they were beautiful memories nonetheless.
He took the elevator ride to his room, the sweeping vista of the city romantic and breathtaking. He wished Marge were there to share it with him. He’d last seen her at the train station in Superior, her blue eyes wet with tears as she waved her goodbye. He stood on the step of the Pullman car, drinking in his last look at her. Then he turned and went off to find his berth. It was a Hollywood goodbye at a time when he was an A-list guest on the Hollywood party scene.
The elevator stopped, and he found his room. To hell with convention, he should have brought Marge. They could have shared their final moments before he returned to battle here. That would not have been proper, though, and surely there would have been a scandal over it back home. So they had to make do with their train platform moment.
He’d decided that summer his reticence to get married in wartime could be worked around. On the same day Gerald married Barbara in June, Dick parked the family car and reached across Marge’s lap to open the glove compartment. It was locked, and he fumbled with it, trying to get the fussy thing open. When at last he did, he produced a pink velvet ring box and handed it to his girl. Marge opened it to see a diamond shining up at her. He said a few words, spoken from the heart. There were tearful affirmations. Dick lifted her hand and gently slid the ring on her finger.
They were engaged now, and the wedding would happen after he returned from combat. He was still determined not to make Marge a wartime widow if he should fall in battle.
He knew there would be more battles in his future, though earlier in the summer, when Arnold ordered him to the Pentagon, he didn’t appear eager to go back to the SWPA. During that trip, he ran into Don Gentile and Robert Johnson. Don was affable, quick to tell him how much trouble Dick had been giving him in the race. He and Johnson, though, talked about going back. The Jug ace felt he’d done his part and wanted to stay home. Dick told him the same thing. He’d be home selling war bonds too. “It’s a helluva war,” he said to Johnson.
Perhaps he’d told Johnson that because he’d just been to see Tom Lynch’s family. He flew to Pennsylvania without warning, hoping to elude the press that hounded his every move. He sat in Tom’s childhood home, recounting their friendship to his family. Gradually, he circled closer to the final flight. He explained what happened as gently as he could, the pain of the moment stamped on everyone’s faces. When he finished, Tom’s mom asked, “Is there any hope my son survived?” She was still clinging to the War Department’s words that he was missing in action. A slender lifeline, those words. It stalled the finality of loss, pushed the grieving down the road. Dick knew this and did not wish to see them suffer. They needed to know the truth. Tom could not have survived that explosion and fall.
He shook his head and replied, “No. There is no chance he could have survived.”
It was the last thing they wanted to hear. But it was the truth.
Away from combat, leaving that meeting, who would want to return to such trauma? No, he was done with it, just as he had told Robert Johnson.
While in D.C., Arnold offered him a regular commission. It was a chance to stay in after the war, be a part of shaping the peacetime Air Force. Bong made no commitment. He still clung to a vision of a small-town life in Poplar. Maybe that wouldn’t be enough after all he’d experienced, but for now that was his plan.
In the end, he didn’t stay home, though he was sorely tempted to do so after a visit to Lockheed’s factory in Burbank, California, gave him a glimpse of the future of fighter aviation. There, at what later became known as the “Skunk Works,” Lockheed’s best minds were working to perfect a jet fighter capable of speeds only discussed in comic books. It was strictly Buck Rogers stuff. Dick wanted to be a part of it as a test pilot, at least for the duration of the war.
Instead of asking for a slot in the jet fighter test program, Dick went to a new AAF gunnery training school. At first, he struggled. Deflection shots were the bane of his combat flying, and in Texas that weakness was revealed again. But then, it all clicked. He started nailing targets from almost any angle. The training was so good that many times he said that if he’d had it before going to New Guinea, his score would be double.
Perhaps part of him wanted to test these new skills. Perhaps he was defined by his ace of aces status and did not want to surrender it to Tommy McGuire or any other contender. It was who he was. If somebody beat him, what would define him then?
He was going back into combat. He couldn’t explain it. To most civilians, it didn’t make any sense at all. He’d done his part. He had the pick of any job in the Air Corps. But the truth was, being out of combat made him miss it. It was what he knew, where he was at his best.
It was where he belonged, even if he remained an outsider to those who flew beside him. He hadn’t finished his second tour anyway; it had lasted only three months instead of the usual year or more. Returning, he reasoned, was the right thing to do.
His stay in San Francisco was a short one. Hamilton Field soon called him. A seat opened on a flight west. He packed his things and headed back out across the Pacific.
Only a few days after Bong’s flight left, Maj. Gerald Johnson checked into the St. Francis with his wife, Barbara. They were tanned and radiant, happily learning how to be husband and wife as they adventured around the country together. The press largely ignored them, which suited Gerald fine. He coveted his privacy and wanted every nonworking moment to be focused on Barbara. They’d gotten to know each other as never before while driving from Oregon to Kansas and back. For a glorious few weeks, they lived together at Leavenworth, Barbara getting a glimpse of what life would be like for an Air Corps wife.
Gerald showed her the St. Francis, as Dick had wanted to do with Marge. That night, they dined in the Mural Room with Air Corps friends, the table filled with laughter and happiness. The hotel photographer snapped their pictures to memorialize the moment. Barbara looked stunning and at ease in the opulence. Until this summer, she’d never even been out of Oregon. She was a tomboy who climbed mountains, learned to ski when city kids were learning to ride bikes. As a nurse trainee at OHSU, she’d seen the harshest side of the war. The wounded convalescing, the psychiatric casualties. The infirm needing care in their final hours. It took a rugged heart to see those days through.
In San Francisco, on her major’s arm, a feminine side awoke in her. She loved the whirlwind of the St. Francis. They drank and celebrated their marriage and new life together. They rekindled friendships and made new ones in that short stay. The tomboy became a laughing, happy partner to her mate. The old adage that anyone can make colonel, but it takes a great wife to make general? Barbara was exactly who Gerald needed to reach for that star someday.
One morning, Barbara awoke feeling dizzy and sick. At first, she just assumed it was payback for having too much fun the night before and tried to ignore it. She got up, went into the bathroom, and fainted. Gerald rushed to her side, scooped her up, and laid her on their bed. A quick call to the front desk, and the hotel doctor rushed to their room. He examined her carefully before giving his diagnosis.
Gerald hovered nearby as the doc observed her. “My dear,” he finally said. “You’re pregnant. You’ve got morning sickness.”
The news hit Gerald like a thunderclap. He’d become a husband. Now he would be a father. The two goals of his young life—he’d achieved them despite the chaos and upheaval the war had thrown in his path.
He doted on Barbara for the rest of their stay at the St. Francis. If she needed something, he dashed to retrieve it so she didn’t have to get up. He brought her food, rubbed her feet. Loved her with an open heart.
Internally, he was torn. This summer had been a dream, the happiest of his life, just like Bong’s. Yet, a small part of him felt guilty. He knew the men he’d left behind were locked in the violence and horrors he’d seen in New Guinea. Being home, enjoying what he called “dual sack time” like a peacetime newlywed, made him feel like those men who had stayed behind and avoided overseas duty. He was no shirker. He knew that, but he could not shake the feeling. His place, at least as long as the shooting continued, would be out with the men doing the fighting. Anywhere else and he would feel a sense of shame.
I will never be satisfied unless I am back overseas with the real soldiers.
The bond he’d known in combat had come to define Gerald just as Dick’s ace of aces status defined him. It was the bedrock of his character now, and even the realization of his closest-kept prewar dreams would have to take a backseat to it. He needed to see this through. Then his heart wouldn’t be torn, and he could return to Barbara with no regrets.
A few days later, Gerald kissed his love goodbye one more time. She wept in his arms, unashamed of her display. He held her tight to his uniform tunic. He would return when the war was won. He promised. They parted, Gerald feeling more torn than ever, Barbara feeling utterly alone. That afternoon, she boarded a train home as Gerald’s C-54 crossed over the Golden Gate, flying west into the setting sun to the place where aces were made.