Once They Were Eagles Read online

  “With some of the other leaders you’d get a mess—planes milling around and the Zeros making runs on us instead of us on them. Not with Boyington; he had a sense—not only experience but a certain aptitude. Personally, he may not have been the greatest guy in the world, but when he got up in the air, he had real aptitude. A lot of others did, too, but I have to exclude myself. I didn’t really have that knack. I’d see a Zero and get buck fever.

  “After the Black Sheep, I was Duty Officer at Air Command, Northern Solomons, on Bougainville. It was a lousy tour—just strafing palm trees around Rabaul. The crash that sent me home was the result of a night flight. I landed without having my wheels locked down. They had a level with a knob you had to push all the way through the quadrant so the handle would latch—if you didn’t, the thing would hang. Normally, it would have been O.K. anyway, but this plane had a bomb rack on it for bombing missions, a long pipe bolted to the underside. I started to skid on my belly, and this damn pipe snagged in the Marsden matting, jammed back and up into the fuselage, and wiped out the lower end of the gas tank. It rolled up, and the thing flamed like a big blowtorch through the cockpit. The plane finally stopped, cockpit 90 degrees, nose pointing at a bunch of guys on the embankment watching who was frying in the flames.

  Marion March

  Robert McClurg

  “Without any knowledge of what I was doing, I flipped my safety harness and dove over the side. Chin broken, face torn up; my mustache and eyebrows burned off, burned all over my face; left wrist burned where the jacket and glove didn’t meet. The funniest thing, my shoe was cooked so that the leather sole was cracked. I had a third degree burn on my left calf and up my leg. The meat wagon and fire truck found me there, trying to beat out the flames around me.

  “I spent a couple of months at the Naval Hospital. They gave me a couple of skin grafts on my leg, one on my face, and shipped me home to the Naval Hospital at Seattle, where they finished the skin grafting and then sent me to Parris Island. I finished the war there and got out.”

  Businessman and Sportsman

  Robert McClurg

  Bob McClurg picked me up at the Syracuse airport and drove through a snowstorm to his magnificent estate in a wooded glen at Cedarville Ridge, New York. The pungent odor of pine needles from a brightly lighted tree in the corner of the sunken living room, and the sparkle and crackle of the log in the fireplace, emphasized that Christmas was not far away. The picture window looked over a snow-covered porch where birds were dinner guests in feeders. The living Christmas-card view continued down a slope and through the trees into a canyon, where a stream meandered through the property. Although he’s a hunter and fisherman (the freezer in his garage is loaded with game: venison, pheasants, geese, ducks, grouse, trout), Bob assured me he never hunts the deer frequenting his own place.

  The downstairs den walls are covered with souvenirs of his Black Sheep days, and some of his fishing expeditions.

  McClurg is part owner of a highly successful agency that represents a dozen lines of plumbing and heating equipment. He is semi-retired now, concentrating on his golf, hunting, and fishing. Although graying, he still has plenty of hair; he is lean, alert, and energetic.

  Already accepted by the Naval Air Corps in 1942, he left his mother to receive his college degree for him. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was the commencement speaker. She went up to him and said: “My son Bobby is a flyer too. Do you know him?” Rickenbacker answered that oh, yes, he knew him. Bob was shipped to Hawaii with only 21 hours in fighter planes, never having made a carrier landing in a fighter.

  The colonel there asked him, “How the hell did you get here?”

  “I told him, ‘By ship, sir,’” McClurg related.

  “He said, ‘You dummy, how could you get here with a logbook like that? … You’re worth nothing to nobody. You’ll have to stay here and we’ll train you.’

  “Two days later, I was on a plane to the South Pacific. I had my first flight in a Corsair and demolished part of a palm tree when I took off. I managed to get it down all right, but every time they’d pick up pilots from the replacement pool, they’d reject me for guys with 120 to 160 hours in fighters.

  “When I was transferred, Pappy looked in my logbook and took a couple of us out to fly. He said, ‘Mac, you fly like a bag of piss. You’ll never get anywhere till somebody teaches you something.’

  “I was grateful to him for that because I’d begun to feel like another bump on a log, and thought I’d never get home.

  “The first air raid on Munda, when we were sleeping in a Quonset with mosquito nets around the four posts of each bunk, two of us got tangled up, smashed heads, and dragged the nets with us as we scrambled on all fours to the foxhole. We rolled into it, and somebody jumped on top of us.

  “After the Black Sheep I went to Green Island, flew a few escort missions and strafing. I came home, did some instrument training, went to several schools, then back to the west coast to go overseas again. The colonel called me in: ‘You’re going to stay in when the war’s over, aren’t you?’

  “I said ‘no.’ It turned out that you had to stay in a couple more years if you went overseas. But I had enough points, so I got out and went to work for a company that manufactures plumbing and bathroom fixtures.

  “I worked there for 15 years, learned the business thoroughly, and struck out on my own, starting small and gradually expanding. We did about $2 million gross last year.

  “In the past couple of years, I’ve backed off and worked my son into the business.

  “Looking back, I’d say that if I hadn’t been part of the Black Sheep Squadron, my life would have been only partially fulfilled. There was camaraderie other squadrons didn’t have. Tears come to my eyes now when I hear the Black Sheep song. All the ditties—Fisher, Bragdon, Bolt, Sims, and all of us singing together—nothing like it. Like that song: ‘If you lose your airspeed now you’ll come down from forty thou, and you’ll wind up in a rowboat at Rabaul.’ Paul Mullen’s contribution.

  “It really came back to me, Frank, at the reunion, how much you had done to help us put our squadron in the forefront—unbeknownst to us at the time because we were all playing with our airplanes. Pappy did a hell of a job; between you and Pappy and the rest, that’s why people will remember the Black Sheep.

  “If I should die tomorrow, I’ve lived a great life.”

  Professor

  William Heier

  William D. “Junior” Heier commenced his wartime service with the RCAF because he had only a high school education, and the U.S. required two years college for its airmen.

  Junior retired from the U.S. Marine Corps 20 years later as a Lieutenant Colonel with a master’s degree in accounting controllership. Eighteen months after that, he had his doctorate in management. Now he is a professor of management at Arizona State University in Tempe, a pleasant city of about 100,000.

  Two and a half hours after I left Chicago’s four-degree weather, he picked me up at the sunny Phoenix airport and drove me to his delightful home in a quiet residential area near the university. Oranges, grapefruit, and tangelos grew profusely in his back yard.

  His office/den walls were covered with Black Sheep mementos. I asked why he’d joined up. “It was a matter of patriotism,” he said. “My dad and mother agreed we would eventually be in the war, and I was concerned about how the British were doing, all by themselves, so I thought I’d help them, since I already had my civilian pilot’s license.

  William Heier

  Jim Hill

  “After Pearl Harbor a bunch of us Americans asked to be transferred back. After Navy training, I was introduced to the Corsair on Espiritu Santo.

  “I think everybody was nervous. You’d have to be stupid not to be afraid of the unknown, but we were eager to get at them, to test our skills. I was comfortable in that Corsair, never afraid of going into a fight because it was a tremendous airplane.

  “When the squadron broke up, I went to Green Island; later, I came home
but stayed in as a regular, got married, was transferred to helicopters, and went to Korea. I finished out the Korean War in jets. Back in the States I had a series of varied assignments: CO of a jet squadron; TAC Squadron Commander at Cherry Point. In 1959, I went to Washington and stayed until I retired in 1962.

  “I started night school when I was in Quantico in 1949—averaging four nights a week, year after year, taking six units every semester—planning my career in accounting.

  “Frankly, once you get your 20 years in and are eligible to retire, you’re working for half pay, because you could get the other half even if you’re not there. Besides, I was coming up a colonel, and under the rule at the time, if you made colonel, you had to stay another five years. I’d have been 47 by then. It’s not easy to get a teaching job at a big school at that age, even with a Ph.D. So I got out and started my second career.

  “Now, I’m debating about retiring here. I’ve been chairman and general manager of our credit union for over 16 years, and I was chairman of the Arizona State Credit Union Board for six years. I could take over and administer one of those organizations. I’ve been offered a sabbatical proposal to study the shift from government financing of pension plans back to the private sector. If I did that, it would mean a year in foreign countries studying what’s been done there, but I’d have to stay at least another year at the university after I came back. I’d sort of considered retiring in 1983 at age 62.

  ‘Incidentally, you’re responsible for one of my goals, Frank. Years ago, you told me you were saving $1,000 a month. That’s what I chuck into deferred tax income.”

  “Fine, but one of these days you’ve got to plan how to spend it so you don’t end up leaving a million dollars.”

  “For the kids? Forget it, Frank. Our ideal has been to spend the last nickel and drop dead.”

  Sales Executive

  Jim Hill

  Tall, slender, energetic Jim Hill drove over from his home in Skokie to meet me at the hotel at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Other than a slight graying at the temples, he didn’t look a whole lot different from before.

  “I’d originally intended to make a career of the Marine Corps. But then the war was over; I’d been overseas for a year, back in the States for six months, and back out again for another six. They were talking about adding another year to that if I became a regular. I figured that was too long to be away from my new bride.”

  Released from active duty, Jim went to work selling fire and safety equipment for a distributor. He is now regional sales manager for a six-state area.

  “I got into aviation because my best friend was a Marine pilot. He was killed at Guadalcanal about two months before I got out to the South Pacific. I had about ten hours in the Corsair before our first combat tour. We were all charged up—scared, but looking forward to it with a certain amount of excitement.

  “I saw my first Zero in my rear view mirror, and he was shooting at me. I rolled over and dove out, just as I was told to do. Coming back from my first combat hop, my engine kept cutting out. When it got so bad that I was down to 1,500 feet, I decided to bail out. I got out of my harness and had one foot up on the canopy when the engine cut back in and I stepped back into the plane.

  “One time, flying cover for B-24s over Rabaul, the P-38s never showed, leaving eight Corsairs for 25 bombers. It was like a movie: some B-24s going down, guys bailing out, us spotting the nearest Zero and attempting to head it off. One B-24, one or two motors out, hit the trees on his final approach coming home.

  “The Black Sheep made all the difference in the world. We got along well. Maybe it was the excitement, or being there at the right time with plenty of action. We became very close in a very short time. But we lost a lot of fellows. Like Bob Alexander—we roomed together when we first got out there, and he impressed me. I mean, he could do more things with that Corsair than I’ve seen anybody do. I couldn’t believe we’d lost him that day.

  “After the Black Sheep, I went to Green Island, then home. I took a lot of pride in the Marine Corps. I look back on those four active years, and really, with that background, any problems that I faced later in life, I thought, ‘Man, this is nothing compared to what it was like in World War II.’ I can remember those years and the things that happened very vividly, whereas, gee, a ten-year span after that really wasn’t very interesting.”

  “Yes, after Guadalcanal and Munda and Bougainville and Rabaul—things get pretty dull, talking about changing the baby’s diapers,” I said.

  “I’ll never forget those days.” Jim nodded as he spoke.

  Business Planner

  Henry Bourgeois

  Henry Bourgeois met me at Newark Airport.

  Hank could not only fly like an eagle; he had the eyes of an eagle. The rest of the squadron acknowledged that he could spot enemy planes many seconds before anyone else did. That capability undoubtedly saved a lot of lives, giving his flight that slight position advantage so vital in aerial combat.

  His eagle eyes have dimmed now, but he is still alert and energetic, very much the business executive as Director of Business Planning for Kearfott Division of the Singer Corporation. “I’m also a farmer now,” he said. “We bought 90 acres in Maryland, including a 200-year-old house and 1,800 feet of waterfront. We’ve planted most of it in grapes and hope to have a vineyard by the time I retire, which will be before long.”

  Hank was apparently born to do everything early: a flight at age seven; first plane crash at eleven; soloing at thirteen; youngest in the Navy V-5 program; and at 20 years and nine months, the youngest Marine officer ever commissioned.

  “I sailed from San Diego on the Lurline with Pappy Boyington and six or seven other pilots as replacements. I went on up to Guadalcanal and then back to Santo, checked out in Corsairs, and went back to Guadalcanal for my second combat tour. I was more scared after it was over than before, but I got more confidence as time went on and became more cautious the more men we lost. I began to see there was more to it than adventure.

  Henry Bourgeois

  Alfred Johnson

  “As one of the experienced Black Sheep pilots, I was a division leader responsible for training the new men. With eight experienced combat pilots and a total of 28, we had more than enough to lead each four-plane division.

  “After my first and only Black Sheep tour, I trained pilots for a while in Green Cove Springs, then went to Quantico for Junior Amphibious Warfare School, then to San Diego, Coronado, and El Toro. When the war ended, I was sent to Okinawa to join the Fifth Marines. We went into China; as Forward Air Controller, I was with the Division Commander on the first jeep into Peking.

  “We didn’t know what the Japanese were going to do. Our job was to repatriate them to Japan: disarm them, get them out of there. We had to make sure all the people who’d been locked up, the Embassy people and so forth, got out and back into operation.

  “I was there a year and a half, then went to Tientsin and took over from John Begert as Air Officer for the Division. I got involved with OSS, flying agents into Manchuria, picking them up, and other sneaky things.

  “When I got back to the States, I was at El Toro for several years, then at Electronic Officers School in Memphis, where I finally got my degree in electrical engineering. I went to Korea for a year or so and came back to serve on the Marine Corps Development Center for two or three years.

  “I retired in 1961 when my eyes went bad; I had three boys growing up, and decided to try my luck on the outside. I went to work for General Precision.

  “Kearfott provides guidance control and navigation systems for anything: airplanes, missiles, spaceships. We do planning, short- and long-range, for new products and business areas, deciding where we should invest our funds in developing new products and trying to forecast where the Defense Department is going and where we fit into that picture.

  “In 1973, Mildred and I went to Japan. Our company, Singer, owns part of Mitsubishi Precision, and I went to do some work on strategic plan
ning. The director of marketing, Suwo, was a retired major general of the Japanese Air Force. We got to talking one night, and it turned out that he’d been a squadron commander on Bougainville. We had long talks that resumed when he came to the States later. He’d brought his logbook and I got mine out. Comparing flights and dates, we found we’d been shooting at each other! He got transferred back to Japan, and became head of training the Kamikaze pilots. He claimed to have shot down 27 or 28 American planes. He said they wondered where all the American planes were coming from.

  “He was quite a man. He was a hunter, and so am I, so I took him to my place in Maryland. We had a great day of duck shooting; it was lousy weather, and the ducks were flying. I took him to dinner that night, and he said, ‘Hank-san, I’m sure glad I didn’t shoot you down!’

  Travel Agent

  Alfred Johnson

  Al “Shorty” Johnson drove from his office through the snow to talk to me at Bob McClurg’s home in Syracuse, New York. Al owns a successful travel agency which, in addition to making him a comfortable living, has afforded him the opportunity to travel over most of the world. Al is still alert, energetic, and as quip-tongued as he was with the Black Sheep.

  “The day after Pearl Harbor, I went across the street from where I worked to sign up for the Army Air Corps. I filled out quite a few piles of papers. I thought I was another Lindbergh: I already had a private pilot’s license for a seaplane, so I kept asking about flying and trying to tell them about my seaplane experience, but they kept ignoring my remarks. Some little corporal with a big cigar kept handing me more papers. I thought, ‘I don’t like this outfit,’ and I rolled the papers in a ball and popped him right in the face and walked out.