A Death in the Family, 1944

The uncle I never knew

Andrew Jr. in flight training, Texas, 1944. Photo property of the author.

Our guest writer,

Victoria Olsen

of

From Life with Victoria Olsen

joins us for a second publication for the Projectkin Members’ Corner. Victoria’s suggestion that this post be held for Memorial Day was the inspiration for the military theme for our posts this month. Explore the entire Members’ Corner here, and learn more about joining a future cohort here. Read Andrew Jr, 1923-1944 here and subscribe to her publication from the button below:

Eighty years ago, in the spring of 1944, my father’s older brother sent his parents a postcard from Goodfellow Field in San Angelo, Texas, writing, “Here it is. Vultee BT-13: The one I fly. (Believe it or not.)” Multiple underlines underscore his excitement. He was stationed at nearby Foster Field Army base in Victoria (a coincidence with my name that I had never known until I started researching my father’s family).

Andrew Peter Olsen, Jr. had enrolled in The Citadel in 1941 as an Army Air Force cadet and enlisted in the Reserves in 1942. He moved to active duty in February 1943 and spent a year learning how to fly planes. He sent many photos home, like the one above, in which he looked young and carefree. He was 21 years old. My father, three years younger, remained in high school in Chicago.

Then on May 22, 1944, the day before he would have graduated as a single-engine plane combat pilot, Andrew Jr. died in a plane crash with his flight instructor. The army posthumously awarded him status as second lieutenant and sent his parents his wings.

Western Union telegram, May 22, 1944, saved by my grandfather.

What’s left behind

“The coffin was empty,” my father would say in hushed tones when he repeated this story to us decades later. Without the body itself, his parents kept every other scrap of documentary evidence about their son. In a folder marked “Andrew Peter Olsen, Jr.” there’s the original Western Union telegram they received in Chicago at 10:34 that night as well as a photostatic copy of it. There are three copies of the condolence letter from H.H. Arnold, General, U..S. Army and Commanding General, Army Air Forces, dated October 1944 (five months later). They kept letters to and from military officials and an inventory of Andrew Jr.'s effects, including the bill of lading for one crate of personal items, including 13 towels, 29 handkerchiefs, assorted clothing, four rolls of film, and a camera. His billfold contained $27.14, identification tags, and a religious medal. An officer in Section H, 2539th AAF Base Unit wrote to explain the various items Andrew Jr. had purchased and which ones were returned for refunds, duly forwarded. Plane tickets home worth $67.83, unused. Uniforms and a Valopak Bag from the Foster Field Post Exchange cashed out for $14.00. The funeral receipts show expenses at $300.75, to which the government contributed fifty dollars. The inventory included a damaged ring and a broken Longines watch, which suggests those items survived the crash but obscures the story. The letter writer, Summary Court Officer Paul J. Turner, added,

“I would like you to know that your son, Andrew, was a man who stood out from the other cadets. I saw him in church every Sunday and though I didn’t get to know him personally, one can always readily tell how a man conducts himself as to what type of individual he is. He would have been an excellent officer and it seems unreasonable on the part of our good Lord to take such men as your son and let others carry on who do not have the good qualities that Andrew had. It was God’s will and we have to let it go at that.”

This was among the best of the condolence notes. The one from C.P. Summerall, President of the Citadel, simply said,

“Your son gave great promise of a life of great usefulness to his country. It is paradoxical that he should have given his life so soon but it was for his country and in that I can see some comfort for no one could do more.”

I never heard an explanation of what actually happened from my father, but among the saved letters is an account, written by the local army chaplain Ralph G. Saxe on the day after Andrew Jr. died. Reading it, I had never heard these details before and they deserve quoting in full, in the chaplain’s own words.

“Your son took off from the field yesterday shortly before noon in the same plane with his instructor, Lt. James F. Clark Jr. It was to be his last flight, since he had only 25 minutes of flying time to qualify as a pilot. The formation went north of the field and above some light clouds, where, at an altitude of about 7000 feet, they practiced acrobatics. At that height, the outlook was beautiful—soft fleecy clouds below them— and after they had been up about 25 minutes, the formation divided and headed back towards the field, going down through the overcast below.

There was no indication from the top that a severe local thunder cloud had developed below them, and one of the instructors who was flying in another plane, told me that as they went lower, it got almost pitch dark, so that it was necessary to fly entirely by instrument, and the turbulence became so great that several times his hand was thrown completely off the stick. Although he was descending at a rate of 160 miles per hour, the plane was so tossed about that at times it was tossed upward in the midst of this descent. This plane emerged from the clouds at an altitude of only about 400 feet and then headed toward the field in a torrential rain.

A cadet who followed your son’s plane found himself caught in a tremendous down-draft which hurled him helpless toward the ground, and he fell in a few seconds from 6000 feet to 400 feet, emerging from the clouds at a rate of 300 miles an hour, and the airplane’s ordinary cruising speed is about 150.

Just what happened to Andrew’s plane will never be known for sure, but it seems likely he must have got caught between some of those rapidly rising or falling currents of air. The left wing was torn off in mid-air, and the parts of the plane were strewn along the ground for three-fourths of a mile. It seems very likely, however, that both he and the officer were unconscious, as neither of them were able to even loosen their safety belts.”

It’s an extraordinary letter. Beginning as if he were there, the author relates a series of events that juggle technical details and poetic impressions. The other pilots serve as supporting witnesses for a story of blameless death, just Mother Nature in all her unpredictability. The final paragraphs, as befits the chaplain, return to the comfort of faith and God’s care. Still, I can't imagine what his parents made of some of those grim details.

Later, I found Andrew Jr.’s death certificate, which lists the primary cause of death bluntly as “Amputation, Traumatic, Complete of head and extremities.” The secondary cause was “Evisceration of the thoracic and abdominal cavities.” It is one of the few records missing from Andrew Sr.’s folder—and it tragically, horrifically explains the central mystery of the missing body. It’s more than anyone wants to know.

What were the statistics for deaths like these, soldiers still on U.S. army bases? Pilots still in training? The question sends me scurrying to government records, historical and current. Before World War II the Air Force was known as the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). It didn’t become its own division of the military until 1948. One of the first things I found out is that Foster Airfield was named for a Lt. Arthur L. Foster, who himself was a U.S. Army Air Corps instructor killed in a nearby crash in 1925. The base was established in the spring of 1941 as a school for single-engine fighter pilots. Foster’s widow dedicated a plaque to her husband “who gave his life teaching others to fly” when the base was named after him in February 1942. Foster’s son then trained there and graduated shortly before Andrew Jr. did. Most students graduated as Warrant Officers but the top of the class left as Second Lieutenants, the rank posthumously awarded Andrew Jr. They flew North American AT-6 Texan trainers or Curtis P-40 Warhawk bombers in formations of as many as twelve planes. The base was gradually shut down after October 1945, though briefly reactivated in 1951 for the Korean War effort. It was finally closed in 1958 despite then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign to keep it open. It is now a regional county airport.

What does it mean?

On January 12, 1945 one of Andrew Jr.’s Chicago classmates, Lt. Thomas Hargrave Berry, also “met with a fatal accident” while training in combat flying at Key Field, Meridien, Mississippi. My grandparents wrote condolences and perhaps attended the funeral at Oak Woods Cemetery because they saved the In Memoriam card and a thank you note from Mr. and Mrs. Berry in the folder with Andrew Jr.’s records. Thomas had been born in Chicago a week after their son and attended the same high school; then their paths diverged until they ended in the same place. Andrew Sr. tore a clipping of his son’s obituary notice from the newspaper and pinned it to the inside of a Hallmark card inscribed, “Hi Dad, See you soon, Love, Andrew.” My grandfather’s birthday was May 25th so it may have arrived after his son’s death on the 22nd.

When the war was over my grandfather applied for Veterans Compensation from the state of Illinois for his son’s death. In an envelope marked in his careful all-capitals print “DATA FOR BONUS” are affidavits filed by people who knew Andrew Jr. in Chicago, like his aunt Anna, a family lawyer, and a neighbor at 7539 South Luella Avenue. The point seems to have been to establish that Andrew was indeed a resident of Illinois, despite dying in Texas and going to school in South Carolina. Everyone attests to his upbringing and his many returns for holidays and breaks. I can’t tell if they ever received the bonus. The last item in the folder is a manila envelope entitled ANDREW JR’S DIPLOMA AND COMMISSION, which were awarded posthumously. But inside the envelope is also a 8x10 headshot of Andy in pilot gear, taken in a San Angelo, Texas photo studio. In tiny red script Andy wrote, “To my own dear father with all my love from Andrew Jr. ’44.” It’s one of many such formal portraits of Andy, all large, some now water-damaged from my basement leak. The record shows it’s hard to overstate the effect of Andy’s loss on the whole family.

Andrew Jr. ’44, in dress uniform. Photo property of the author.

Among the documents in the dilapidated folder labeled Andrew Olsen Jr. another one set stands out: four handwritten pages of notes, stapled together with a business card for a State Veteran Counselor in Catskill, New York. It’s scribbled over with info about Andy Jr. like DOB, location of death, and service number along with addresses and phone numbers for requesting a KIA NCD report and the NPRC from St. Louis. The military acronyms are baffling and it takes me a while to realize that these papers were not saved by my grandfather in the 1940s. These are from the 1990s or early 2000s. My father retired near Catskill in the late 1980s and received nearby VA services himself (he died in a VA hospice in Albany in 2011) so he must have started this process of researching his brother’s death late in his life. What more did he want to know? What was left out of this already exhaustive record?

Much later I too would retrace my father’s inquiry, writing to the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) for my father’s, uncle’s, and grandfather’s military records. They added nothing to Andrew Jr.’s story, but documented his final pay check for $17.01, prorated for the month of May. It was a symbolic kind of closure for what had long been an open wound.

This story picks up on a tale

Victoria Olsen

started in a post on May 22nd, the 80th anniversary of his death.

Andrew Jr, 1923-1944

Explore more stories in our Members’ Corner, and watch for new releases this month focused on memories of family members who served in the armed forces worldwide.

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Victoria Olsen

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