(Part one of a three-part
series.)
Seventy-five years-ago, my father, Thomas C. Colt Jr., was stationed somewhere in the Pacific during World War II. This fact barely registered in my consciousness when I was growing up and well into my adulthood until a few months ago when my sister discovered a stash of 160 letters he’d written during the war to his wife.
It was as though we’d hit the lottery because my father was a prolific writer and documented in great detail his experiences. He never talked about the war to me, of course, and I never thought to ask him about it. I was 26 years old when he died in 1985 and with him died his stories, or so I thought.
What I knew about World War II was gleaned from watching movies and television shows. Sure, I knew about Hitler and the atomic bomb, but not much else in between. Reading the letters inspired me to get crackin’ at this history lesson I’d glossed over for decades. Plus, the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landing last year made me realize my father’s part in the war wasn’t really being talked about because he was in the Pacific fighting a different enemy.
Soon we will be acknowledging the 75th anniversaries of the commencement of the battles on Iwo Jima (Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945) and Okinawa (April 1 to June 22, 1945) and I just learned, thanks to the letters, my father was intimately involved in that part of the war.
A brief history of my father is in order.
Thomas C. Colt Jr. was born in 1905 in Orange, New Jersey, educated at Blair Academy and Dartmouth College (class of 1926), and in 1935 became the first director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), the first state-owned art museum in the country.
Inspired by the adventures of Charles Lindberg and an uncle who was an aviator in the First World War, my father became a buck private in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in order to learn to fly in 1929, training at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
During the course of his training he flew single-engine open-cockpit biplanes, typically a Curtiss Hawk variety, and described them as the sweethearts of fighter planes and “as temperamental as a thoroughbred horse.”
In a letter to his father, he described his first of many misadventures:
“My first hop, my motor conked out at 3,000 feet, with a solid bank of cloud below me between 1,000 and 2,000 feet. That cuts out all view of the landing field and is tricky to go through without a motor. I dove through it and found myself directly over a forest. There was a tiny clearing I might just barely make. I cut the switch, took off my goggles, made my peace with the world and dove through the tops of the trees. I stalled at the perfect edge of the clearing and dropped in about five feet. When I climbed out and sat on the ground for a while, I couldn’t find the plane for branches all over it, but it wasn’t even dented.”
On July 1, 1930, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and reported to Quantico, Virginia, for continuous active duty as a Naval aviator in the Marine Corps Reserve for the aircraft squadrons, where he would serve for a year. The depression circumvented his Marine career because of lack of funding, and he eventually landed the job at the VMFA, maintaining his Reserve status.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, my father was in his 36th year of life and his sixth year as director of VMFA. Recognizing the need for veteran aviators to lead what would become an aerial war in the Pacific, my father received a letter on Jan. 13, 1942, from the Washington headquarters of the U.S. Marines requesting his service. He had to convince the governor of Virginia and the president of the museum board to allow him to take a leave so he could place himself in the “position of greatest possible service to my country.” There was some resistance from the upper echelon because of the importance of his job and his age, but ultimately he prevailed.
Leaving behind his wife, Belle, and two young sons, Tinker, 7, and Jonny, 4, he returned to Quantico with the rank of first lieutenant for basic training before heading to the Naval Air Station at Corpus Christie, Texas, for flight training. In a letter to Belle, he describes his first flight:
“This afternoon I had my first hop, with instructor, and it felt mighty good. I was afraid, after nine years, that I’d have to learn all over again. Of course, I was stiff & rusty, but the feeling was not all gone, and I made a couple good landings, as well as minor acrobatics.”
Because my father was a quick study, he easily adapted to the new planes, instruments, radio and navigational challenges, becoming a favorite of the flight instructors and a father-figure and mentor to the young cadets who consulted him about “their troubles and the facts of life.” He described the experience of flying the new planes, which he called SNV’s, SNJ’s and OS2U’s, as being like graduating from the Ford Model T to the Packard Roadster. “They are powerful, and the main job is figuring out what all the dials and handles and gadgets are about and what you do about them.”
Graduating into Fighter Squadron Training was a feather in his cap as he had designs on getting into the action as soon as possible. He wanted desperately to be a fighter pilot, which he described as the “white knight of the services.” He loved the acrobatics, formation work, dog fighting, ground strafing and dive bombing, having done it all before in 1930. But the sheer power of the new planes challenged him physically, joking that he had to “push my eyeballs back in with my fingers” after all the maneuvers. Unfortunately, the likelihood of him becoming a fighter pilot was slim because of his age.
The last thing my father wanted was to be a flight instructor, so when he was informed that he would likely be shipped to an island in the Pacific to work in flight operations and help run things in the actual tactical fighting (which he described to Belle as “a desk job as a command aviator where it really counts” to ease her concerns), he was reservedly excited. He flew over to the main base in San Diego to collect his flying gear consisting of “3 helmets, summer, leather, and fur lined; three jackets, same; summer coveralls; winter coveralls, leather and fur lined; summer and winter gloves; fur lined boots for winter; earplugs and two pair goggles – everything in the wearing line with my name in gold stamped on it; and two suitcases to put it in.”
Before he was to be shipped overseas, he was granted a much-needed two-week leave to go home and be with his family after five months away, the longest period of time he’d been away from his family. Commercial flying in those days depended largely upon the weather. His trip home was delayed when his plane was grounded due to weather in Dallas and again in Nashville, where he decided out of desperation to catch a train for the final leg home, arriving 48 hours late after an agonizingly long haul across the country.
My father’s first letter to his wife upon returning from leave revealed a tortured heart conflicting with the duty he felt he was obliged to fulfill:
“My dearly beloved and beautiful wife –
The leaving of you this time was one of the hardest things I have yet done, and I felt that the very heart was being dragged out of me. This is a poor and miserable life for a man, and all the good things to me are with you, at home with the children, where there is beauty and peace and companionship and the love that perfectly contains me.
I am now concerned with only one thing, and that is to get on with my part in this war so that I may honorably be returned to a duty near you. And I dread the time that will elapse until that is possible.”
Coming Thursday: Part Two – Awaiting orders
Coming Next Sunday: Part Three – Off to the Pacific
(Susannah Colt of Whitefield is a retired New Hampshire attorney attempting to be a writer. Email: susannahbcolt@gmail.com)