War Games

June 6, 1944

War Games

The Rest of the Story

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            There are too few stories about Scottie.

            In fact, there are a whole bunch of folks who knew a whole lot more about him than family members. Born in the waning days of the American version of the black plague, he was, in retrospect, an unlikely Cliff Cowboy. When the sons of the valley are arrayed, though, he emerges as one of the most intriguing.

            Several firsts can be identified. He was very likely the first of his local generation of peers and classmates to receive a college degree. As far as that is concerned, he was the first of his family since the Loveladys of Tennessee and then pre-statehood Texas to receive a college degree. He was also the first to achieve a degree of international renown in what remains a very limited career field, mining engineering, and, of course, he was the first and only commissioned officer of the family to fly through the flak of World War II over Europe.

            What he did or where he was on June 6, 1944 is a mystery to those of us who should have known him best. The only thing we know is that the race horse of the medium bombers he flew, the B-26 Marauder,  was very much a feature of what transpired when the blood of young men was spilled so horrifically on the water, on the land and in the air that day 75 years ago.

            War Games

            His flight training took place at Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana. The verbal history of the one and only visit by the family was consumed not by what the training entailed, but what a terrible place Louisiana was to residents of Grant County, New Mexico who had never experienced such suffocating humidity as that of the Sportsman’s Paradise. The fact he was flying the plane when it was still known as the Widow Maker was silent. The realization that the engineering changes that were made to make it one of the most effective of all medium bombers were driven as much by a group of bright young pilots as the aeronautical engineers that Martin employed, was also silent.

            Indeed, war games were always the most dominating feature of what we were taught, and it had nothing to do with military conflict. The objective stories were too far apart and too few.

            The ones like the mule bucking through the britchin’ one day at the Moss place are the ones that should have been told. On that day, the brothers were headed to pick up the mail and on the road by the Grandma Lewis’ when the dreaded Holstein cow appeared. The mule my uncle was riding was still a bronc of the long-eared variety and had never seen anything like that black and white apparition. As if it had discovered an alligator out ln the Louisiana swamps that had not yet been encountered, the mule was certain it was going to be eaten and proceeded to separate itself from the rider to save its life.

            The ride was described as epic.

            There was even the suggestion that mule was sunfishin’ first to the left and then to the right in subsequent jumps, but the rider remained locked in position. The ride intensity only increased as the mule started to voice a combination of braying and squealing when the cow trotted closer to observe the commotion. The ride, though, wasn’t to a standstill. With a long straightway lunge, out through the saddle and attached britchin’ the mule pitched. Skylighted at least ten feet in the air for a brief and glorious moment, the rider sat in his saddle in classic saddle bronc style with his toes pointed outward, and his right hand extended to the sky before he plunged to the earth in a heap with a full complement of dust settling around the scene. The mule was last seen still bucking blindly and headed south and home to the corral on Sycamore.

Unimpressed by the whole affair, the cow went back to grazing.

The Rest of the Story

            The rest of the stories are largely untold.

            There are brief snippets of a crash in Belgium where the plane was eventually recovered for parts and inspection. That story was told by Sidney C. Grahn, armorer and gunner, on Uncle Howard’s crew. There is also the revelation of the fact my uncle grew tired of dropping bombs and killing people. The crew became a pathfinder unit, the front runner planes, that went in and marked targets in order to try to limit civilian casualties.

            In a box of medals I never saw, was one that was awarded for efforts to remark a target missed on a first pass. So, back through the flak flew the lone B-26 to mark the correct target then flying under and against the stream of the accompanying group dropping their bombs.

            There was also the suggestion that another of those medals that was associated with classified flights into what may have been neutral Switzerland. There was a rumor of a mysterious woman who sheltered him or the crew after another crash with an eventual night crossing of the perhaps the Rhine in a small boat to return to allied lines, but there were never enough first accounts of anything to expand the full and complete outcome.

            My uncle would not talk about it. Even to his own children the expanded story of his life at that time was incomplete. He took that all to his grave.

            Perhaps it was just too painful. No, there is no perhaps in the body of untold truths about my uncle. The question must be asked.

How many of those boys of June 6, 1944 have parallel and amazing stories?

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.  “Everything about our relationship with our uncle, Howard A. (Scottie) Wilmeth, was viewed through a filter of darkened, sibling rivalry.”