What I Didn't Know & Who Are We?

Dick Wright, a client and a friend, died Tuesday at age 89. He has known my parents for well over sixty years. When we lived in Pocatello, Idaho my parents were part of a group with five or six married couples. The women would get together to play bridge, the men would get together and play poker. The couples would go out together to celebrate whatever holiday or event that was going on at the time. Costume parties at Halloween, for example. Dick was brilliant. For a long time he was the public address announcer for The Spokane Indians, then a farm club of the Dodgers. He later was a public relations director for a local television station. Then he served as point man for the Rose festival. I knew all that. However, whenever a close friend dies it always amazes me what I didn't know about them. Over the years I must have had a thousand conversations with Dick and his wife, Bernice. They were like family. They attended our family events and we spent many evenings out as a group at restaurants. You would think at least once I would have asked Dick had he ever served in the military. I never did. He was a marine stationed in The South Pacific during World War II. What I could have learned had I just asked that simple question. I really need to get out of myself a bit more and into others lives to really get to know them. How about you? Are you surprised sometimes about what you didn't know about a close friend or relative? Dick may you rest in peace, you will be missed.

Today's Who Are We?

A move by congress in 1941 forced the Army to form our group. Still the War Department made an effort to eliminate our unit before it began by setting up a system with a higher education requirement than they expected to be filled. Their efforts failed when the War Department received an abundance of applicants that exceed those education requirements. We were commanded by Commander Davis one of the few black graduates of West Point. Because of segregation in the army the formation of our group lead to black surgeons being employed by our group.
Seventeen flight surgeons served us from 1941 through 1949. At that time, the typical tour of duty for a U.S. Army flight surgeon was four years. Six of these physicians lived under field conditions during operations in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy for almost eight years. Considered ready for combat duty, the 99th was transported to Casablanca, Morocco, on the USS Mariposa and participated in the North African campaign. From Morocco they traveled by train to Oujda then to Tunis, the location from which they operated against the Luftwaffe. Flyers and ground crew alike largely were isolated by the racial segregation practices of their initial command, the white 33rd Fighter Group and its commander Colonel William W. Momyer. The flight crews were handicapped by being left with little guidance from battle-experienced pilots except for a week spent with Colonel Phillip Cochran. The 99th's first combat mission was to attack the small, but strategic, volcanic island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea, in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. The 99th moved to Sicily where it received a Distinguished Unit Citation for its performance in combat. Colonel Momyer told media sources that the we were a failure , cowardly, incompetent, or worse, resulting in a critical article in TIME. In response, the House Armed Services Committee convened a hearing to determine whether the our group should be dissolved. To bolster the recommendation to scrap our group, a member of the committee commissioned and then submitted into evidence, a "scientific" report by the University of Texas that purported to prove that African Americans were of low intelligence and incapable of handling complex situations. Colonel Davis denied the claims by committee members, but only the intervention of Colonel Emmett "Rosie" O'Donnell prevented a recommendation for disbandment of our group being sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On January 27 and 28, 1944, Luftwaffe Fw 190 fighter-bombers raided Anzio, where the Allies had conducted amphibious landings on January 22. Attached to the 79th Fighter Group, eleven of us shot down thirteen enemy fighters. We won our second Distinguished Unit Citation on May 12–14, 1944, while attacking German positions on Monastery Hill (Monte Cassino), attacking infantry massing on the hill for a counterattack, and bombing a nearby strong point to force the surrender of the German garrison to Moroccan Goumiers. We accompanied another combat group on heavy bombing raids into Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Germany. By the end of the war, we were credited with 112 Luftwaffe aircraft shot down. As a group we were awarded several Silver Stars, 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 8 Purple Hearts, 14 Bronze Stars, and 744 Air Medals. Who Are We?