Minnesotan Becomes An Iowa Booster
By Frank Miles
(War Correspondent Daily Times Herald)
Somewhere in the Mediterranean War Theater (IDPA) -- Second Lieutenant John Hartman, a 28 year-old bombardier in the 15th Air Force, is a resident of St. Paul, Minn., where he was from before he got in uniform. A mistake he cannot explain made him for awhile a soldier in an Iowa outfit and from that an ardent Iowa booster.
Hartman joined the army in February, 1941, expecting to serve in the air force. When orders came he was sent to a Hawkeye cavalry regiment bound for Camp Bowie, Texas. A good soldier, he made no protest. Now he's proud of the proficiency he acquired on riding horse.
"I met some of the finest characters among the Iowa outfit whoever lived," he said. 'They were great, I shall ever appreciate the military training and associations I had with them."
In March, 1942, he engineered a transfer to the air force, won his wings at Midland, Texas, on March 1, 1943, and had been overseas in the thick of action for three months when I met him.
Lieutenant Hartman has relatives in Des Moines and Dubuque.
One evening I grew interested in a snappy game of billiards between two officers in an army military club.
Both were good with a cue and like to kid each other.
One was Captain Charles J. Regan of Iowa City, a personnel officer. He attended St. Ambrose College at Davenport before joining the army in February of 1942. Commissioned a second lieutenant in August of that year, he soon was made a first lieutenant and advanced to his present rank a short time ago.
His opponent was Major Ira M. Allen, of Emmetsburg, a wing chaplain.
A drawling Georgia flier told a group in my presence that he has recently seen a remarkable exhibition of comradeship and coolness by an enlisted man in the crew of a plane which had been riddled by nazi flak.
That man, the Georgian said, leaped from the ship with an unconscious wounded buddy in his arms. The conscious one pulled on the release ring on the other's chute until certain it would open, then struggled clear and opened his own chute.
Both landed safely.
Another flier in the conversation told us seeing a man with a parachute hold a comrade without a chute in his arms and descend. The man with the chute, he said, suffered a broken leg in landing. The other was unhurt.
Source: Carroll Daily Times Herald, October 11, 1944
