Out Of The Blue

The book arrived out of the blue, with a little note written in the author's hand on the inscription page: "See pages 165, 167, 168." Turning dutifully to the first marked passage, I read the following:
Sunday, December 26, 1943: Castelventrano (Italy)
"Word flashed to me at 11:00 o'clock that a P-39 had cracked up. I dashed over to the line but no one seemed to know anything about a crash. Then an MP reported he thought he'd seen a plane go down in an olive orchard near here.

"It turned out to be Lt. J. J. (sic) Bartimus."

On that day after Christmas, in the middle of World War II, Army Air Corps 1st Lt. James L. Bartimus -- the man who would become my father -- was 22 years old, a veteran fighter pilot who'd already crashed twice during the Allies' North African and Italian campaigns against the Germans.
It was a time in his life I knew very little about; now I was reading a first-hand account. What a gift! The book's author, Dr. Samuel T. Moore, was then a 30-year-old flight surgeon from Oklahoma City, who was keeping a daily diary even though it was against regulations. That diary is the heart of Moore's memoir, "Flight Surgeon: With the 81st Fighter Group in World War II" (Macedon Publishing Co., 1999).

Now 88, the retired orthopedic surgeon who still lives in Oklahoma City sent me the book after he ran across my column, recognized my last name and tracked down my address.

It's rare these days for the children of World War II veterans to hear first-hand recollections about their fathers from their combat buddies. I'd already heard some stories from pilots who flew with Dad in the 92nd Fighter Squadron, but visiting with Dr. Moore by telephone added rich details to the portrait of a young man I never knew.
"Bart" Bartimus was a prankster who bartered successfully for ice in the desert, who once "liberated" a goat for a barbecue, who landed his fighter in shifting sands to save a stranded friend. As the Americans fought their way through Tunisia, El Guettar and Kasserine Pass, I could "see" the past through Dr. Moore's eyes:
"Your dad had a rugged frame and large hands. He had well-tanned skin, and he grinned a lot. The guys liked him; he was popular among the pilots. He was rated as one of the better pilots in the outfit. We were together quite a while, being chased around by Gen. (Edwin) Rommel, the 'Desert Fox'. 

"We lost about half of our pilots within a couple of months. The P-39 Aircobra was a terrible airplane, and pilots were flying it 50 feet off the ground, going 250 miles an hour, three abreast in formation. Their job was to dive down on German convoys. Those were very dangerous missions; the odds were less than 50-50. But your dad was a happy person, able to handle tough situations."

Thanks in part to Dr. Moore, my dad didn't die in that Sicilian olive grove on Dec. 26, 1943, when his engine quit on landing after a mission. Dr. Moore wrote that Dad "jettisoned his belly tank and made a dead-stick landing in the best place available. He tore three trees to pieces and damaged 15 others, plus tearing up a stone wall. The plane cartwheeled and landed on its back. Bartimus was unconscious about 30 minutes before a Sicilian farmer pulled him out of the wreckage."

The flight surgeon stanched the bleeding and quickly dispatched his patient to a military hospital in Palermo, where X-rays revealed a "long linear fracture of the skull, with hemorrhage of the middle ear." Dad's war was over. He was shipped back to the States on medical leave and married my mother three months later. Two children followed, in 1947 and 1949.

The lives of Bartimus and Moore intersected for a brief, crucial time. After they parted in Italy, they never met again, but the doctor says, "I'll always see him in my mind just the way he was in those days." Thanks to Dr. Moore, I got a glimpse of him then, too.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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