The Liberator

"I prayed that I wouldn't make a mistake."

            "Airplanes were the first thing I thought of every evening and the first thing I thought of every morning," said movie star Jimmy Stewart, recalling his childhood. When Lindbergh conquered the Atlantic in 1927, nine-year-old Jimmy eagerly listened to every radio news flash. In the 1930s while making pictures for MGM, the young star found the time to earn his commercial pilot's license, sometimes flying cross-country to visit his parents.

            "You're like a bird up there," he said. "It's almost as if you're not part of society anymore. All you can think about is what you're doing and you have a complete escape from your worldly problems."

            But when FDR instituted the draft in 1940, Stewart wanted to fight, not escape. Military service was a tradition in his family. His great-great-great grandfather fought in the Revolution. Both of his grandfathers served in the Union Army in the Civil War. (One was at Appomattox Courthouse when Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered.) He watched his father go off to fight in Europe in the Great War.

            Stewart, however, had to fight Uncle Sam before he could fight Nazis. At 32, he was far older that most enlistees who wanted to fly (and beyond the regulation age limit for pilots). Worse, he flunked his physical. He was six-foot three-inches tall and weighed 138 pounds. The Army said he was a "health risk." Using a Hollywood diet coach and lots of milkshakes, he packed on the pounds, and after pulling a few strings, he was reclassified as 1-A.

            He certainly wasn't in it for the money. His salary fell from $12,000 a week to $21 a month. MGM threw him a going-away party. Stars Rosalind Russell, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, and Ann Rutherford all kissed him, and Russell used her handkerchief to wipe off their lipstick from his cheeks. After writing each woman's name by her lipstick smear, Russell gave the handkerchief to Stewart. He kept it as a lucky charm, and it flew with him on all his combat missions.

            Even though he was now in the Army, he still had to fight to get to Europe. Uncle Sam assigned him to a Motion Picture Unit in Dayton, Ohio, to make morale films. Angry, he met with the commanding officer. Convinced that Stewart wanted to see action, he urged his superiors to transfer Stewart, writing, “He wants to be treated exactly as any other American boy drafted into the service of his country.”

            In the fall of 1943 at the advanced age of 35, Stewart became the commanding officer of the 703rd Squadron of the 445th Bomb Group of the Second Combat Wing of the Second Bomb Division of the Eighth Air Force, rising from private to captain in two-and-a-half years.

            He led a squadron of 15 B-24 Liberator bombers and became known for his crisp flying skills and quick-thinking. His men liked him. "I always got the feeling that he would never ask you to do something he wouldn't do himself," a flier recalled.

            During his 15 months in action over Europe, he flew more than 20 combat missions. They included strategic strikes in Germany, Holland, and France against a U-Boat base; naval shipyards; a V-1 missile launch site on Christmas Eve; a chemical factory belonging to an I.G. Farben, the maker of cyanide gas used in death camps; a Nazi air base; bomber and fighter plane factories; and an incendiary raid on Berlin. As D-Day approached, his group went after tactical targets in France, including another V-1 launch site. Promoted to colonel 12 days before D-Day, he flew on the day of the invasion itself on a bombing mission just north of Omaha Beach.

            On each flight, Stewart took with him a copy of the 91st Psalm which his father had sent him. Its verses read: "Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day."

            "Just remember you can't handle fear all by yourself. Give it to God. He'll carry it for you," said Stewart. "Fear is an insidious thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it's contagious. I felt my own fear and knew that if it wasn't checked, it could infect my crew members."

            The trauma of combat was severe. Stewart couldn't eat. A friend said he survived the war on ice cream and peanut butter. B-24s had no heat. Temperatures in the bombers at 20,000 feet fell 40 below zero, and Stewart wore an oxygen mask and an electrically-heated flying suit.  

            That wasn't nearly the worst of it. The terrors of air combat were constant. A Nazi fighter tore past his plane so close to the cockpit that Stewart could count the rivets on its underbelly. After missions, he regularly found gashes in his plane so big he could put his hand through them.

            On one occasion, flak tore a hole in his cockpit floor two feet across only a few inches from his feet. After one flight, his B-24's flak-riddled fuselage split open on the runway. "Somebody sure could get hurt in one of those damned things," Stewart said to a sergeant standing nearby. On one flight, he barely limped back to base when one engine iced up and flak took out another.

            "All I wanted to do was keep [the men in my squadron] alive and do our job," said Stewart. "I didn't pray for my own life. I prayed that I wouldn't make a mistake."

            When bombers in his squadron were shot down—a regular occurrence, Stewart's responsibility as squadron leader included the grim task of writing hand-written letters to the parents of each airman. It was lonely being a leader. "You can't make the men you command into your friends," he said.

            The press was always after him. He subscribed to his home town paper, The Indiana Evening Gazette, and in one issue, the headline of a story read: stewart said loneliest man—Indiana Captain Too Busy to Talk to News Writers. Throughout his four-and-a-half years in the service, Stewart avoided all contact with reporters, unless he was ordered to do so.

            After flying 20 combat missions (as well as others that went uncredited), his commanding officer saw the terrible effects of combat in Stewart's face. "I just told him I didn't want him to fly any more combat," he recalled. "He didn't argue about it."

            When he parents first saw him when he came back to the States, they noticed that his hair was graying, and he was thinner. They thought he looked as though he had aged two decades.

            He refused to capitalize on his combat heroism. When he learned that MGM wanted to make "The Jimmy Stewart Story," a movie celebrating his exploits, he nixed the idea. A clause in all of his movie contracts said that his war record could not be used in publicizing his films.

            He rarely spoke of his wartime experiences. "I saw too much suffering," he said. "It's certainly not something to talk about." Psychologically, his experiences haunted him, and he became deaf from his long hours near the roar of airplane engines.

            After the war, he couldn't get work. Neither could director Frank Capra. He talked Stewart into starring in his new film "The Greatest Gift." After Capra told Stewart its plot, he asked him what he thought. "How do I know?" Stewart replied. "I can't make head nor tail of the damn thing!"

            Retitled, the film was released as "It's a Wonderful Life," the story of a man haunted by failure who realizes that anyone who has friends is a success.

MORAL: Trust the Director. 
He knows the role you should play.

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