Army & Navy – The Major and God

Flying over southeast Asia, Major Walter V. Radovich began to think about his 18-months-old son — and also about God. The Major was a crack fighter pilot. He had shot down four Jap planes, had flown through a defile not much wider than his plane’s wings to blow up an enemy munition train, had won the Distinguished Flying Cross. But there was something on the Major’s conscience which would give him no rest.

In Manhattan last week U.S. Attorney John F. X. McGohey told the rest of the story: Radovich finally went to his commanding officer and confessed that he had once accepted bribes to save two other soldiers from duty overseas. Radovich was only half a jump ahead of an investigation already under way. But he was obsessed with the idea that God would punish him by punishing his son, he said. He made a clean breast of it.

These were details of Radovich’s wrongdoing, by McGohey’s account:

In February 1943, when Radovich was a captain in the Air Forces, he was sent to Mitchel Field to organize a unit for the China-Burma-India air war. There he became acquainted with two brothers, Samuel and Elias Bayer and their nephew Jerome Usdan, thread manufacturers of New York. Samuel Bayer’s son Martin, 22, and Usdan’s brother Morris, 21, were both privates at Mitchel Field.

Radovich was wined & dined, presented with tailored uniforms and gifts for his wife and son, $7,000 which he invested in war bonds. Twice he saved Martin and Morris from being sent overseas by having them temporarily transferred to his own unit. In January, Radovich himself went overseas (though he had to persuade his commanding officer to overlook a minor leg injury) and played a hero’s role in the CBI until his conscience overtook him.

Sent home, the remorseful Radovich sold his war bonds and gave the money to the Army. Last week he was under detention at Mitchel Field. Martin Bayer was still in the U.S. in spite of everything. Cousin Morris was overseas. Jerome Usdan was held in $5,000 bail, charged with conspiracy to corrupt an Army officer, FBI agents were looking for Samuel and Elias Bayer, wanted on the same charge.