Army & Navy: Sky Pilot

Sam Palmer never missed a Sunday at the Broadway Baptist Church back home in Fort Worth. His favorite hymn is still Take Your Burdens to the Lord and Leave Them There. In Sixth Ward grade school Sam was a boy soprano; at Texas Christian University, student manager of the Horned Frog football team because he was too light to play. One day freckled, redheaded Sam Palmer learned to fly. He left college to be an Army pilot.

Last month Captain Samuel Louis Palmer Jr., 24, arrived in China. “Well, here I am.” he wrote back to Fort Worth, “a little closer to home because the world is round. I led my new squadron across a hell of a lot of country to get here. . . . Came over Palestine—Jericho, where the walls came tumbling down. I ought to make a good Sunday-School teacher when I get back and I think I will. . . . Met General Chennault day before yesterday and he sure is a swell egg. . . . We’re the first of the P-38s over here. . . .

“It may take a long time, the way things move over here. These Chinese tiekle me to death. They walk down the streets and roads, never moving for a truck or jeep. . . . No one makes a move to help a guy who has been hurt or killed because, if you do, you have to help his whole family. Consequently traffic victims just lie there and die. . . . Got a couple of combat missions but they were so easy I didn’t even want to count them.

“. . . I am at the farthest outpost in China. I can damn near spit on the Japs from here. . . . I started to teach a little Chinese kid English yesterday. You remember how mad Daddy would get when I couldn’t get something through my head? I do the same with the kid but he only looks at me and smiles! That’s the Chinese for you. . . . It will be some time before I get home. Not this Xmas, I’m sure. I got a lot of work to do here. . . . There are lots of these damn Japs . . . and close by too.”

Last fortnight Sam’s mother, a tall, big-boned woman and a competent cook, who always wanted to baby Sam, read in the papers that her son had got his first Jap plane. “I want him to come back home after this war,” said she, “and live a natural life.”