Our nation has mourned and honored the loss and memory of President George H. W. Bush for the past week as we reach the 77th anniversary of the dastardly attack by the Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
All this TV coverage intensified nostalgic memories of times past for me. I always admired President George H. W. Bush for the man, the person, the leader that he was – and it has made me wonder why. It is because he was much like my dad and the men he worked with when I was a kid as far back as I can remember. They too were much like G.H.W.B, but where he became a business man and politician, they went into crop dusting. I grew up and worked with WW-II pilots and just flat out admired them and decided at an early age that I wanted to be just like them. George Bush and my father followed much the same course, via different routes, from high school to aerial combat in the Western Pacific Ocean then on to successful transition into the civilian milieu.
Young George Bush, a senior at The Phillips Academy, a Boarding School in Andover, Massachusetts decided then to join the US Navy and become a Naval Aviator. George did such on 12 June 1942, his 18th birthday. His path as a member of what Tom Brocaw named as The Greatest Generation was his own, but there were thousands of other young men and women across the States running nearly parallel but not all at the same pace; eventually some of them even crossed tracks.
One such parallel path was that of a young man, also a Senior in high school, living a couple thousand miles west of the future President-to-be in the barren prairie coal-mine town of Stockett, Montana. This lad was the 17-year old John “Jack” Carlton Leslie. Jack was born on 3 July 1924, making him about three weeks younger than George Bush. Jack had been out hunting rabbits that day with a neighbor kid and when they returned to the kid’s house they heard the news of Pearl Harbor. Jack Leslie is my Dad, and I recount some of this narrative from our jointly authored book “In My Fathers Footsteps.”
Jack went straight home and announced to his parents that he was going to quit school and go to Great Falls the next morning and enlist in the military service, any service that would take him. My Grandpa Dan told him “The hell you will! You will graduate high school, and you can enlist after your 18th birthday.” Jack went into Great Falls to the Navy Recruiting Station the day following his birthday, the Fourth-of-July, to enlist. When he learned that Jack was a high school graduate the recruiter asked if he wanted to try to be a Navy pilot, that the Navy had just started a Cadet program where high school graduates could apply. Jack says he had never been around airplanes and had only seen an occasional airplane flying high overhead, but knew nothing about them. The avid recruit said umm “I guess so.” Thus began his path parallel to that of George Bush, only it would be a longer trip for Jack.
George Bush received his Navy Wings and was commissioned as an Ensign on 9 June 1943, three days prior to his 19th birthday. Jack was on a different track, and had some delays in the early months of his enlistment, but finally earned his Navy Wings and commissioning as a Ensign on 11 April 1944, a full ten months later than George Bush.
These somewhat parallel paths continued when they each were tagged to fly the TBF/TBM Avenger Torpedo Bomber. Based on the much earlier commissioning of the future President, he had flown his 58 combat missions with Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) while embarked in the San Jacinto (CVL-30) all before Jack departed San Francisco Bay for dangerous waters in the western Pacific in March 1945. Jack’s squadron, Torpedo Squadron 1 (VT-1) finally reached Leyte Gulf to join the USS Bennington (CV-20) in June 1945. Jack’s first combat flight was on 15 July against an airfield just south of Tokyo. He reports their missions were between 3-4 hours, and they flew at least one sortie per day, sometimes two. Jack also reports that even though they were a “Torpedo Squadron” they didn’t deliver a single torpedo during the combat cruise. Jack’s log books did not survive his civilian life, so I don’t know how many combat missions he flew. But, the war for them ended on 15 August 1945, and he reports that they operated three days on the line, then two or three days of underway replenishment of food, ammunition, and fuel. Based on those figures, it is reasonable to estimate that Jack flew between 25-35 combat missions. He was awarded an Individual Air Medal and a Navy Cross for two consecutive day strikes against the Kure Harbor, three weeks following his 21st birthday.
That is a longer story than I expected to tell, but it took me this long to figure out why I sobbed as I watched much of the news coverage of the elder George Bush, and why I liked him so much as our President – he was just like Dad – Humble Plank Owners of the Greatest Generation!