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183 Chapter 18 Home at Last Lt. Lee Lamar, twenty-four years old, bomber pilot and ex-POW, arrived at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 20 June 1945. He left for Camp Sheridan, near Chicago, the next morning, where he would be processed and then given leave. He planned to visit his sister Mildred and her husband before heading home to Faucett. We speak today of the “Greatest Generation,” and we stand before them in awe. But don’t think that for the returning GIs it was all parades and kisses . Those might come later, for many, but often the soldiers came up sharply against indifference, venality, or poor planning. On his first day back in the States, Lamar decided on a haircut to celebrate his return. A brief fad at the time was for a barber, after trimming a customer’s locks, to light a strip of newspaper and singe the man’s hair—for an extra seventy-five cents. Lee didn’t care about such self-indulgence, and declined the service. The barber, however, after clipping Lee’s blond hair, lit a strip of newspaper and before the young pilot could object had quickly passed it back and forth over the top of his head. He then insisted on the additional six bits. That experience left a bitter taste in the young lieutenant’s mouth, but he was eager to board the train for Camp Sheridan the next day and put it behind him. The two-day trip aboard the crowded train was another sour experience, however . It was packed, and the weather was hot; there was only a minimal amount of poorly prepared food. Lee had to sleep in the aisle in a sleeping bag he acquired at Camp Henry. At Camp Sheridan, the men, all ex-prisoners of war, were processed quickly. There were more unpleasant surprises. Repeatedly during his tour of combat, he and his fellow fliers had been told, by a variety of authorities, that in the event of being shot down and captured, all of their pay and allowances would continue until they were liberated. When Lee received his back pay, it did not 184 The Final Mission of Bottoms Up include his flight allowance, which was fifty percent of his monthly rate. When he inquired about it, he was told, “You weren’t flying, so you don’t get flight pay.” Years later, however, when talking to other ex-POWs who had been fliers, they all said that they had gotten flight pay for the time they were imprisoned. Apparently it depended on the interpretation of the pay officer where the men were processed. (However, this wasn’t a case of sloppy army record-keeping. Two years later, while a student at the University of Missouri, Lee received a letter from the Department of the Army: he had not been billed $6.10 in 1944 for his GI insurance . Please remit the amount due. Not all the record-keeping was so soulless. Lamar learned that Casa Mañana, the Bottoms Up officers’ tufa-stone house, had been sold to a new crew for $200; subsequently, $50 was forwarded to the next-of-kin of each officer by Maj. Anderson, the executive officer, as directed by Col. John Price.) At Camp Sheridan, Lee was given a sixty-day leave, with orders to report to Miami, Florida, no later than August 28 for reassignment. The war with Japan was still raging, and he assumed that after his leave he would be trained on B29s for another tour, this time in the Pacific. He phoned his sister Mildred in Chicago, but got no answer. After calling his home in Faucett, he learned that Mildred and her husband Norman were there on an extended visit. Lee took a train to Kansas City and walked to the Greyhound bus station where he hoped to catch an early bus to Faucett. He was too late and would have to wait several hours for the next one. He called his sister-in-law, Lovella. Brother Dick, who owned a service garage, was not home, he learned. “That’s okay. I’ll stay here at the station and catch the next bus to Faucett.” Lamar checked his small bit of luggage in a locker at the station and headed out to explore Kansas City on foot. In the meantime, his brother had returned home shortly after Lee’s call; he and Lovella immediately headed to the bus station in Kansas City...

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