Benjamin Arnold Nicks, JR 1919-2022

NICKS

Posted By: j.n. (email)
Date: 11/9/2022 at 20:53:33

SHAWNEE DISPATCH (KANSAS)
Archive for Wednesday, November 11, 2015

"Shawnee, Kansas veteran Ben Nicks shares story for documentary film"

Ben Nicks (JR), 96, spoke with Patriot Features film maker Sean Winn two weeks ago to make a personal documentary film about his life and serving in World War II.

Photo by Nico Roesler. Enlarge photo.

Ben Nicks, 96, spoke with Patriot Features film maker Sean Winn two weeks ago to make a personal documentary film about his life and serving in World War II.

By Nico Roesler

November 11, 2015

Ben Nicks, 96, spoke with Patriot Features film maker Sean Winn two weeks ago to make a personal documentary film about his life and serving in World War II.

Photo by Nico Roesler

Ben Nicks, 96, spoke with Patriot Features film maker Sean Winn two weeks ago to make a personal documentary film about his life and serving in World War II.

While the nation remembers and honors all of its veterans Wednesday, one local World War II veteran, with the help of local film company Patriot Features, is taking a step to make sure his story can be remembered forever.

Ben Nicks, 96, took a seat in front of a camera to tell his personal and service story recently so that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of which he has 7 each, will be able to relive his incredible life long after he is gone.

“I wish I had something like that about my grandfather,” Nicks said.

The longtime Shawnee resident who now lives in the Shawnee Hills Senior Living Center, 6335 Maurer Road, agreed to have a documentary feature made about him with Patriot Features, owned by Shawnee resident Sean Winn. Winn sat down with Nicks two weeks ago and asked Nicks about his service time as an Army Air Forces pilot in World War II, about his late wife and family life, and about his overall feeling about veterans and how they should be remembered.

“They just knew there were jobs out there to be done,” Nicks said. “I guess that’s the definition of courage, to do something that has to be done even if you don’t want to.”

Nicks, who speaks vividly and passionately about his younger years, can clearly remember a lot of aspects about his time in the United States Army Air Forces. He flew all types of bombers including B-29s, B-24s and B-17s. He flew 35 missions over Japan in 1945 that included mining missions, incendiary missions and high-altitude explosive missions.

Specifically, he recalls three days during his six-month deployment to the Pacific arena that had lasting impacts on him.
Ben Nicks when he was a pilot with the United States Army Air Forces in 1945.

Ben Nicks when he was a pilot with the United States Army Air Forces in 1945.

One was a mission in which his bomber had to escort another bomber that had been hit by enemy fire back to their air base on Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands. While flying back to the base, the 11-man crew of the plane they were escorting had to eject from the plane as its engines failed. Nicks and his crew circled the wreckage in the water for hours as a radio specialist on his plane tried to send coordinates to their base. The radio signal was spotty at best so Nicks said they had no way to know if their message was getting through.

Nicks' plane began running low on fuel and he was forced to leave the stranded crew and wreckage and turn back toward base. When they landed, they quickly learned that a ship had been sent to the coordinates Nicks’ crew had been relaying and that the men would be saved. Nicks later learned that 10 of the 11 men survived thanks to his crew.

“The fact that we played a role in rescuing them is something I am very proud of,” Nicks said.

Another key day during his deployment was when he received orders to conduct night raids on Tokyo. Nicks had been part of other raid missions, but not like the one his new commander was ordering. He was to join other bombers in the first low altitude bombing raids on the Japanese city. The low-altitude strategy was being enforced because the high altitude strikes weren’t accurate enough.

Nicks said he was “dismayed” when he got the order to fly at low altitudes; he said he thought it “was a crazy order.”

“There were a lot of last letters written home before that mission, and I wrote one,” Nicks said.

He wrote it to his wife June Carolyn “Daisy” Nicks, whom he had married in April 1942. The two had met in San Antonio, Texas, at an Army dance event. The two had a daughter, Margaret, who wasn't even a year old at the time.

Luckily, Nicks piloted his plane through a safe mission and returned to base unscathed. When he got back to his bed, he found “his last letter home” and tore it up.

The other day that stands out in Nicks’ memory is the day he learned about the atom bomb and Hiroshima. It was Aug. 5, 1945 and Nicks was assigned to his 35th and final mission before becoming eligible for 30 days of leave home. He and his 11-member crew were assigned a mission to fly to Rashin, North Korea, near the Russian border. It was a mining missing in which his plane was to lay mines in the Sea of Japan.

On the flight there, his plane refueled on the island of Iwo Jima before continuing over Japan under the cover of nightfall. The mission was a success and the crew turned back south to fly back to base. By the time they flew back over Japan, day had broken and it was Aug. 6. While flying their mission, they had no idea what had happened at Hiroshima while they were away. All they knew, Nicks said, was that they had finished their last mission and they were going to be able to go home. Then, a radio broadcast came through their radio system saying that an atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. Nicks and his crew had flown over the city twice that night and morning, not knowing what had happened.

“The local Army radio broadcast said that a bomb had just been dropped on Hiroshima that would end the war,” Nicks said.

Nicks said that he still wasn’t exactly sure what an A-bomb was at that point, or what the significance of Hiroshima was. The Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the bomb, was also stationed on Tinian with Nicks and his crew.

Once President Harry Truman officially announced the bombing of Hiroshima, that Nicks said he knew the war was going to end soon.
A photo of Daisy and Ben Nicks that hangs in Ben Nicks' room.

A photo of Daisy and Ben Nicks that hangs in Ben Nicks' room.

He eventually made it back home to the United States and landed in San Francisco by mid-August. He took a train from California to San Antonio to reunite with his wife and daughter. Nicks was officially discharged from the Army in January 1946 and the family decided to move to Shawnee.

They joined St. Joseph Catholic Church and Daisy Nicks served for a time as president of the grade school's Mothers Club. The Nicks family went on to have seven children while Nicks worked for more than 30 years in different roles for TWA. Daisy and Ben Nicks were married for 63 years when she died in 2005.

Nicks’ son Benjamin Nicks III also went into the military and served in Vietnam where he died in 1970. A framed picture of his son remains in Nicks’ living room. When he sees pictures of his son and brother, who also served in World War II, in the photo albums Nicks has collected over the years, he raises a silent hand to his forehead to salute them.

“They’re all heroes,” Nicks said, not just about his closest family, but all veterans.

Nicks’ documentary film will be available to view at PatriotFeatures.org. Patriot Features is nonprofit that relies on donations and sponsors to create these documentaries for local veterans and their families, which are given to them at no cost.

For more information about Patriot Features, visit their website or call 913-568-2457.

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Note: Mr. Nicks' father (Ben SR) was a native of Dubuque.