Capt. Robert Losey

LOSEY, MILLIKAN

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 4/14/2009 at 16:34:58

Maquoketa Sentinel-Press
June 9, 1999

Capt. Losey Seems Forgotten
By: Robert Melvold

Capt. Robert Losey, a West Pointer, the first American serviceman killed in World War II, was born in the manse of Andrew’s Presbyterian church. He was the son of the Rev. Leon Artemus Losey, a Princeton graduate with eight college degrees who preferred serving small rural churches.

To arouse curiosity a bit, I might add the documented fact that German Air Marshal Hermann Goering sent flowers and a note of condolences upon learning of Losey’s death. And it is believed, but less documented, that Adolph Hitler did also.

You see, Capt. Losey was killed by shrapnel in one of the German bombing raids that accompanied their surprise occupation of Norway on April 21, 1940. Remember, the United States was not at war with Germany until nearly 20 months later.

Capt. Losey was the military attaché of the American embassy in Oslo under Ambassador Florence Harriman. He had made arrangements for the evacuation to bordering Sweden of the female spouses and children of the embassy staff.

Spearheading The Evacuation

On that fateful April 21, Capt. Losey and others members of his party were at Dombas, a Norwegian rail center located northwest of Lillehammer, a more recent site of the winter Olympics. When the air raid sirens blew, the party took shelter in an adjacent railroad tunnel.

German bombers, hitting the rail yards, dropped one bomb right at the tunnel’s entrance. Losey, wishing to see the effects of the bombing, was only 30 feet inside. A bomb fragment struck him in the heart and he died within minutes despite first aid from some Red Cross physicians who also were sheltered in the tunnel.

There is a memorial park at Dombas, dedicated by Norwegian royalty that honors Losey. A recent issue of a periodical published by Washington’s Norwegian embassy contained a feature on him titled, “Lest We Forget.”

With the United States and Germany not exactly neutral but not at war, it was not unusual that regrets would have been expressed by the German head of state and its air marshal.

Birth Notice Was In Sentinel

There was a brief notation in the Maquoketa Sentinel of Losey’s birth in Andrew on May 27. 1908. Some of Losey’s surviving relatives have a photo of him from his days as a young boy in Andrew. Losey and his wife, Kathryn, had no children. She remarried and is now deceased. A sister, cousins and nephews attended the dedication of the Losey Memorial Park at Dombas.

Capt. Losey’s father left for another pastorate about the time Losey would have been entering the Andrew first grade. He became the man of the family, at age 12, when Rev. Losey died of a ruptured appendix. Rev. Losey is buried at Terry, Mont., a small sheep and ranching community is the kind and size of community he preferred for pastorate.

Capt. Losey was brilliant, according to comments from associates and relatives. Graduating from West Point in 1929, he requested Air Corps duty and received his pilot’s wings at Mather Field, Sacramento, Calif., the next year.

On Track For A General’s Stars

With weather science becoming more important, the Air Corps selected him for advanced training. He received a master’s degree in meteorology from the University of California at Berkeley and a similar degree in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Coincidentally CalTech was then headed by Dr. Robert Millikan, a man with even longer roots in Jackson County.

After pocketing those degrees, Losey became chief of the weather section in the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Air Corps. The Air Force was another branch of the Army in those days, with some West Pointers opting for flight duty.

Capt. Losey’s next assignment was to Finland. He became an observer in Russia’s attempt to overrun Finland’s Karelian peninsula. It was obviously a strategic location for Russia to launch an attack on Germany or in defending against a German attack on Leningrad.

Concerns Over German Attack

Capt. Losey passed his findings on to his superiors until February 1940, when he was transferred to the embassy at Oslo. The American high command had great concerns over the security of Norway and Sweden. The hope was that the British Navy could effect an occupation of at least the west coast of Norway before the Germans got their attack mounted.

It didn’t happen that way. Lowell Carlson’s April 1995 article in the Bellevue and Maquoketa newspapers includes Losey’s West Point graduation portrait shown here. Another shows him in a Life magazine photograph assisting in the evacuation of the U.S. embassy staff. There is a photo of his gravestone at the West Point cemetery, noting “Killed in Performance of His Duty, as Military Attache in Norway.” And there’s a photo of the former Presbyterian manse in Andrew, now privately owned.

It’s located on South Benton Street, on the southwest corner of the block where the Midway Mart is located.

Royal Family Evacuated

At the time of Capt. Losey’s effort, the Norwegians were able to evacuate King Haakon, Crown Prince Olay and his wife, Martha, over to England before Hitler could take them as hostages.

During a visit to a family wedding in Cleveland last year, I included an excursion to the famed auto museum at Case Reserve University. Among the lineup of limousines was a Mercedes-Benz parade limousine. Hitler had commissioned at least 100 of this model, one for himself and one for each of his more important generals and government leaders. It had two spacious rows of seats to the rear of the driver, a retractable hardtop and a 7.7 liter engine. Some, like Hitler’s, were heavily armored. It was fantastic.

This one had been assigned to Gen. Von Falkenhorst, the German commander of the Norwegian occupation. But with V-E Day, it became the limousine of the returned King Haakon.

An accompanying photo of the limousine shows it in a victory parade in Oslo. King Haakon, Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Churchill are shown in the back seat, waving to the crowd on a happier day than when Dombas was bombed.

Losey Memorial Park in Norway

Norway will never forget Capt. Losey. Likewise, Andrew should provide a suitable stone in its cemetery that will mark the memory of the first American serviceman to lose his life in World War II, to accompany the graves of a Revolutionary War veteran and Iowa’ first governor.
Maybe that quail, persistently calling during the reading of the names, was trying to tell us something.

“How about mentioning Capt. Losey?”