Iowa Old Press
The Daily Times
Davenport, Iowa
Wednesday, May 17, 1944
Lt. Jack Beilstein, Davenport Flier,
“Back From the Dead,”
Greeted by Wife in Chicago.
How Did He Escape After Bailing Out of Fortress Over Nazi Territory?—That’s a “Super-Special” Military Secret.
By Fred C. Bills
They clung to each other in the train shed at the LaSalle street station—the young lieutenant and his wife. And with eyes swimming, they kissed. First Lt. John N. “Jack” Beilstein of Davenport was “back from the dead,” and his wife was in Chicago to greet him.
Other train passengers watched delightedly. They knew they were witnessing one of the little dramas of the war. But they couldn’t known that the officer with wings of the army air force was the first man of the quad-city area to make his way home after having parachuted from his stricken Flying Fortress to land among the Nazis.
Lt. Beilstein can’t tell about it, either. It’s the deepest kind of military secret. The lives of too many others—both the fliers who may follow in his path, and those who aid them—depend on it. One indiscreet word might mean death for one, or many.
“I find,” he said, “that I’m a ‘hot potato.’
“After I got through with questioning by army intelligence officers in England and Washington, they told me: ‘If anybody asks, you can say, ‘I was forced to bail out over enemy-occupied territory, and made my way back to my base.’ And that’s all I will say.”
Lt. Beilstein is scheduled for a lecture tour—when the War Department decides what his speech will be—and he will probably speak in Davenport after he and Mrs. Beilstein have “a second honeymoon” in Chicago.
“Super-Special Secret”
It will be a different speech, though, from the one has given in a tour of army air bases in England. There, he gave other fliers the benefit of his experiences, but they were sworn into the conspiracy to keep his “super-special secret”—under the penalty of court-martial.
His wife, the former Miss Virginia Green, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. B. A. Green, 721 Taylor street, was one the verge of illness Monday night and Tuesday morning as she prepared to go to Chicago on the Rock Island Lines 10:10 “Rocket.” Sheer nervousness.
As the train neared Chicago, she powdered her nose again.
“Jack,” she said, “never did like a shiny nose.”
“Will you take my bag?” she asked this reporter, “I want both hands free to grab him.”
We took her bag. And she grabbed her husband.
Throngs in the LaSalle street station stared as they walked along, their arms around each other, but as far as the Beilsteins were concerned, there was no one else in Chicago.
It had been a year and a month to the day since she bade him goodbye at Kearney, Neb., as he finished his training to go overseas as a bombardier on a Flying Fort, and eight months since he was reported missing.
There were months during which, Mrs. Beilstein said, she never lost faith in his return. Her wedding handkerchief has been the symbol of her confidence.
“After word came that Jack was missing,” she said, “I had two letters from him, one written Sept. 15, the day before his last mission. He asked me to send him something which would remind him of me. I picked out my wedding handkerchief, and sprinkled it with cologne which he had always liked. Every Sunday I added fresh cologne. And,” she concluded triumphantly, giving the handkerchief to her husband, “here it is!”
As Lt. Beilstein caught up with the news of his family—his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Beilstein, live in Williamsburg—and of his friends in the Davenport area, he deprecated “all the fuss and feathers” of a newspaper interview and pictures.
[PHOTOS TAKEN]
The occasion was both joyful and tearful as First Lt. John N. “Jack” Beilstein, Davenport, was greeted Tuesday afternoon at the LaSalle street station in Chicago by Mrs. Beilstein on his return as the first flier of the quad-city area to come home after eluding the Nazis when forced to “bail-out” over enemy-occupied territory. These pictures were taken a second after they were reunited. When he landed in New York, Lt. Beilstein said, he kissed the ground—as he had sworn to friends in England. “Next to my wife,” he explained, “I love the United States best.”
Mum in Nine Languages.
“But,” asked the interviewer, “didn’t you parachute into France after your Fortress was shot down, and then have some pretty exciting experiences getting back to Britain with the aid of the French underground, or something like that?”
“I can’t say what happened to me,” he said.
“Did you get hurt?”
“I can’t say.”
“Suffer hardships?”
“I can’t say.”
“I’m no hero,” said Lt. Beilstein. “The real heroes are fellows like Lt. Clark Moore of LeClaire—I was talking to him in the station while I was waiting for Virginia—who’s home after having completed his missions. I got shot down on my nineteenth—didn’t finish the job!”
“And there’s Maj. Jack Roche, who’s still over in England. I spent two days with him before I came home, and had a nice time. He’s a great guy, and doing a marvelous job. Jack’s a squadron commander now, and Davenport can be well and very proud of him. Right now, he’s not in combat flying.”
Won Decorations.
Contradicting Lt. Beilstein’s opinion of his own accomplishments is the record. His sensational experiences on disabled planes, which devastatingly bombed German industry merited national publicity before he was reported missing, and during them he won the Air Medal and four Oak Leaf clusters.
He is credited with shooting down a Nazi fighter plane, recorded as the equivalent of five missions, and he would have had his captaincy soon if he had remained overseas. The Distinguished Flying Cross may be awarded to him later.
It was on a mission to Wilhelmshaven, northwest of Hamburg on the coast, on his second mission that he got the German fighter.
“We were on our way into the target,” he said, “and ran into a lot of fighter attacks. One cued up on us from about 5,000 years in front. I watched him, and when he was within range, I started firing—and kept on firing with my 50-calibre machine gun from the nose of our Fort until he zoomed to explode right above us.”
That last mission? It came just after a week at a rest home which resembles a summer resort.
“It was just another day’s work,” says Lt. Beilstein. “Before I got into the plan, I reached over and patted it under the belly the way I always did. Just one of those things you do.
“We gathered a strong force of bombers, with fighter escorts, about noon that day. Before reaching the objective, our wing ran into the enemy opposition, and crew of our Fort was forced to bail out over enemey-occupied territory.”
Lt. Beilstein won’t talk about just what happened to the plane, nor the crew, although it has been reported one was killed and five were captured by the Nazis.
“Were you hurt?” Mrs. Beilstein asked, worrying about a recurrence of a back injury he suffered as a guard on the St. Ambrose college football squad back in 1936.
The lieutenant was noncommittal.
It’s Tough.
“Some believe there is less Nazi opposition to air attacks now,” he volunteered, “but anybody who goes over still has it tough. I’d much rather have flak than fighters. There is still a good deal of luck in a direct hit with flak, which is chiefly used to deter the bombers, rather than known them down.
“We used to fly though flak so thick it looked like you could get out and walk on it—but the lethal part was gone then, and it was just a black cloud.”
“I thought you might have become a German prisoner,” said Mrs. Beilstein, and his response was fervent:
“Thank God, I’m not!”
The Saturday of Holy week seems to play an important part in his war experience. It was on that day that he arrived in England in 1943, after having kissed his bride good-bye. He and the former Miss Green, whom he had met before his graduation from St. Ambrose in 1939, had married Sept. 12, 1942, at Hobbs field, New Mexico.
And it was on that same Holy Saturday in 1944, the day before Easter, that word came to Mrs. Beilstein that he was safe.
Arriving in New York, May 11, he went to Washington to report to army intelligence Monday, and then he came to Chicago, arriving Tuesday morning. He expects to obtain his release Thursday at Fort Sheridan for a 21-day leave. Lt. and Mrs. Beilstein will spend next week-end with his parents. And then come to Davenport. After his leave, he will report to the Miami Beach redistribution center, probably for an assignment as an instructor.
* * *
Flyer Reported Missing Is Safe, Mother Informed.
Cable Arrives Last Night From Capt. Charles S. “Chuck” Vogler.
Reported missing in action since a flight in his Liberator bomber over Austria April 2, Capt. Chas. S. “Chuck” Vogler of Davenport is safe and well.
News of his safety was received at 10 p.m. last evening by his mother, Mrs. Jacob Vogler, of 812 Kirkwood boulevard, in a cablegram from her son which read:
“All well and safe—please don’t worry—congratulations on your anniversary!”
Mrs. Vogler is convinced that Capt. Vogler in some manner made his way back to his base, as the message is a standard Western Union cablegram, and not one that could have been sent from an enemy prison camp, or from a neutral country. If from the latter, it would have had to be dispatched through the War Department.
Couldn’t Take It.
Mrs. Vogler almost declined to receive the message.
“When Western Union telephoned that they had a message, I felt that I just could not take any more,” she said. “I told them so and was calling my daughter, but the operator kept exclaiming:
“But this is good news—this is good news!”
“Then she began reading the message and it changed everything.”
She and her daughter, Mrs. George Block, the former Betsy Vogler, then went to the Western Union office to send a message to their son and brother. They discovered that his message was made up of three separate forms, combined into one, and that for that reason he must have been at his base when it was sent. The reference to the anniversary referred to a recent birthday.”
Raid Over Austria.
Overseas since February, Capt. Vogler is believed to have been a part of a formation of more than 500 Liberators and Fortresses that attacked and smashed the German aircrafts parts factory and ballbearing works at Steyr, in old Austria, from bases in Italy. News dispatches stated that 33 Allied planes were lost in the sortie, which encountered determined resistance from 300 Nazi planes, some of which used rockets and aerial bombs.
Before going overseas Captain Vogler had been stationed at Foster field, Victoria, Texas, as an instructor. He entered the army air forces shortly after his graduation from the University of Iowa in June of 1941, and received his commission and wings in February of 1942.
[transcribed by L.Z., Oct 2021]