THE PILOTS OF RED SPRINGS
How Four Bowie County Farm Boys Took to the Air in World War II
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a four-part series about four young men from the Red Springs community in Bowie County who trained as World War II pilots. In this series, local author, historian and former Texarkana Gazette reporter Dr. James Presley takes readers into the lives of each accomplished man. Today, the story of John Wesley Head is highlighted.
Born in Whitesboro, Texas, on April 13, 1920, John Wesley Head and his brother were to have the most combat experience of the four youths from Red Springs who took to the skies.
But no one relished flying more than John.
“He’d fly anything that had wings,” his daughter Elizabeth
Head Larimore said.
His parents, Virgil and Cecille Silva Head, divorced when he was small. Cecille had operated a boarding house in the Heights area of Houston and may have run one in Whitesboro where John was born, acccording to some accounts.
John’s father, Virgil Head, had served in France during World War I and had “gone over the top” and suffered poison gas injuries in its trench warfare. Virgil remarried, to Winnie Burcham, a union that produced three children, the eldest of whom was John’s brother, Virgil Woodrow Head, followed by Zala and Melvie Jimmie.
Growing up, John lived in several towns in Texas. After his father’s new family moved to Red Springs, John spent time with both parents. He lived with his mother in Houston, attending Reagan High, and usually spent summers with his father and his three siblings. In his later school years, he lived with his father and graduated from Redwater High School.
Intending to go into engineering, John began studies at Texas A&M University. After one semester, he with several buddies believed war was on the horizon. On June 3, 1940, John joined the Army as a private. He took basic training in California. The next year, serving with an engineers group, he was promoted to sergeant. At this juncture, he applied for flying school.
Like many others coming out of the Depression, he was skinny. In order to meet the weight requirements for cadets, just before the physical, he ate all the bananas he could stand, he later told his daughter. He passed the physical.
Transferred to the Air Corps, he trained in North Carolina and graduated at Harlingen, Texas. He received his wings at Ellington Field at Houston in April 1942. In September, he married Calista Rueckert, with whom he had attended high school in Houston. He remained in the Training Command until transferred to England in 1944 for the Normandy invasion.
From England with the Eighth Army Air Corps, he first flew C-47s during the D-Day operations in June, delivering paratroopers to designated jump sites. He also pulled gliders with soldiers, dropping them behind enemy lines. Once the glider was released from the plane, the pilot had the feeling of a catapult suddenly shooting the plane forward with the drag no longer present.
He mostly flew B-17s on bombing missions over Germany. “Nose art” was common for American planes. Head and his crew dubbed their plane The Texas Genie. Its nose featured a genie wearing a Stetson hat.
Because they flew bombing missions with the possibility of being shot down and forced to parachute out, the crew members flew armed. Head carried a pearl-handled .45 caliber pistol. A superstition they shared was to always wear the same pair of boots, with the belief they would land safely.
Lt. Head’s closest call came once on returning from a bombing run over Germany. Bombs delivered, he was on his way home to England when German fighter planes caught up with them. His plane disabled, it gave its last gasps over the English Channel and plunged into the chilly waters, crew and all.
His niece, Zona Dupree, heard him recount the brush with death.
The plane hit the water with such force that he went down, down, down— he didn’t know how deep. Holding his breath, he began swimming up as hard and fast as he could toward the surface. Finally, reaching his limit and his lungs bursting, he knew he didn’t have a chance of making it alive, he was so far under water. He prepared to take one big last breath, which would fill his lungs with salt water and end it. Just at the last moment, he broke to the surface and took in life-saving oxygen. His crew also made it out.
That day, he learned firsthand the excellence of the British rescue operations.
Daughter Elizabeth remembered his account. “When the British pulled you out of the Channel they gave you (a mug of) hot buttered rum to drink to warm you up, since the temperature of the Channel is very cold. Also, on returning from a bomb run, when you got towards the coast and could see the White Cliffs of Dover, then you knew you were almost home and safe.”
After the war, Head was stationed at a series of bases until he retired. At Lowry Air Force Base near Denver, he managed and coached the base’s baseball team and directed the physical training program. In organizing all of Lowry’s sports activities, he added golf and tennis to the base’s sports teams.
In 1947, he was transferred to Kobe, Japan, as special service officer in addition to his regular pilot duties. This was the first year dependents were permitted to join him overseas, and at that time the dependents were not allowed off base without an armed escort.
During the tour in Japan, he organized, led and played a steel guitar in a band performing in the Officers Club. The musicians wore monogrammed shirts, his with “Tex” on it. His daughter Elizabeth remembered the band would practice at their home. “That’s when I learned to dance, when I was four years old,” she said.
The second year in Japan, he was stationed at Nagoya. From Japan, he returned to Ellington AFB at Houston, followed by an assignment in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at March AFB at Riverside, Calif., where he flew whatever he was asked to fly–B36s, B47s, B52s. He also served as electronics and communications officer at some of the bases where he was stationed, as well as base commander.
His younger brother, Woodrow, who had gone into the Navy and became a pilot, was stationed on an aircraft carrier out of San Diego while John was at March AFB in California. When Woodrow had shore leave, the brothers would manage to get together.
“One of the things I remember Daddy and Uncle Woody talking about was that to land on a carrier in the middle of the ocean was like looking for a postage stamp in the middle of that ocean,” John’s daughter Elizabeth said.
It was a proud moment for the Head family when they were on leave at the same time in Red Springs.
By the early 1950s, according to his notes, he’d flown 101 combat missions–a huge number–and had logged 4,000 hours, another large number. Adding his wartime service in England and time in occupied Japan, he’d accumulated seven years of overseas duty. His decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with oak leaf cluster and a Presidential Unit Citation.
In addition to the tour at March AFB, his assignments included Keesler AFB at Biloxi, Miss., several times for classes in radar technology. Other tours were at Fairchild AFB at Spokane, Wash., and a number of Aircraft Control and Warning (AC&W) Squadrons at Charleston, S. C., Texarkana, Ark., and Eagle Pass, Texas, where he was base commander. While stationed at Texarkana, his daughter Elizabeth graduated from Texas High in 1962.
Dispatched to Saudi Arabia in 1956 during the Suez Canal crisis, he piloted dignitaries, such as King Saud of that country, and others.
In a personal family touch, when he, like his younger brother, flew in the Texarkana area he would tip his plane’s wings over the Head homestead in Red Springs to salute and sometimes drop messages in a bottle. Whoever was home would know it came from one of the Head pilots.
During his last assignment, a major by then, he served as director of electronics for the Alaskan Air Command. This duty at Elmendorf AFB at Anchorage included all of the radar sites in the command. His responsibility not only dealt with the routine mission but also emergencies, such as bears invading the buildings and the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. The quake lasted nearly five minutes and wreaked historic havoc. He retired there in 1965.
He, his wife Calista and daughter Elizabeth moved to Houston. He worked for aerospace companies for a few years, then returned to Texarkana in 1968. He worked for the Texas side as director of planning. Later, to keep busy, he drove a school bus on a rural route. He started a business of repairing business machines, doing work for schools in the area, including Redwater from where he had graduated.
Years before while on active duty, he and fellow officers, on a light-hearted whim, consulted a fortune teller. John’s reading, according to his daughter, foretold a shortened life span.
He died May 16, 1986, of a heart attack or stroke. He had sent his wife on an errand, causing family members to believe he knew the end was near and didn’t want her to witness his final moments. He was 66 years old, after a packed life that few men experience even in 100 years.