Author: Joe
Last saved by: PJD
Company: GDC

99-11-11.JSH-225 / 

© 1999  Joe Griffin

Review (72): It’s a Wonderful Life: Veterans Day Salute: Starr Smith’s “Jimmy Stewart—His Most Demanding Role”; Invisible Historical Impact

Star at War
Veterans Day Special
11 November 1999

Introduction:
Tonight I’d like to salute all the men and women who have fought and served in our nation’s wars.  In the past I have customarily read a few Medal of Honor citations or commented on a particular battle or campaign.  This year I’d like to remember our veterans by highlighting the military career of one of the stars of the movie we are now analyzing, Frank Capra’s classic, It’s a Wonderful Life.
The doctrines we are studying are portrayed by this man’s life as effectively as they are by the roll he plays in this movie.  In fact, his military service record exemplifies the principles of patriotism, duty to one’s country, establishment viewpoint, genuine humility, and invisible historical impact as much if not more so than any of the characters he has played on the Silver Screen. 
The article I am about to quote relates his contributions to our country’s efforts in the European Theater during World War II.  It is written by Starr Smith, a columnist for The Montgomery Advertiser, a man I ran into from time to time during my years in broadcasting in Alabama.  His story was published originally by The Retired Officer magazine in its September 1998 issue. 
Smith, Starr.  “Jimmy Stewart—His Most Demanding Role.”  The Retired Officer, Sept. 1998, pp. 66-74:

Jimmy Stewart—His Most Demanding Role
by Starr Smith
It was in Canada last year when the news of Jimmy Stewart’s death broke. As the words sunk in, I was poignantly reminded of another time, another country, where I first met and served with this remarkable American — wartime England. 
It was at a cold, windswept, World War II bomber station known as Old Buckenham. The station, located near the North Sea between Cambridge and Norwich in England’s East Anglia, was home to our outfit, the 453rd Bomb Group, B-24 Liberators. Stewart, then a major, was the group’s operations officer, and I was an intelligence officer who handled much of the briefings for the air crews before their mission over Nazi Germany. Night after night, we worked together preparing the details of the mission. Stewart briefed on the operations aspect of the mission, and I did the intelligence side. 
I have never known a brighter, more knowledgeable, hardworking, conscientious, or dedicated officer than Jimmy Stewart. The story of his military career is as remarkable as the man. 
The first obstacles 
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Stewart — Academy Award-winning actor, aviator, Princeton graduate, piano player, and bachelor, a prime favorite with the Hollywood ladies — felt that America soon would be at war. With England fighting Hitler since 1939, radio announcer Edward R. Murrow’s bleak broadcasts from London, and the Pacific war against the Japanese going badly for Britain, Stewart decided that if America entered the war, he wanted to be in uniform and overseas on combat duty. 
As unselfish as this decision was, Stewart faced two major roadblocks. One came from his boss, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who used every persuasive tactic at his command — choice of roles, contract revisions — to persuade Stewart to stay out of uniform and to continue making pictures for MGM. The other roadblock came from the U.S. government. 
In September 1940, the Selective Service Act became law, and men between the ages of 21 and 36 were required to register. Being 32, Stewart registered and was quoted later as saying, “The only lottery I ever came close to winning was the drawing for the first draft before Pearl Harbor.” However, when Stewart was called up for a physical late in 1940, he was turned down: underweight. That could have ended the whole affair, but Stewart decided to go the volunteer route. He appealed the Army’s underweight decision, embarked on an eating binge, made the weight requirements, and at the age of 33, reported for induction on March 22, 1941, at Fort MacArthur, Calif. 
Because he had been a pilot for years, owned a Stinson 105 airplane, and had more than 300 hours in his logbook, Stewart was assigned to the Army Air Forces and sent to Moffett Field near San Francisco. Based on his flying experience, educational background, and age, Stewart applied for a commission as an Army Air Forces pilot. He was accepted and immediately began an extensive schedule of flight training and ground-school class work. He shared life with his fellow enlisted soldiers, doing his share of KP, close-order drill, and guard duty. 
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Jimmy Stewart was pulling guard duty at Moffett Field. Taking advantage of Stewart’s fame, the Army Air Forces scheduled limited public appearances, including several on network radio with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Stewart had reached the rank of corporal when his commission came through on Jan. 19, 1942. 
Newly commissioned as a second lieutenant and wearing his Army Air Forces pilot wings, Stewart was immediately called to active duty. After a 40-hour refresher course at Moffett in instrument, night, and formation flying, he was sent to the instructor’s course at the advanced flying school at Mather Field, Calif., where he became a twin-engine instructor. 
In the following months, Stewart flew bombardier students in a twin-engine Beechcraft, learned about the Norden bomb sight, flew the glamorous four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress at Hobbs Field, N.M., and finally moved to Gowen Field at Boise, Idaho, the staging area for combat crews. 
At this point in his career, Stewart’s dream of seeing combat hit a snag. While the other 29 graduates of the B-17 transition school were immediately given crew assignments and began training for overseas duty, Stewart, to his dismay, was assigned as an instructor in the first-phase training at Gowen. Apparently, nobody wanted to take responsibility for sending a famous movie star into combat. 
After six months, Stewart went to his commanding officer, Col. “Pop” Arnold, commander of the 29th Training Group at Gowen, with his desire for combat duty and fear of being kept in the States as an instructor or perhaps recruiting officer. Seeing Stewart’s determination, Arnold made a quick phone call to a friend, Col. Robert Terrell, who was at the time forming the new 445th heavy bombardment group of four-engine B-24s in Sioux City, Iowa. “I just felt that if he wanted combat duty this bad, I’d help him,” Arnold said later. 
The 445th was scheduled for overseas movement in three months, and Terrell agreed to take Capt. Stewart as a squadron operations officer. Shortly after Stewart joined the group at Sioux City, this item appeared in the unit history: “The novelty of having this movie star in our midst soon wore off, especially since he proved himself to be a hard-working, sincere, and regular fellow.” 

On the move 
In late November 1943, Stewart led his B-24 squadron on the “southern route” to England — Florida; Puerto Rico; Brazil; Dakar, Africa; and the long flight over the Atlantic from Marrakech /ma-ROK-ish/, Morocco, to Prestwick, Scotland. Only a short time later, I flew the same route in a B-24 Liberator with my 453rd group, and several times after Stewart joined the 453rd, we talked about the hot days and cold nights of Marrakech while waiting for the field order to come down for the next day’s mission. 
Home base in England for the 445th was Tibenham, less than 100 miles from London. Terrell had his crews in the air immediately. In 18 days, the 445th flew seven missions, and, of these, Stewart flew four. He was promoted to squadron commander and major in January 1944, and continued to fly a heavy combat schedule, including Brunswick in February, for which the 8th U.S. Army Air Force commander, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, awarded Stewart the Distinguished Flying Cross (his first of two). 
On March 22, while still at the 445th, Stewart was a leader of the 1,000-plane raid on Berlin, perhaps the climax of his flying career with the 8th. 
Hard times at the 453rd 
Meanwhile, my group — the 453rd — only a few miles from Tibenham, was not faring so well. We had been committed to combat the first week of February, bombed an airfield at Tours, France, and flew in “Big Week” — the series of strikes against the German aircraft industry. During this time, Col. Joe Miller, the group commander, was shot down. The new commander, Col. Ramsay Potts, a battle-tested B-24 specialist who had been on the historic and pivotal Ploesti mission and earned a Distinguished Service Cross, set about reshaping the unlucky 453rd. He stood the group down, led practice missions, and, within days, replaced the group operations officer. 
Enter Maj. Jimmy Stewart — slim, soft-spoken, overseas cap slightly askew, leather jacket, high-top shoes — who had already established himself as a solid combat pilot, squadron commander, and mission leader at the 445th. Potts told me later, “I did not request Stewart by name. I did want somebody with his background as my group operations officer. Gen. Ted Timberlake [commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing, which consisted of the 389th, 445th, and 453rd] sent him to the 453rd. I’ll always be grateful.” 
Potts and Stewart hit it off from the start. They were both combat-tested, mission-minded, and hardworking, and shared a true belief in the daylight precision bombing of Germany. (The Americans bombed in daylight, the Royal Air Force at night). They lived together in a little house near the Officers Club and sometimes went to the movies in nearby Norwich. As Potts said to me once, “Jimmy had never seen a movie he didn’t like.” 
Never one of the boys 
My own personal relationship with Stewart was professional, not close, not casual. I enjoyed briefing with him and greatly admired his knowledge and skill with words. The crews saw him not as a famous figure, but as their leader who had made the scene, a man they liked and trusted. 
At night, working with me preparing the mission, Stewart was crisp and businesslike, reserved, but he knew his job and was a keen student of daylight precision bombing. It was interesting to see him at the bar of the Officers Club after a tough day and hear his discussion of the mission with the returning pilots. But even then, he was slightly aloof. He was never one of the boys. 
This is not to say Stewart was unfriendly. Rather, he went about his work with a cool, professional detachment — a single-purpose approach that did not allow for personal involvement. This, I think, was the reason for his success in the war. He was determined to prove that he was more than an actor, more than a Hollywood star. He was determined to prove that now he could measure up as a man doing a really important job in the military crucible and not just a celluloid hero. 
Meanwhile, the 453rd was forging ahead at a rapid pace. Morale was high. In his recent biography of Stewart, Donald Dewey notes, “... within a couple of months of the arrival of Potts and Stewart, the 453rd’s proficiency rate on raids rose from nearly the bottom to near the top among 8th Air Force units.” 
Stewart was promoted to lieutenant colonel just before we were to work together on the 453rd’s D-day missions, and he rose to that momentous occasion. 
In July, Timberlake called Stewart to the 2nd Bomb Wing headquarters, made him chief of staff, and promoted him to full colonel. In doing so, Timberlake passed over some of Stewart’s senior officers, later saying, “Stewart was the best man available.” He also added Stewart to the short list of officers in American military history to rise from private to colonel in slightly more than four years. 
Stewart’s duties, while still operational and mission-oriented, did not call for actual combat flying, yet he would occasionally jeep to Tibenham or “Old Buc” to fly missions. Capt. Carroll (Cal) Stewart (no relation), Timberlake’s aide and later a journalist in Nebraska, afterwards told me, “Jimmy was a superior pilot, never overlooked a detail, never shirked, a tireless operations officer who got along with the young fliers. He was proud of his military service but did not want to parade it around.” Shortly after the war ended in the spring of 1945, Stewart was appointed the 2nd Combat Bomb Wing’s commanding officer — thus coming full circle. He spent his entire combat tour assigned to B-24 Liberator units in the 8th Air Force, rising from squadron operations officer to wing commander. 
I have always felt that Stewart was extremely lucky to have three superb officers as his mentors: Terrell, Timberlake, and particularly Potts, who retired from the Air Force Reserve as a major general. 

That last mission 
After he was discharged from the Army Air Forces on Sept. 29, 1945, Stewart was immediately appointed to colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces Reserve. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1957 and retired — from the U.S. Air Force Reserve — in 1967. But, before retiring, the decorated officer had one last mission: 
After Stewart’s death in 1997, Air Power History published a memoriam that included this little-known item: “In 1966, during his annual two weeks of active duty, Stewart requested a combat assignment and participated in a bombing strike over Vietnam.” Stewart’s stepson, 1st Lt. Ronald McLean, was killed at age 24 in the Vietnam War. 
In his World War II years, Stewart flew 20 combat missions, among them the tough ones: Brunswick, Bremen, Frankfurt, Schweinfurt, and Berlin. His wartime decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, four Air Medals, and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm. 
With myriad honors of a celebrated and eclectic career, including the highest in his profession, the Academy Award, it is not hard to believe that Jimmy Stewart reached the best time of his life in those eventful and dangerous years of World War II.
[ This article can be printed out from the Web site of the Retired Officer Association: http://www.troa.org/Magazine/September1998/Stewart.asp ]

Epilogue:
Just before Jimmy Stewart left the States with the 445^th Bombardment Group for combat duty in Europe, his parents, Alex and Bessie Stewart, traveled to Sioux City, Iowa, to wish him farewell.  An account of that gathering reads us back into our study of George Bailey and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Fishgall, Gary.  Pieces of Time: The Life of James Stewart.  New York: Scribner, 1997,163:
Jim remembered that he and his dad were “very self-conscious with each other.  At the time of the greatest crisis in my entire life, he would have to stand aside.  We were both afraid.”  Despite the awkwardness of the occasion, Alex managed to communicate his feelings in a letter that he gave to his son as he said good-bye.  Jim read it in his bunk that evening.
“My dear Jim boy,” Alex wrote.  “Soon after you read this letter, you will be on your way to the worst sort of danger.  I have had this in mind for a long time and I am very much concerned … but Jim, I am banking on the enclosed copy of the 91^st Psalm.  The thing that takes the place of fear and worry is the promise of these words.  I feel sure that God will lead you through this mad experience.  I can say no more.  I only continue to pray.  Good-bye my dear.  God bless you and keep you.  I love you more than I can tell you.  Dad.”
It was the first time that Alex had ever actually told his son he loved him, and the words caused Jim to weep.  Then he looked at the little booklet containing the Psalm. He found the sentiment:
“I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress (v. 2a).  His truth shall be your shield and buckler.  You shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flies by day (v. 4b-5).  For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.  They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone (vv. 11-12).”
Jim drew comfort from the ancient words and the man who had given them to him.

3.	International Impact:
1)	This impact focuses on non-client nations by means of missionary activity.
2)	A spiritually mature missionary is a blessing to the client nation that sponsors and supports his ministry.
3)	He is also a blessing to the nation to which he is called.
4)	The mature believer who is aware of the need for missionary function can be a blessing in both these areas by his support through prayer, communication, and benevolence.

4.	Angelic Impact
1)	The mature believer has blessing on the angelic creation by being a witness for the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of the appeal trial of Satan in two categories:
a.	Evidence Testing: In human history, man's thoughts, motives, decisions, and actions are entered as evidence, exhibits, precedents, and arguments in Satan's appeal trial.  Every believer who attains maturity is an argument or witness for the Prosecution against Satan.  Evidence testing, then, is Satan's cross-examination of every witness presented by God.
Summary of Evidence Testing:
1-	Satan is the ruler of this world but man through freedom of volition is able to make choices on his own.  He may choose to follow Satan or follow God.  The Gospel thus becomes the central decision as to which way he will choose.
2-	When a believer expresses faith in Christ he becomes a witness for the prosecution in the appeal trial of Satan.  That witness is his life’s testimony that in the hostile environment of the devil’s world, he chose to follow God no matter what and through it all had the staying power to advance all the way to maturity.
3-	Once he arrives in Santa Fé he become a witness for the prosecution under evidence testing which comes in two categories: (1) Satan contends that through personal suffering the believer will turn against God out of anger, bitterness, frustration, and discouragement.  The believer’s witness here is to remain loyal to God and positive to his plan no matter what sufferings he may encounter.  (2) Satan contends that if offered sufficient wealth and power, the believer will become, as he did, arrogant and therefor become unfaithful to God.  The contention is that everyone has his price.
4-	Through these two levels of testing, Satan does all he can to distract the believer whom God has presented as a witness before the appeal trial.  Evidence testing also challenges the believer’s relationship with God as well as his through the circumstances of life.
5-	This form of testing is administered by Satan himself but God has established the rules under which he may function and at all times protects the believer by never allowing him to confront more pressure than he is able to bear.
6-	The mature believer therefore may be brought forward to testify in the appeal trial of Satan as evidence for the Prosecution that no matter what he has the staying power to remain loyal to God under any circumstances.
b.	Marriage: Mature believers united in the Christian institution of marriage have impact on the angelic creation by fulfilling the three laws of the Christian marriage.
2)	This invisible impact is upon a creation of beings who are themselves invisible throughout the Church Age although they are visible in all other dispensations.
3)	Believers of the Church Age have available to them information, assets, and a system completely unknown to the Old Testament prophets, priests, and kings.  As a result, no Old Testament believer had a clue about Church Age modus operandi since none of his spiritual leaders did.
4)	The same can be said of the entire angelic creation, both elect and fallen.
1 Corinthians 4:9b -	… we apostles have become a spectacle in the arena of life to the entire universe, both to angels as well as to mankind.
1 Peter 1:12 -	I was revealed to Old Testament writers that they were not serving themselves but you [ Church Age believers ] in those things which now [ the Church Age ] have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by agency of the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven; things over which angels bend down to get a good clear look.
Luke 15:10 -	“I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who changes his mind [ metanošw / metanoeo /: volitional conversion at salvation expressed through faith alone in Christ alone ].
5)	This is how the mature believer becomes a testimony not only to fellow members of the human race who are visible but also to millions of angels who are presently invisible.
6)	As the angels seek to learn about the unique spiritual life of the Church Age, it is the mature believer who demonstrates its attributes most effectively and thus becomes a blessing to these creatures.