With The Men In Service: September 26, 1942

With The Men In Service

Local Pilot Credited With Beating Japs

Letters home from Lt. Francis DeWitt Barnard, one of Ann Arbor's two flying Barnard brothers, never gave his parents any idea others than that life was pleasant and quiet in the Alaskan area where he is stationed.

But DeWitt's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn Barnard, 1943 Jackson Ave., picked up a copy of Life magazine today and found their son wasn’t just on a picnic—unless shooting down Japs is a picnic, which it probably is.

There on page 38, in one of a group of pictures taken by the U. S. Signal Corps of American Flying Tigers in Alaska, they recognized their son. With three other pilots he was carrying a fifth who had just shot down a Japanese dive bomber.

What pleased them most was the censor-approved caption which told that all of the five "had met and beaten Japanese fliers in the Alaskan skies.’’

Now, naturally, they would like to know how many Jap planes DeWitt has downed. They probably won’t learn from their son’s letters, however, judging from his past secretiveness. But anyway, friends will understand if the Barnards strut a bit these days.

Neither the picture caption nor DeWitt’s letters indicate where he is now stationed, except that he is a member of a pursuit group commanded by Maj. John Chennault, son of the famous commander of the American Flying Tigers of the Chinese war front.

Maj. Chennault also has named his group, Flying Tigers, but their planes are decorated with emblems of the snarling Bengal tiger rather than with the tiger sharks which gave the AVG planes in China such a fearsome appearance.

Lt. Barnard's brother is far from the fighting front, but he, too, has a major role In the nation's war effort. Lt. Frederick Barnard is a pilot instructor at Randolph Field, Tex.

Captured Sailor Wounded At Wake

Petty Officer Kirby Ludwick, jr., who was taken prisoner by the Japs with the fall of embattled Wake Island, was wounded during the bitter fighting for that Pacific outpost, according to a long-en route letter received by his wife here.

Dated March 22 and received six months later, the letter was Mrs. Ludwick’s first word directly from her husband since Japan attacked the United States.

The sailor wrote that he suffered a flesh wound when captured, but had recovered, and he added, "all is well, don’t worry.” He asked for some tobacco, toilet articles and a razor, and he said he had made a phonograph recording of his voice which he hoped would reach her eventually.

The letter was printed, rather than being written in longhand, in accordance with a Japanese requirement, and was on cheap paper bearing Japanese characters. On the envelope, too, was a U. S. censor’s sticker. It confirmed an earlier Red Cross report he was held in a Japanese internment camp at Shanghai.

Mrs. Ludwick, who lives with her children at 433 S. Ashley St., sent her husband a package, which included clothing and tobacco, on Aug. 12, but it is still being held at San Francisco—waiting for the Japs to live up to treaty obligations and guarantee safe passage for Red Cross ships with supplies for war prisoners.

Busy Someplace

Robert W. Hodge, the former national guardsman-Army artilleryman-Marine who now is a petty officer in the Navy’s construction battalion, is with a unit of the Seabees somewhere in the Pacific.

Petty Officer Hodge, in a letter to his wife, said he was well and at work as usual, hut gave no indication of where he is stationed. However, he left the West Coast late in July, presumably for work on some naval base.

A carpenter by trade, Petty Officer Hodge was a guardsman on the Mexican border in 1916, with the Army in France in 1917-19, and a Marine in Central America, China and the Philippines for the next five years. He was recalled by the Navy last March.

Mrs. Hodge and their seven children live in Buena Vista subdivision, three miles west of Ann Arbor along Jackson Rd.

Lt. Francis DeWitt Barnard of Ann Arbor is shown (front left) in this U. S. Signal Corps photograph (reproduced from Life magazine) of five American pilots who “have met and beaten Japanese fliers in Alaskan skies."

Kirby Ludwick
R. W. Hodge