MEMORIES OF BOB AND BOB
NOTE: Links and picture blow-ups, open in this same browser window.  To return to this page use your browser's -BACK- button.  Where appropriate, notes (from my mom and her mom) on the back of some photos have been reproduced.   The hi-resolution images are about 1.5 Mb each and will take a while to load if you are on dial-up.

Last Update: 06 June 2009   The below as compiled and written over several months by Dan Martin.  This is a work-in-progress and there are changes still to come.

ATTENTION: A humbling testament to both personal and national honor is to be found on the website of
The Honor Guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetary.   These men dedicate their entire lives to a stainless standard beyond any other call so that they may more fully honor the fallen unknowns.

Below are photos and other memories of two guys named Bob.  Both were World War II heroes, and both are honored in the National  World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.   If you visit the website link, you will be able to search the electronic World War II Registry of Americans who contributed to the war effort, and also add the name of a loved one or special comrade in arms.

  hi-res  At left is Bob my father-in-law, pictured in late 2004 with his great grandson Luke.  By the end of 2007, both Bob and Luke were still thriving.  Bob fought with the 3rd army under General Patton and his duty was to drive a 10-ton wrecker vehicle - a giant of a machine with a big crane on the back.  He tells me that it was higher than most trees and could be seen from a great distance.  The Germans could spot it from afar and they would use it to range-in their artillery.  Bad job to have...

At the wars end, Bob helped liberate the walking corpses from the obscene  Mauthausen  concentration camp, and several others as well.  He has many pictures and even more memories of these horrible times.  It is still unbearable for him to speak of or review these things, but perhaps one day he will share some of them with us.  Meanwhile, enjoy the war relics shown below that he somehow acquired from the shambles of the German High Command.  The greatest treasure of all is that Bob - World War II hero extrordinaire - is still with us, and still smiling for Memorial Day, 2007.

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  hi-res  Lt Robert James Crutcher (my "Uncle Bob") gave his life fighting for freedom in 1944.   He died in a bombing run over Hamburg Germany 12 days after D-Day (also known as the Battle of Normandy).  At left he is pictured at 18 in his high school graduation photo.  A handsome lad to be sure.  His hair was not scarlet, purple, orange, or blue.  Not a trace of a piercing or a tattoo, but his heart was flowing with the red, white, and blue.

After he graduated from high school, Uncle Bob attended  Kansas University  in Lawrence, Kansas, for two years and also worked briefly for the Federal Reserve bank in Kansas City, Missouri.  He volunteered for the Army the day after Perl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese.  In those days, all pilots and aircraft were assigned to the  Army Air Force  (the United States Air Force would not come into existence until 1947).  You can see in the first picture the primitive design of his training aircraft.  Unfortunately no photogtraphic record exists of his being a test pilot for the incredible Lockheed  P-38 Lightning fighter plane, fearfully referred-to by the enemy as the Fork-Tailed Devil.  For reasons now lost to history, Bob rapidly migrated into the role of a B-17 bomber pilot.  

In exciting, relatively recent historical developments,

  • (1) A literally deep-frozen P-38 was recovered in 1992 from under 260 feet of glacial ice in Greenland.  Now appropriately known as "Glacier Girl," it was part of a 1942 mission to ferry much need fighter planes (P-38s) and heavy bombers (B-17s) from the U.S. via a route from Canada to Greenland, to Iceland, and on to England.  This group of aircraft became lost in dense clouds over Greenland and eventually each crashed after running out of fuel.  In the ensuing 50 years, all were encased under hundreds of feet of snow and ice.  (map courtesy of lostsquadron.com)

    In a surprising wink of God's eye, scientists at Denver National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver Colorado have "proven" that Glacier Girl is over 3,000 years old!  Such a revelation could call into question every scientific assertion as to the age of anything.  The earth may not be millions and millions of years old as science claims...

  • (2) A nearly perfect P-38 emerged in 2007 from its tomb of 65 years from beneath the sands of a remote beach in Wales, England, where it had crash-landed in 1942 after running out of fuel.  This aircraft, now know as the "Maid of Harlech," is among a precious few surviving P-38s and the only intact P-38F in original condition.  (photo courtesy of tighar.org)

  • (3) I found a web page that shows many images of rare WW-II era USA experimental aircraft
    - included is the LOCKHEED XP-58 CHAINED LIGHTNING, which appears to be a bomber version (complete with gun turret) of the awesome P-38 Lightning.


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    Bob was stationed at several airfields during his training, among them Colorado Springs CO and Bakersfield CA.  He qualified for all the required ratings, and at the end was granted the coveted "wings", a small pin that signified its proud wearer was a certified pilot in the AAF.   The photo at the railroad station shows Ross Crutcher (Bob's father), me, Bob, and my mom.  Bob would soon be off to England and into the thick of War.
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    Uncle Bob, by that time in England, and some of his flying buddies:
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    The  B-17 "flying fortress" bomber was the both the workhorse and the enforcer of the Allied air strategy.  Uncle Bob eventually became a B-17 Command Pilot, and led entire squadrons of these craft in bombing raids over the Hun (German) homeland.  He named his first ship "Smilin' Thru", but it was soon shot up in battle.   The valiant crew were able to nurse it back over the channel to English soil where it crash landed.  Ditto the same story for several subsequent B-17s that he commanded.   The second picture, a tiny 2"x3" print, originally had the aircraft name and identifying numbers redacted for security purposes.  The attempt failed because in the hi-res scan done 60 years later, we can clearly see the name of the ship and plenty of identifying marks.  Little could the authorities of that time have imagined the power that today's digital processing brings to bear on the past.
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    ALERT: In July 2005, I was able to get some excellent photos of a surviving B-17.

    By June 1944 Bob had already fulfilled all 25 of his required bombing missions (he could then return to the United States),  but the mop-up after the massive D-Day operation demanded that he fly just one more...
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    Listen to this moving D-Day Prayer (6Mb .mp3) as given by President Franklin Roosevelt.  View this video of President Ronald Reagan honoring the D-Day dead of Normandy on June 06 1984 (40th Anniversary).  Public prayers to God led by a US President will probably never be heard again, due to the constraints imposed by rampant Political Correctness.  You will also enjoy this D-Day prayer introduction (1.6Mb .mp3) from noted historian and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Now, hear this audio tour of the memorial (10Mb .mp3) for Franklin Roosevelt, also authored by Newt Gingrich.


     HALLOWED GROUND

    Uncle Bob's mother traveled to England shortly after he was killed and stayed there several years.  She attended many of the ongoing ceremonies at the Cambridge American Military Cemetery - a place where thousands of young American warriors found rest after an untimely end to their life's journey.  The base of the 72-foot flagpole in front of the Visitors' Building carries an inscription taken from John McCrae's poem - In Flanders Fields, "...To You From Failing Hands We Throw The Torch - Be Yours To Hold It High."  The sad and lonely sound of TAPS has been played over their graves for many a year now.  You can download a small .mp3 file of Taps here.  Play it for them again now, won't you?

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      On a cold winter's night,
      For these heros in dreamless sleep,
      We pray, oh dear God, their souls to keep...

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      hi-res  I was there with my mom and grandma Ruby (Bob's mother) for the dedication of the Kansas University Memorial Carillon and  Campanile tower in 1951, and years later in 1958 as shown in this photo.   I passed through the doors of that same tower during an incoming Freshman ceremony at Kansas University in 1958, and again on graduation night in spring of 1962.  Both times, and every time on dozens of visits since, I have stopped and located the name of Uncle Bob inscribed among the other KU alums who died in World War II.  I thank God for him and the sacrifice he and so many - too many - others have made for America both before, since, and yet to come.  I spit on the soul of any person born on American soil who has, or does, or will, publicly disparage the memory of our fallen war heroes.

      hi-res  Uncle Bob's body was eventually taken from England and reburied in south Kansas City, Missouri, along with his father and mother.  Through the years, my eldest son and later my father would join them at that place in final repose.



    "OH, I HAVE SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS OF EARTH, AND DANCED THE SKIES ON LAUGHTER-SILVERED WINGS..."

       YET THERE WAS JUST A TRACE OF SORROW IN YOUR EYES...

      hi-res  These are pictures of Uncle Bob taken only scant weeks before he died.  The horrors of war have aged him beyond his years: he looks 40 but was only 24.  Compare to his senior high school photo further above (taken only six years before).  The War had already stolen his youth, but even such a price was not enough.  The ultimate payment was still to be demanded.


    The song  Fountain Of Sorrow, (4.2 Mb .mp3 - Joan Baez) just seemed to flood into my mind (I had not heard it in years) as I was pulling this tribute together.  Be they a nudge from my creative muse, or an inspiration from beyond, the words from it now seem so appropriate that they should be documented here:
    "Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
     I was taken by a photograph of you
     There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more
     But they didn't show your spirit quite as true

     You were turning 'round to see who was behind you
     And I took your childish laughter by surprise
     And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
     There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes"

    Here is Uncle Bob, in England at the controls of his B-17,
    turning 'round to see who was behind him,
    and at the moment that the camera happened to find him
    there was indeed just a trace of sorrow in his eyes.

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    In the full context of this young hero's death, I think these phrases from the final chorus of the original 1974 Jackson Browne recording (6.5 Mb .mp3) are so poignant and meaningful that they too must shared with you:

     "Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light
     You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight
     You've had to struggle, you've had to fight
     To keep understanding and compassion in sight
     You could be laughing at me, you've got the right
     But you go on smiling so clear and so bright"

    Bob's father, Ross Crutcher, shown here in 1947 was, I believe, a deeply unhappy - but still a very proud - man at the time of Bob's death.  His gaunt and weary face shows he must have been still grieving the loss of his only son.  In 1947, Ross was living in Philadelphia - five years separated from his wife (Ruby) and daughter (my mother, Dorothy).  He had only a 4th grade education and was working as a clerk among far younger, and college-educated, peers. By no means could his life then be anything but grinding and futile,
    yet of such men had many heros been fathered...

    At left are scans from the many letters sent to well-wishers, only weeks after Bobs death, by his dad. His responses show both dignity and class, unlike the public spectacle of how some parents seem to grieve their loss in the year 2005 - as exampled by the hateful and embarassing antics of war-mom now turned anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

    An unknown someone, Jack Minor, submitted Uncle Bob's name to the WWII Memorial (see picture at left).  I would like to thank him but don't know how to get in touch.  So if you are the one, please  email me (see below) and let me know how you knew Uncle Bob.  Were you a fellow service man, a high school friend?   Even if you are not Jack Minor, but know how to reach him, or have other related information, please forward this link along to him and/or email me (see below) with more information.  Thank you.

    A full dress white-glove salute, executed smartly and
    held long, to honor these and all brave men in uniform.

    God bless America.


    With Love and Highest Respect,

    Dan Martin
    Longmont, CO

    email: dan at dansher dot com

     In Red Skelton's own, heartfelt words:  The Pledge of Allegiance (4 Mb .mp3)