Archie Mathies’ profile in courage
There are different types of courage. There’s the “courage of your convictions.” There’s the courage to do what is right. We’re hearing an awful lot lately about political courage. A famous book was written on the subject. It’s called Profiles in Courage.
Then there’s physical courage. Last but not least there’s the courage that comes with looking death in the eye.
By most any measure, Archibald Mathies was courageous. Seventy-six years ago, around this time of year, the blond 25-year-old born in Scotland died in a fighter plane crash at RAF Glatton, in the United Kingdom.
Glatton was English pastureland before it was turned into a beehive of activity by World War II. It was home to an Allied air base for missions over embattled Europe.
Archie, who had emigrated to the United States as a youngster with his parents – they settled in western Pennsylvania – died while trying to guide his crippled B-17 bomber to a successful crash landing, following a harrowing mission over Leipzig, Germany, in February 1944.
He failed, but his failure authored an awe-inspiring tale of courage. You see, Archie Mathies wasn’t a pilot. He was a gunner, part of a 10-man crew on the B-17 bomber nicknamed Mispah. With the co-pilot dead and the pilot grievously wounded, Archie was filling in.
He might have bailed out himself, as others did, thus saving his own life. He chose to stay on board in an attempt to save the life of pilot Clarence R. Nelson.
For his valor he was awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military validation of courage under fire.
Archie Mathies had hours to think about his decision to stay with the badly-damaged Flying Fortress. What hours they must have been.
Historian Bruce Catton tells us that battle deaths rarely if ever stem from devotion to principle or even love of country. An infantryman on the beaches of Normandy probably wasn’t thinking of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or Election Day, at the moment a German slug pierced his heart, shredded his gut, or opened his skull.
He most likely was thinking about getting to that damn rock over there. He might even have been pondering, fleetingly, the question: How did I get into this mess? Why me? Then whack. Nothing. The big blank. The terrible void. He was dead.
The dead of Iwo Jima, of Bloody Ridge in Korea, of Hue in Vietnam of Kandahar in Afghanistan, we can be pretty sure, weren’t contemplating the joys and perils of free speech or a free press when they took one. Their minds weren’t dwelling on the first, second, or third amendments, on “all men are created equal,” on the GI bill, on what a great president (or, conversely, what a poor president) so-and-so was.
Soldiers throughout history have died getting to or away from clusters of trees, road junctions, besieged farm houses. First they were quick; then they were dead.
Archie Mathies was different. His was no split-second decision. There was nothing hap-dash about his staying with the B-17. Oh, his mind might have been racing. Maybe he found it hard to concentrate, though, as the saying goes, nothing focuses the mind like approaching catastrophe.
As far as can be determined, Archie was calm, deliberate, and cool in the long, last hours of his life. He contemplated consequences, he weighed alternatives.
After dropping its bombs on a Nazi aircraft factory in Leipzig, Mispah headed back to base but not before it was engaged by German flak. A 20mm enemy shell burst near the cockpit, killing co-pilot Ronald Bartley pretty much outright. He was gone by the time Archie arrived from his ball turret position on the plane’s underbelly. Meanwhile, pilot Nelson’s face and chest were smeared with blood. He was immobile, close to dying.
The plane’s bombardier, who had enough training to actually fly the plane and maybe land it, bailed out early, preferring the certainty of capture to the probability of death. Of the ten crew members, only three remained on board in the last, fatal seconds.
From the Glatton control tower, Col. Eugene Romig twice ordered Mathies and navigator Lieutenant Truemper to save themselves by parachuting to safety. Twice, the order was declined. In charge of the plane and speaking for the lieutenant, Sergeant Mathies told the colonel they wouldn’t abandon Nelson, no matter what.
In the end, all three died. After two aborted landing attempts, Mathies steered the plane down to an open field, where it splintered into pieces and erupted in flames.
Today, a granite remembrance to Mathies’ bravery stand a few hundred yards off Route 88 in Library. Abutting a trolley stop, the memorial is a little more than a half-dozen miles from his adopted hometown Finleyville.
In 1946, Archie’s body was returned to the United States. He claims a piece of American soil at Finleyville Cemetery.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.