Page 90 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2024 - Online Magazine

Charles Baldwin A Pilot, a Poet, and
a Pleasure
by Jane Bromley
January 1922. He
still remembers
watching the
brick being laid
on the streets of
Brownfield. When
the store closed in
1929 because of
the Depression,
Charles’ dad
and grandfather
opened a
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and Baldwin’s clothing
danced the skies on laughter silvered wings …;” store in Artesia
NM. That’s where
Charles and his
he line from the famous sister grew up.
poem by John Magee, Jr. is a
Tfavorite of Charles Baldwin, He graduated from Artesia High
and On Laughter-Silvered Wings is School in 1939 and attended UNM
the title of a book he penned about for two years. He enlisted in CPT
his experiences as a fighter pilot in (Civil Pilot Training) in the Air
the European Theater in WWII. Corps Reserves and later joined
the Army Air Corps as an aviation
Just a few months from now, Mr. cadet. He was called up to active
Baldwin will celebrate his 100th duty in 1943. After basic training
birthday. The gentleman is a at Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls,
history buff and has experienced he was sent to the University of
firsthand so many of the events the Wichita, Kansas, then to SAAC
rest of us have only read about. Field in San Antonio. His flight
training continued at Vernon
Charles’ dad worked for a chain TX, Garden City KS, Victoria
of dry goods stores and moved his TX, Richmond VA, and finally,
family to Brownfield shortly after Wilmington NC where he trained
Charles was born in Clarendon in on P47s. (The P-47 Thunderbolt’s
primary
armament
This article (from 2021) is the eighth of was eight
.50-caliber
ten articles we are reprinting to celebrate machine
Senior Link's decade of honoring area guns, and it
veterans. could also be
equipped with
90 Lubbock Senior Link
rockets or bombs.)
He had hoped to be sent to the
Pacific because so many of his
Artesia buddies (25-30) had been
killed or captured by the Japanese
while deployed in the Philippines.
Instead, he and his unit sailed to
Scotland aboard the refitted British
luxury liner, the RMS Aquitania.
“I was seasick the whole way.”
The squadron met up with their
unit in Belgium and soon began
flying missions to assist in the
Battle of the Bulge – the largest and
bloodiest single battle fought by
the U.S. in World War II.
Later, the P47s were moved to a
base near Aachen, Germany. As the
Allies advanced, the strategy was
to get the fighters closer, so their
trips would be shorter. “By that
time, the battle line was moving
fast,” so they moved again to an
airstrip near Koblenz. On April
21, 1945, the unit made their final
move to the large German airbase
at Kassel and continued air assaults
until the German capitulation. In
all, the fighter pilot had flown 52
missions.
The area around Kassel was
wooded and mountainous. During
their time off, Charles and his
buddies were able to hunt and fish.