Garden City’s Untold Heroes

Leon Vance Jr

The following is part of a series commemorating the history of veterans in Garden City.

By Kyle Smith

Recently, I detailed the background of William Bradford Turner, the Garden City WWI Medal of Honor winner, a grandson of a Rhode Island governor and a distinguished Williams College alumnus. Some aspects of his impressive but unfortunately short life before being killed in the trenches of World War I were not generally known.

However my research into Mr. Turner, his background and exploits, also discovered another Garden City associated Medal of Honor winner. Leon Vance Jr was not a native of Garden City but wa born and raised in Enid Oklahoma, where his father was the local middle school principal and a flight instructor. His uncle wa a decorated WWI flyer who was killed in france.

A brilliant student and athlete, Mr. Vance attended Oklahoma University for two years and is still remembered and honored there. An Oklahoma Sooner magazine article recently detailed his life and time in Oklahoma and at OU. Always interested in flying through his father’s influence, leon Vance Jr. transferred to the United States Military Academy (West Point) from where he graduated in 1939. the present United States Air force at that time was the US Army Air Corps.

Mr. Vance spent considerable time at Mitchell Air Base Uniondale and met a Garden City girl, Georgette Drury of Locust Street.

Love bloomed and on his graduation date (1939) from West Point they were married. You cannot be married and attend the service academies. Mr. Vance officially entered the military from Garden City where they lived with her parents at 106 Locust Street for sometime as his orders came through. He attended various Army and Air Corp courses, commands and air bases across the country in his first years of service. Georgette followed him on his postings and they had a daughter.

Dec 7 th 1941 bought war to America and his training and command postings accelerated. He went overseas with the 8 th Air Force in England and was assigned to heavy bombers (B 24 Liberators), rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (LTC). He was a mission commander on only his second combat flight when his life was forever altered.

For bravery and actions on the day before D Day, June 5, 1944, as detailed in his citation below, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Very badly wounded with a foot nearly severed, he saved his crew by keeping his disabled bomber, hit by antiaircraft fire, in the sky over France long enough to reach the English Channel and ditched the aircraft into the Channel. After a cold-water rescue, with the Allied invasion fleet proceeding across the channel to launch D Day, LTC Vance and his surviving crew members were returned to hospital in England.

According to Rick Nicolini Sr. of Garden City Locksmiths, who was a waist gunner on a similar WW2 B24 Liberator, the aircraft even in normal conditions was a good bird but a tough one to fly. Rick also mentioned that a water ditching was a very difficult maniuve, even a slight miscalculation would have the aircraft flip over to instant destruction. Rick himself had many missions with the 491 th Heavy Bombardment Group, also based in England and flew missions over France, Germany and holland. in the case of Holland, the B24s were used for low level supply drops to American and British paratroopers who were trapped behind German lines. This effort was highlighted in the movie A Bridge Too Far.

There is another aspect to the heroic nature of LTC Vance’s actions when he was shot down. LTC Vance’s unit was a heavy bomber group normally used to bomb strategic targets like German cities. Its use over France prior to d Day was to create as much damage to German troop concentrations and French bridges so as to prevent German reinforcements from reaching Normandy and the Allied beachheads planned for the very next day. The Germans knew that heavy bombers over France were doing something different and would have dearly loved to capture a high ranking officer involved in those heavy bomber missions.

LTC Vance was aware of the D Day invasion plans and knew that when his plane was severely hit that the easy course of action would be to bail out. However, besides saving his crew from death or capture, he also sought protect his knowledge of the invasion from being revealed to the enemy. When he was rescued from the English channel, the Allied invasion fleet was already on its way to Normandy.

However, LTC Vance’s story doesn’t end with this rescue, about a month later (July 26 th 1944) he was being medevaced to America due to the severity of his wounds. On this flight the plane and all aboard disappeared between Iceland and Newfoundland. A true America hero and onetime resident of Garden City was lost at sea along with all others on that flight. Perhaps because his time in Garden City was limited and his Garden City raised wife and he then departed to a series of military posts, Garden City has not been aware of his exploits. His official military records have his entry point of military service as Garden City and this would have been his own entry selection. In his native Oklahoma LTC Vance is a well-known hero; Vance Air force Base in enid Oklahoma is named after him.

Just last month, his daughter dedicated a new building at a Texas Air force base to both him and Major Harold Carswell. In a small world situation, Major Carswell and his wife socialized with LTC Vance and his wife while at wartime stateside posts. Major Carswell was also a Medal of Honor winner posthumously for actions in the Pacific with B 24’s. Garden City and America can be proud that we have persons of this caliber an continue to have them.