Robert C. Wilson was the radioman on the Charles Blankenhorn crew. Robert's nephew sent copies of letters he sent home and some photos. Below are those letters:. Dear Fern, I hate in a way to start this, but I will see how it goes. It may sound like bragging, but it is not meant to be.
As I said before, have had a pretty exciting life and here is going to be some of it. When I was 17 yrs old, it was decided that I go to sea and that is what I did. I boarded the "President Polk" at San Pedro and went around the world on it. We hit 22 ports and I worked like a dog as an ordinary seaman for a dollar a day.
My memory of the trip reads like one of Hemingway's stories or books. Finally home to L. Some trip!!!! I went back to school and finished with graduation.
This was in All this at 17! After this I did several jobs and finally joined the Army and served there at Ft Mac Arthur for a couple of years. Bought myself out and went into machine shop woth in Hollywood. They sent me to radio school and a year or so later the war started. We started to go around the world the other way, destination , Austrailia.
On the way there, we stopped at many of the places you have probably been. Khartoum, Aden and the finally India. There we lost an engine and could not go on the the great sub-conitinent. By the this time the Japanese had Java and we could not get to Austrailia. This is only the start of things and I will send it an see what you think of it. Here goes!!!! Dear Fern, I think I left off as we got to India and were stuck there because of the blown engine. We replaced the engine with one out of a British fighter and then they blew the new one due to not changing the oil cooler, as I had suggested, and was ignored.
