Life quickly fell into a routine at Cape Luna. Nate was up at five in the morning for parade and barracks inspection. Then there was breakfast before the troops were marched out to learn all the skills necessary for fighting a war. They did fitness training and learned survival skills. By lights-out, Nate would fall into bed exhausted, but he was always up the next morning ready to go.
Whenever he got the chance, Nate went into town to church. News soon spread that he was a Christian, and other Christians sought him out to pray with them. Nate also arranged Bible studies for other Christians in his unit.
All the while, Nate never gave up on his dream of flying, even though he knew it wasn’t easy to get flying jobs in the U.S. Army. Still, his persistence paid off, and he was accepted into a training program in Los Angeles. In the program he would learn to work on the C-47 cargo planes that the military used to transport men and supplies. At the training school, Nate studied in class from two in the afternoon until one o’clock in the morning. He learned all he could, and after graduating from the training program in March 1943, he was sent to an Army base in the Mojave Desert to work on C-47s. From there he was sent to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri.
All this moving around got a little tiresome. Nate had been in the army for only four months, and already he’d been from New York to New Mexico to California and now to Missouri. Sometimes he felt like he barely had time to unpack all his things before he got his orders to move on to his next assignment. He figured that if he kept that pace up, he could well see the entire United States at Uncle Sam’s expense. But as much as he liked to see new places and new things, bouncing around from one place to another had its share of problems. Mail, for example, usually took a while to catch up to him. Sometimes letters went to two or three places before he received them.
Jefferson Barracks was a crossroad for many soldiers who were shipped in to learn important things about fighting in a war and then were shipped out all over the world to fight for the United States.
Nate enjoyed learning new things, especially if it was hands-on and not just from a book. In St. Louis, he learned how to survive a gas attack and use a variety of weapons safely. While he didn’t like the idea of ever using a gun in a real battle, he enjoyed learning how guns worked. Once the soldiers understood how the various guns and rifles worked, they were expected to be able to take them completely apart and put them back together again without help or instruction manuals. Nate went one step further: He practiced until he could strip the guns down and put them back together in the dark! It wasn’t difficult for a kid who’d been pulling his mother’s appliances and clocks apart since he was a small boy.
Finally, after several months at Jefferson Barracks, Nate got the letter he’d been waiting for since enlisting in the army. The letter was addressed to “Saint, Nathaniel. 28th Training Group.” Nate’s hands trembled as he opened it. He took a deep breath before unfolding the letter. To his delight, the letter read, “You have been accepted into the Air Cadet Training Program. Please report to Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa, at 2100 hours on June 12, 1943.”
“Yippee!” Nate let out in a yell of excitement that brought his friends to see what was up. He showed them the letter. Finally, he was going to get to fly for the U.S. Army!
Nate hardly had time to pack his things and write to his parents before he was on his way to Sioux City, Iowa. As the train chugged along, he sat with fifty other cadets, but his thoughts were far away. He thought back to his first flight with Sam. It had been so exciting to feel the wind rustle through his hair and whistle around his ears. And it felt like electricity running through his body when Sam banked the plane and Nate looked down on the Delaware River from three thousand feet up. Now, thirteen years later, he was on his way to become an Army pilot. His dream was about to come true. He felt that same electricity in his body. Nothing would stop him now.
Chapter 3
A Different Kodachrome Slide
“Hup two, hup two, hup two.” Nate marched along to the rhythmic chant of the drill sergeant. He had been at Morningside College in Sioux City for three months now. The routine was tough but bearable. There were endless lectures and tests, fitness exercises, duties, and drills like the night march he was on. But it was all worth it, and now he was only two days away from beginning the best part of all: flight training.
As he marched in time with the other cadets across the darkened parade ground and around behind the mess hall, Nate thought of all the possibilities that lay ahead of him. The war was going strong; American and English troops had invaded and captured Sicily, and now they were preparing for an invasion of Italy. In the Pacific, American troops were forcing the Japanese back island by island. Many people thought there was a good chance the war would be over before long. Nate wondered if he might not even get to experience active duty. But even if he didn’t, he knew his training would land him a good job as a commercial pilot. Perhaps Sam might be able to help him get into American Airlines. How exciting that would be; instead of greasing and fueling the planes, he would be piloting them.
By now, all the cadets were lined up behind the mess hall for a final inspection before being dismissed for supper. As usual, the food was terrible. Nate often joked that if the army served up dirty dishwater, most of the soldiers would have a hard time recognizing that it wasn’t soup. Still, he was hungry, and he ate what he needed before heading for bed and a good night’s sleep.
His roommate, Bob Bjorklund, was already in bed when he got to the room. Nate wished him goodnight and sat on the edge of his cot. He pulled off his boots, and then his socks. He didn’t know exactly why his right leg felt a little sore. He figured he must have bumped it during the march. Standing up, he pulled off his trousers, and as he did, his heart fell. The impossible had happened. There was a red swelling around the old osteomyelitis scar on his leg. It could mean only one thing: the infection was back.
Without saying a word to Bob, Nate took off the rest of his clothes and got into bed. He pulled the blanket tight around his body, hoping that in some magical way it would keep out not only the cold but also his thoughts. In the dark of the night, though, the thoughts seeped into his head. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that his flying days were over before they had begun. Hot tears welled up in his eyes and slid silently across his cheeks and onto the pillow. Years of anticipation drained out of him with the tears. It was over, all over. The next morning Nate did what he knew he had to do. He reported to the base doctor, who told him what he already knew—the osteomyelitis was back.
The following day was his twentieth birthday, but instead of going to the airport for his first day of flying with the other cadets, he bid them farewell from outside his barracks. He took a snapshot of them all smiling in anticipation of the flying that lay ahead. Then Nate climbed into an Army jeep and was taken to the hospital for x-rays. It was a birthday he did not want to remember, but one he knew he would never forget.
He wrote a letter to his parents and told them the disappointing news. He wrote: “The way the situation has changed during the last couple of days reminds me of that dog in Bryn Athyn that used to chase me when I rode past with my newspapers. I remember how he put it in reverse the day I dropped a firecracker in front of him. He skidded about ten feet forward while running backward before he stopped….I’ve just stopped—which direction I’ll take off, I don’t know.”
He folded the letter and enclosed the snapshot of the other cadets on their way to the airport. He marked a little “x” where he would have been positioned if he’d been with them. But he wasn’t with them, and there was nothing he could do about it. Life would have to go on. Despite his disappointment, somewhere deep inside he knew God had things under control, and in God he would trust.
The x-rays confirmed that Nate’s osteomyelitis had indeed flared up again. It quickly settled down again, too, but a man with a medical problem could not be considered for duty overseas. The doctor stamped “Disqualified for Combat Crew Duty” on his record, and that was the end of the matter. The army would never train him to fly now if he couldn’t go into combat in an airplane.
For the next month, Nate was assigned to nonflying duties. Without the pressure of study or preparing to fly, he had a lot of time on his hands. He spent much of it reading and praying. One magazine he liked to read was Reader’s Digest, and in the August 1943 issue he read about a new “wonder drug” called penicillin, which reportedly was able to stop infections. Nate thought of his osteomyelitis and that it was too bad penicillin hadn’t been discovered ten years earlier when he first needed it.
After a month, Nate was transferred yet again, this time to Amarillo, Texas, where he was made the barracks chief in charge of fifty men. It turned out to be a lot harder work than he’d imagined, getting fifty men up and inspected each morning, but he enjoyed the challenge. Nate found a group of Christian men in the barracks and developed friendships with them. He also inspired several other soldiers to renew their commitment to God.
Again, with the pressure of study off, Nate had plenty of spare time, and the Army base at Amarillo seemed to Nate to be the most boring place on earth. Nate needed something to keep him busy and take his mind off not being an army pilot. Thankfully, one of the other soldiers introduced him to the base’s photography department, which had a large darkroom and camera equipment available for soldiers to use free of charge. Nate took to photography. He loved both the artistic side of it—getting just the right light and the right camera angle for a shot—and the practical side, mixing chemicals and developing his film and photographs in the darkroom. Nate’s favorite subjects to photograph were people going about their daily routines. He made photos of enlisted men polishing their boots, sergeants driving jeeps, cooks mixing biscuits. No one on base escaped the attention of Nate Saint and his camera.
Nate also used his spare time to write long, interesting letters. It was hard for him to believe a year had gone by since he’d signed up in New York. Now he was about to spend his first Christmas away from home. In a letter to his parents written just before Christmas 1943, he said: “Two fellows just closed the barracks door, leaving me alone….They left a radio on and I can hear distantly, ‘O Come Let Us Adore Him.’ There’s snow on the ground and the stars are glittering clearly—like gems on black velvet, illuminated by a great hidden light….” He went on in the letter to tell how he was about to be transferred yet again. “They have made up special orders for me to proceed to Fort Wayne, Indiana. If flying is ‘out,’ I want to be useful in some way. It will feel good to get greasy, get a few callouses, skin my knuckles on a gadget, hurry to get ’er ready to go on time, and go to bed really tired again.”
Once again, Nate settled into a new routine, this time at Baer Field in Fort Wayne. He was a crew chief working on C-47 transport aircraft. It was an interesting job, but just as in Amarillo, he had a lot of spare time.
One of the soldiers he worked with had just qualified for his license as a class E airplane mechanic. Until then, Nate had not been aware that the army would help mechanics become better qualified for other positions. It was an opportunity too good to miss, so Nate, who had left his apprenticeship at American Airlines early, now threw himself into studying for his class E aircraft mechanic’s license.
When he needed a break from study, he would drive over to the Winona Lake Bible Conference grounds about forty miles east of Fort Wayne. Nate’s older brother Phillip, who had become a well-known artist and evangelist, often spoke there. The two brothers spent many happy evenings talking together around the campfire. It was just like old times on the roof back in Huntingdon.
