Last Saturday, 86-year-old Frank “Burt” Vardeman put on his Tuskegee Airmen cap, got into his Buick with his wife of 63 years, Martha, and headed over to the Northlake Festival Movie Tavern in Tucker to see if his memories had been interpreted correctly on the screen.
As the couple stood in line to buy tickets for the movie “Red Tails,” Vardeman noticed the curious stares he got. It was clear from his cap that he was going to see the George Lucas film about the Tuskegee Institute-trained fighter pilots and the pivotal role those African-Americans played in World War II.
“But they were wondering, ‘What’s this white guy doing with a Tuskegee Airmen’s hat on,’” Vardeman said.
The “Red Tails,” as they were called because of the distinctive red paint on the rear of the planes, were charged with protecting bomber aircraft on missions into Nazi territory.
Vardeman was a young radio operator on some of those B-24 Liberator bombers.
He’s one of a dwindling number of veterans who remembers the feeling of relief brought on by the sight of one of those red tails.
Of course, the Red Tails weren’t the only escort unit to accompany the 824th Bombardment Squadron during the war. In fact, what posed the greatest danger to Vardeman’s unit was flak from anti-aircraft guns — not enemy fighter planes, Vardeman said.
Amid his service medals and military memorabilia is a print of a painting depicting the Red Tails on a mission protecting one of the B-24s. It’s displayed prominently in the paneled basement office of his brick rambler. He is not a tall man, but an upright one who still rises at 5 a.m. each day to work out. His memories of that long ago time are keen.
“Before we’d go on a mission, we’d go to a briefing in this big auditorium,” Vardeman began. “They’d show us a map with our targets, and they’d also show us, ‘At this point your fighter escort is going to join you.’
“And because they’d come in up above us, you didn’t always see them immediately,” Vardeman said.
As he told the story, for a moment it seemed he was back there. He brought his hand up to within an inch of his mouth.
“‘Pilot to crew. Pilot to crew. Do you see our fighter protection yet?’”
When they did come into view, it was usually a white face in the fighter pilot seat. Until one day when Vardeman looked out and saw a P-51 cruising by the side of his bomber.
“And I saw this black face,” Vardeman said.
The other members of his crew were from Queens and Brooklyn, N.Y., and Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota. Vardeman was the lone Southerner, the son of a Georgia cotton buyer from Covington. His crew members thought he would be near apoplectic at the sight of a black man flying a plane. But if there was one thing his father taught him as a young man, it was to treat people fairly, no matter what.
“I imagine there were boys who were irritated, but I just wasn’t,” Vardeman said. “I was just happy for the protection.”
On one of his early missions over the Adriatic Sea, the engines on his bomber began to fail. A crash seemed certain. But off in the distance past the coast of Italy, the pilot saw an airstrip. It was the one used by the Tuskegee Airmen. The plane made a rough emergency landing, tangling the metal mesh covering the runway. No one was seriously hurt, but Vardeman’s squad spent four nights on the Tuskegee base.
There wasn’t a lot of mingling, but “they were real nice to us,” Vardeman said. “They put us up in bunks, fed us. We’d go in their day room to play cards or ping pong. I developed a real appreciation for them.”
He has tried to show it in the years since. He participated in a National Park Service video honoring the airmen, representing the perspective of the bomber crew, he said. On a Memorial Day visit with his daughter in Raleigh a few years ago, she helped orchestrate a meeting with some of the surviving members of the Red Tails, as well as a member of his bomber group who lived in Chapel Hill. That’s when one of the airmen presented him with the Tuskegee Airmen Red Tail Angels cap.
But the greatest tribute came in September 2010 at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Alabama. On behalf of the surviving members of his bomber group, he made a presentation of a series of paintings like the one in his study. Done by a Navy illustrator, the paintings depict what are said to have been actual Red Tails missions.
Clicking through photos of the event on his computer, Vardeman pointed out four men in blue blazers seated in the front of the crowd; Tuskegee Airmen. He teared up.
“Being able to go there and do that for them, to say ‘Thank you,’ that was one of the highlights of my life,” he said.
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