Love and Radar: A Wartime Correspondence

Ray makes officer and comes home from his Christmas retreat.  He’s being moved to Boca Raton Fla.

Transcript

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Second Lieutenant Raymond J. Conan is hunched over a small wooden table in a barracks somewhere in Oklahoma, the scratch of a borrowed pencil the only sound against the December chill of 1944. He's writing to Shirley Rutledge, a bank teller back in Chicago, and he has just managed to avoid the washout. He tells her he passed his flight check and his first comprehensive exam. But the real news, the thing that's making him do the occasional handspring, is that he didn't just make flight officer, he made second lieutenant. Ray Conan, as of 10 o'clock that coming Saturday, will be an officer in the United States Army Air Forces. He tells her the name Lieutenant R. J. Conan sounds pretty, but you can feel the real weight of it behind the playful swagger. He is a bombardier trained to drop death from 20,000 feet with the precision of a surgeon, and for a moment the war feels like something he's winning, even before he's left the ground. The letters Ray sent to Shirley, now being transcribed by their granddaughter, decades later, are a window into the strange, suspended reality of the stateside trainee. In Tulsa, where Ray was likely stationed or passing through, the war was a physical presence. The Douglas Aircraft Company's bomber plant was a windowless, mile-long monolith where 23,000 workers were rolling out a fresh B-24 Liberator every 19 hours. The city was a hive of aluminum and rivets, and Ray was right in the center of it, waiting for a train that would take him home for Christmas. He tells Shirley he thinks the train pulls in to the Union Depot on Christmas night, 9 30 p.m. He's obsessed with the details of her health, warning her to wear her long woolens and rubbers, even suggesting an onion poultice or a mustard plaster. It's the frantic, helpless care of a man who knows he's about to be sent into a void where he can't protect anyone, least of all the woman he loves. By January eighth, nineteen forty five, the holiday is over and the reality of the machine has set back in. Ray is back at the field, two thousand miles away from Chicago, and he's feeling the weight of the army again. He writes that he and the army are going around together again and calls it a horrible combination, because they have so little in common. The sun is shining, the flight line is quiet, but Ray is restless. He spent the day straightening his gear, an old military habit of order in a world of chaos, and he's waiting for orders that will define the rest of his life. He's already thinking about the end, writing that he just wants to get the damned thing over with. The liquor from the train ride back has worn off, leaving only the eddy current of a lingering hangover and the sharp, focused ache of missing her. A week later, the orders arrive and they carry the scent of salt air and high-stakes secrecy. Ray's being sent to Boca Raton, Florida to work with what he calls more military secrets. At the time, Boca Raton Army Airfield was the site of a revolutionary and top secret technology, airborne radar. This wasn't just another training ground, it was a ghost base. The army had seized nearly 6,000 acres of land, displacing hundreds of Japanese farmers from the Yamato colony, and turning the town of 700 people into a garrison of 16,000 troops. The mission was so classified that students were forbidden from taking notes in class, and the word radar itself could get you court-martialed. Ray doesn't tell Shirley the specifics, he can't, but he calls himself lucky, not because of the secret weapon he's about to master, but because Boca Ratone is a resort town near Palm Beach, and he's already plotting a way to get her there. His letter from January 22nd is a masterpiece of wartime scheming. He's raising a bankroll to get his mother and brother, Miles, down to Florida, and he's begging Shirley to join them. He paints a picture of a civilian life lived on the fringes of a world at war. He tells her they can hobnob with the natives, sit in the lobbies of expensive Miami Beach hotels like the newly built Sherry Frontenac, or wander down Lincoln Road. In 1945, Lincoln Road was the Fifth Avenue of the South, lined with sacks and Bonwitt Teller, a strip of pure Art Deco glamour that felt a world away from the grease and grit of a bomber's cockpit. He jokes about stealing a goat to get her milk, and asks if she likes kosher corn beef on rye from the delis on the beach. It's a dream of normalcy, a vision of deep sea fishing and fifteen cent movies at the post theater, all balanced on the edge of a deployment he knows is coming. But the war never stays in the background for long. In the same letter where he talks about sunbathing and hamburgers, Ray mentions a man named Bill. It's a rotten deal, he says. Bill is missing, likely separated from his company. Ray's tone shifts instantly from the playful lover to the hardened second lieutenant. He tells Shirley to tell Carol, Bill's wife, not to give up. She's a soldier's wife and should be proud. He expects a great deal from her, and she better not let him down. It's a harsh, sudden reminder of the stakes. Ray is a bombardier. His job is to look through the glass of a Norden bombsite and calculate the exact moment to release tons of explosives. He knows that soon he won't be writing about corned beef or goats. He'll be part of the same machinery that swallowed Bill. As Ray packs his bags for Florida, the excitement in his handwriting is palpable. He tells Shirley he doesn't just love her, he doggone it likes her too. It's a simple, profound admission of friendship, in a time when most relationships were being reduced to frantic telegrams and blurred photographs. He's heading to a base where he'll spend 20 hours a day learning to see through clouds and darkness using radio waves, preparing for the missions that will eventually take him over the Atlantic and beyond. But for now, he's just a young man from Michigan with a fresh set of bars on his shoulders, hoping for one more walk on a Florida beach with a girl from Chicago before the sky claims him for good. The letters of Ray Conan are a testament to the quiet, stubborn endurance of the human heart in a world dedicated to its destruction. If you found this glimpse into their story moving, consider sharing this episode with someone who appreciates the hidden histories of the people who lived through it.