Veterans Day
Bringing Bobby Home
Sixty-six years after his B-24 went down over Germany, a young Army pilot was laid to rest in Illinois. In 2010, his great-niece told the story in Inweekly.
On Veterans Day, I like to go back into the Inweekly archives. Every year, one story rises to the top for me: “Bringing Bobby Home,” written by Sena Maddison and published in our pages in November 2010.
It’s the story of 2nd Lt. Robert “Bobby” Bishop, a 23-year-old Army pilot from Illinois who disappeared on April 29, 1944, during a massive bombing raid on Berlin. His family spent decades not knowing. The Army didn’t stop looking.
A Plane Without a Name
Bobby’s family had come to America from Maidstone, England. The war sent him back. He flew a B-24 Liberator out of Wendling in Norfolk, less than 200 miles from the town his family had left a generation earlier.
The raid on April 29 was only his second mission as a pilot. More than 600 B-17s and B-24s headed for Berlin’s rail system. Over Hannover, they ran into heavy German fire. “The Bishop Plane” never came back.
Sena noticed something in the records: every other bomber had a nickname, usually for a hometown sweetheart. Bobby’s was only ever called “The Bishop Plane.”
“Unless you thought its existence was fleeting; unless your time on this Earth was so short and your responsibility so huge that a name was too powerful a thing to utter at that moment.”
The Family Kept Waiting
His sister Connie never gave up. For years, she filed an Army change-of-address form every time she moved, so Bobby could find her when he came home. She died in 2004, four years before the Army called.
That call came in 2008. A German citizen had found remains at the crash site in Meitze in 2003. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command excavated the site in 2005, and investigators needed DNA from Sena’s father, Harry Maddison, Bobby’s nephew.
- They recovered part of Bobby’s jaw, five teeth, bone fragments and a fingernail.
- All 10 members of the crew were identified and brought home.
- Bobby’s dog tags were found melted and bent in two, with his name still readable.
Sept. 18, 2010
Bobby was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Rockford, Ill. Harry Maddison had been a boy waving goodbye on a cold Chicago street. He stood at the graveside at 76, a Korean War Navy corpsman himself.
“Nor did I ever realize the Army would not rest until this day. I have always known Bobby was with God…and now he is also here with us.”
- What makes the story more than a family history is the people Sena met along the way: the casualty assistance officer who had never done this before and said yes anyway, the chaplain who asked to lead the service, the Patriot Guard Riders standing in line, and Sgt. Timothy Brown, who drove the family back to Chicago while arranging another veteran’s funeral over the phone.
“A soldier’s funeral is his final duty to his country. So I will always be early, I will always be prepared.”
Read the full story: “Bringing Bobby Home” by Sena Maddison, Inweekly, Nov. 10, 2010
Today, take a few minutes with it. Then thank a veteran, and remember the ones who never made it home, and the people who keep working to bring them back.
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