A Bit of "Bumph"

Going to depart the program here a little. Yesterday, I went to Cahokia, IL or more specifically St. Louis Downtown Airport. This airport has two very old hangars that were once owned by the Curtis Wright Aircraft Company. These hangars are on the Register of National Historic Landmarks and one of them currently houses a small museum dedicated to the history of aviation in the St. Louis and Metro East areas. Group 1 was running cadet orientation flights out of the museum and I went up to see the activity and talk to Lt. Col. Hertel, the group commander. Anyway, after I finished my business, I headed down to Fairview Heights to the Borders book store. I casually checked out their history section but there was nothing that really jumped out and said "Buy Me!!" Then as I was getting ready to go another section of the store, I looked down at one of the display tables and got real excited. There on the table was the newly released autobiography of BG Robin Olds, the legendary fighter wing commander from the Vietnam War. I started reading it as soon as I got out of the store and for most of this weekend, I haven't been able to put it down.

I got to the chapter of the book that talks about Olds' exchange tour with No. 1 Squadron of the RAF in the late 40's. The first day that he meets the squadron commander, Tommy Burne, tells Olds "...I'll expect you'll want to buzz off to the adjutant's office and get read in on the squadron bumph...." Olds had no idea what "bumph" was until he got to the adjutant's office and found four leather bound volumes that were a handwritten history of the squadron along with photos that were included along with other memorabilia from the past. These volumes also contained the names of everyone who had ever served in the unit. These were not the dry statistical histories that many USAF units produced but the product of men with a deep sense of history. As Olds put it, "...bumph. It meant history, pride, and tradition; something to know and to feel; a basis for my own devotion to duty within the squadron."

That is the kind of history I want to put in this blog. Not the dry statistics but the pride, dedication, and camaraderie that made Franklin County Composite Squadron such a special place to be. FIDO!

Note: The quotations came from Fighter Pilot, the Memoirs of Legendary Fighter Ace Robin Olds by Robin Olds with Christina Olds and Ed Rasimus, St. Martins Press, 2010.

Photo: Wikipedia article on BG Robin Olds.