With His Boots On

President Roosevelt last week awarded World War II's 43rd Congressional Medal of Honor. The citation: "for conspicuous leadership" and "personal valor and intrepidity at an extreme hazard to life." The recipient: Brigadier General Kenneth N. Walker, Air Forces. But General Walker was not at the White House to receive the medal. He had been missing in action in the Southwest Pacific since January.

When he arrived at Port Moresby on his 44th birthday last July, Ken Walker was a sight. In contrast to the bronzed, grimy pilots of his new command, breezy little General Walker was pale from his months in the Army War Plans Division at Washington. His huge sunglasses made him look like a long-nosed owl. Like most airmen in the Pacific, he wore shorts but, like no one the airmen had ever seen, he also wore leather riding boots.

The pilots soon discovered that Ken Walker was no long-nosed owl. He went on three bombing missions the first day, in three different types of bombers--and came back disgusted: "Hell, we didn't hit anything." Thereafter, he went on many another raid, figuring out ways to improve the score. When the bombardier dropped his bombs Ken Walker was up front watching him. And when the Zeros swarmed in, the general went back with the side gunners. Sometimes he manned a gun himself.

The best proof of Ken Walker's labors came on his 17th raid. That time his bombardiers and gunners sent nine Jap ships to the bottom of Rabaul Harbor. But the aircraft that failed to return from his most successful raid was the one the airmen's general was riding.

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