'Men of the Fighting Lady' based on Saturday Evening Post article by Camden naval officer

This year – 2019 - will mark 50 years since the passing of Camden’s Harry Anderson Burns Jr., who is perhaps best known for writing a Saturday Evening Post story that served as the basis of a major motion picture in 1954.

Born on Nov. 27 in 1917, Burns had a successful Navy career that saw him reach the rank of Commander, the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. During his naval career, Burns served in the Korean War and wrote a Saturday Evening Post article that allowed readers all over America to learn about one of the war’s most unusual incidents, “The Case of the Blind Pilot.”

Published in the Nov. 29, 1952 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, Burns’s article described how young Navy Skyraider pilot Kenneth Schechter was severely wounded on March 22, 1952 while flying over Wongsang-ni in North Korea. An enemy anti-aircraft shell exploded and shattered his cockpit, and while it didn’t kill Schechter, he was terribly wounded and left flying blind due to injuries to his eyes and face. As fate would have it, Schechter would live to fight another day.

His roommate aboard the USS Valley Forge was a young lieutenant named Howard Thayer, who heard Schechter radio, “I’m blind! For God’s sake, help me: I’m blind!” At that moment, Thayer was piloting another plane nearby and miraculously, over the radio, managed to guide his blind buddy safely back into friendly territory. It was there that Thayer talked him through a dangerous wheels-up landing at a small, nearly abandoned airstrip, that was manned by a skeleton crew of servicemen.

While all of this was going on, radio operators aboard the Valley Forge were recording the entire incident and later produced a transcript of Thayer’s skillful guidance of his blind friend. The above summary of Burns’s article is just a thumbnail version of this harrowing episode in Korean War history. To read the entire article by Burns, visit www.ussoriskany.us/Oriskany/omag/29%20Nov%2052.pdf.

Burns’s story also made a big splash in Hollywood when it was made into a feature film called “Men of the Fighting Lady,” which debuted in theatres on May 7, 1954. Burns also wrote the screenplay for the movie, which was directed by Andrew Marton and starred Dewey Martin as Schechter and Van Johnson as Thayer. Shot on a budget of under $830,000, the movie made millions at the box office.

Over the weekend, I read Burns’s original article several times and wanted to watch the movie for myself. Unfortunately, it’s not available on NetFlix, so I’m out of luck for now. I think it’s a good possibility that it could be available through some other movie services like Hulu or Amazon.

In any event, Burns retired from the Navy in the 1960s and lived out the remainder of his life in Camden. As things go, he died at the relatively young age of 51, passing away on April 13, 1969. His simple grave, which bears the inscription “Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea,” can be found near the far end of the historic Camden Cemetery, a short walk from the Fail Street side of the graveyard.