Robert E. Collins

Born 5 October 1923. Draft card lists the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and a boss named Lewis Scruggs. Not yet twenty when he registered. The ball turret of a B-17 became his job instead. The group’s compilation puts him in that seat from Chemnitz on, except three mornings in April: Kaltenkirchen, München-Riem, and Burg. Donald J. Wilcox flew the ball those days. Collins is back on the roster for Oranienburg, and for the food. His twenty-eight is twenty-five combat plus the three drops. Frank’s twenty-eight is combat only. Two men on the same crew, both credited with twenty-eight, and the twenty-eights are made of different missions. Neither is wrong. Serial 37: Seventh Service Command. Hutchinson, Kansas. The names are in the record. The reason he missed those three mornings is not.

Signed the Hunter Field shipping ticket of 13 December 1944 in a hand consistent with the draft card. Later life is otherwise thin in the record.

Nine men, four totals. The compilation’s count, beside the other eight.