For years, a section of a wall inside Cool Springs Camp near Kingman, Arizona, paid tribute to Tech Sgt. Thomas Walker, who went missing during a bombing run over Germany in 1944 and later was declared dead. Walker’s parents, Tom and Mary, owned Cool Springs Camp from 1936 to 1940.
A visitor to Cool Springs Camp saw the display and decided to do some deep-dive research. He eventually uncovered evidence that strongly suggests Walker was captured by Nazi soldiers and executed in a wooded area, though his body never was found.
Current Cool Springs Camp owner Ned Leuchtner passed along the uncovered information to Walker’s younger brother, Chuck, who expressed sadness reading the details of his brother’s likely death but also was pleased to get some closure. Chuck never was made aware of that information until recently, and Thomas’ widow died about 10 years ago.
The following details were pieced together with an email chain from Leuchtner and telephone interview, plus links citing official documents about Thomas Walker’s disappearance.
About 20 years ago, Leuchtner heard about the case of MIA Thomas Walker. Moved, he pieced together a collection of newspaper clippings and other memorabilia of a man who helped run his family’s Route 66 business during the late 1930s. Leuchtner displayed the items on a portion of an interior wall of Cool Springs Camp for years. A caretaker without permission dismantled the display a few years ago, but Leuchtner vowed he would put them up again.
Dave Nauman, seeing the display, decided to do more research about Walker’s final mission. He found this website that compiles data about military personnel from official National Archives sources, contemporary news accounts, logbooks, diaries, reference books and interviews.
Ralph Snape conducted the research for a story involving Walker and published it in 2019.
On Aug. 14, 1944, Walker’s B-17G crew made a bombing run to Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, Germany. Enemy flak damaged their aircraft, causing the pilot to lose control. Six of the crew, including Walker, bailed out near Nazi-occupied Strasbourg, France, which borders Germany. Another three crew members bailed out 600 kilometers west near Le Mans, France, when the plane ran out of fuel.
Five of the airmen who bailed out near Strasbourg were captured and taken to a POW camp. No official documents list the fate of Walker.
After France was liberated later that year, the fate of an American airman who had parachuted from a crippled aircraft in the Strasbourg area on Aug. 14, 1944, was investigated by U.S. authorities.
The investigation prompted a General Military Government Court after the war in 1947. The court charged German soldiers Otto Friederich Isenmann and Karl Josef Rebel for their role in the killing of an unknown Army soldier who had been captured as a POW.
“The location and timing of this murder makes it possible this case relates to T/Sgt. Thomas J. Walker,” Snape writes in his report.
The court heard that on Aug. 14, 1944, an American airman parachuted from a crippled plane near Kolbsheim, France, just west of Strasbourg, and was given shelter by a French family. Isenmann and Rebel were notified of the soldier’s whereabouts, went to the home and arrested him. Rebel also assaulted the airman, reportedly without provocation, while taking him into custody.
The court heard that Isenmann was told by his superiors that captured enemy soldiers should be handed over to the Gestapo or SS, who would arrange to have them killed. The airman was taken to nearby Wolfisheim, France, where he was held under guard in the Gendarmerie building.
“Early the next morning at about 0200 hours Isenmann was notified of the arrival of people from Strasbourg,” Snape wrote. “When he arrived at the Gendarmerie building he saw a number of men in civilian clothing and one in uniform. The airman was handed over to them by Isenmann after which they left with the airman in custody. Later that morning Rebel was informed that someone had been killed in a wooded area about 1½ miles from Wolfisheim. Upon arriving at the location he discovered the body of the airman.”
The court rejected Isenmann and Rebel’s defense they were unaware that handing over the airman would result in his death. Isenmann initially was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years, and he was paroled in 1954. Rebel received a 10-year prison term and was paroled in 1951.
“No evidence has been found that the actual killers were identified, arrested or held to account for the murder of T/Sgt. Thomas J. Walker,” Snape stated in his report.
Walker’s burial site remains unknown, and he still is officially listed as Missing in Action. He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in Epinal American Cemetery in Dinoze, France.
Walker’s wife, Opal, died in 2011 at age 94, never knowing the fate of her husband. Walker’s son, Randall, was born the same year he disappeared.
“Although Tom saw pictures of Randy, he never did see him in person,” Chuck Walker wrote in an email. “The last time we saw Tom, our Dad, Stepmother, Jim, and I visited an airbase located near Alexandria, LA, just before Tom’s squadron was deployed to the UK. (1944?) we met Opal at that time. She was expecting their first baby.”
Opal remarried in 1947. Her second husband, Maurice, died in 1980.
Chuck Walker concluded his email: “Although this info revisits heart rendering memories, it is somewhat comforting to know more about what happened to Tom, brutal as it was! This new info takes away all the wondering about what happened to Tom, and helps bring closure to Tom’s demise. Many thanks to Ned Leuchtner (current owner of our Cool Springs Station on old Route 66) for sending these links along to us and for the individual who brought this to Ned’s attention – whom know nothing about except for the info in this email.”
Cool Springs opened on U.S. 66 in the 1920s, declined when another alignment of Route 66 was built to the east in the 1950s, and burned to the ground in the mid-1960s, leaving nothing but the foundations. The remains were used in a scene in a 1992 Jean-Claude Van Damme film, “Universal Soldier.”
Leuchtner fell in love with the site during a Route 66 trip in 1997 and spent several years trying to buy the property and another three years rebuilding Cool Springs Camp to its original appearance. It reopened in December 2004 and remains open to this day.
(Image of the Thomas Walker memorial at Cool Springs Camp and image of Thomas Walker and his brother Jim in 1936 courtesy of Ned Leuchtner; an image of Thomas Walker from a newspaper clipping via the Aircrew Remembered website)
A sad story about the fate of the airman, but wonderful that someone did the legwork to uncover this history.