Update: March 15, 2025   I was moved to touch up and repost this after receiving the latest issue of "Lightning Strikes!", the P-38 National Association's magazine, published three times a year. This issue includes Association historian Steve Blake's fascinating story on the 25th and 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadrons. More information about the P-38 National Association, which honors the single-seat, twin engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning as "The Plane That Changed the Course of History," is at https://p38assn.org/          "Madison Gillaspey never came back." A WWII  story of love and loss       Irene Smith at the grave of Madison Gillaspey at the Keokuk (Iowa) National Cemetery. As Irene Eck, she was engaged to Gillaspey, shown at right as a P-38 pilot in the Pacific.                   I've received considerable gratifying reaction to my World War II research and writing, including from Third Down and a War to Go: The All-American 1942 Wisconsin Badgers since its hardback publication in 2004, and then the appearance of a new, updated and revised Third Down and a War to Go trade paperback in 2007.    I've been perhaps the most touched by hearing from two women whose fiancés I wrote about and were killed in action.  Arlene Bahr, at one point a nosy reporter for the University of Wisconsin student newspaper, was informally engaged to former Badgers tackle Bob Baumann -- my father's teammate -- when the Marine first lieutenant was killed in the Battle of Okinawa on June 6, 1945.   After Third Down's hardback publication, Arlene Bahr Chander contacted me in 2006 and I was able to get what she told me in the paperback. Read about Arlene and Bob here. I also was able to speak with the former Irene Eck, who was engaged to P-38 pilot Madison Gillaspey (above), my father's tentmate in the 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron.    The pilots flew the single-seat, twin-engine Lockheed "Lightning" planes over enemy targets, taking pictures in advance of bombing runs. The P-38s were modifed in F-4 or F-5 versions, with cameras replacing the guns. (Jerry Frei flew 67 missions. "I always say I wasn't unarmed," he often noted. "I had a pistol.")     My Dad had told me of how a small group of flyers in the 26th Photo Squadron, grouped together by the accident of the alphabet, had become  close. Ed Crawford, Jerry Frei, Don Garbarino, Madison Gillaspey and Ruffin Gray. They made a pact that they all would come through the war alive. Because of an alphabet cutoff after training Gray ended up with another unit, but he remained in touch. On February 21, 1945, my father caught up to his unit, by then at Lingayen in the Philippines, after a brief leave. He saw one of the P-38s taking off. Here's what he told me, years later, and this ended up in Third Down and a War to Go: “I asked one of our people, ‘Who’s that?’ He said it was Madison Gillaspey, and he was going on a low-level mission to Ipo Dam. I went over to the squadron area, to the others’ tent. It always was Ed Crawford, Don Garbarino, Madison Gillaspey, and me. But while I was gone, they’d moved another pilot in with them when they got to Lingayen, so I was going to go get a cot and be the fifth.” He didn’t have to get the cot. “Madison Gillaspey never came back,” Jerry Frei said. “No one ever knew what happened, but we lost two planes over Ipo Dam." I heard from Irene Eck Smith and her daughter, Cindy Smith of Montrose, Iowa, in 2012.    Cindy told me she had come across  my November 2000 Denver Post story that served as the starting point for Third Down and a War to Go. She had been searching for information on Madison Gillaspey.   She started checking after attending an air show in Burlington with her mother. When it was announced that the third Friday in September was an annual day of remembrance for American POW and MIA, Irene was moved to tell her daughter more about losing her fiancee during World War II. Madison Gillaspey. Irene called him "Bud." Madison and Irene Eck attended high school together in Argyle, Iowa, were long-time sweethearts and were engaged to be married. While he was serving in the Pacific, she took flight lessons and was on the verge of taking a solo flight as a pilot herself when she got word that Madison was missing in action and presumed dead. Irene told her daughter that she was heartbroken and never flew again. Irene eventually met and married Cindy's father, Wendell Smith, and taught grade school for many years.  My dad remained in touch with the other men in that tent over the years. As did Irene, they missed Madison Gillaspey, too. Irene Smith and her daughter both have passed away.     Here's Argyle, Iowa, High's Class of '41, with both Irene and Madison. They're in the top row. Irene is the second from left, Madison is at the right. Gillaspey's tentmates: Don Garbarino. He was from Portland, and his raves about his hometown made an impression on Jerry Frei, who after his 1948 graduation from Wisconsin moved to Portland with his young wife, Marian, and broke into coaching as an assitant at Grant High School. "Don Garbarino had't told me it rained a lot in Portland," my father later told me.    Ed Crawford Jerry Frei