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<em>Colonel Marshall Bonner</em> was born on July 17, 1911 in Houston, Texas, the son of Thomas Hubbard and Ala Perryman Bonner. He graduated from San Jacinto High School in Houston in 1929 and entered the United States Military Academy in the same year. He graduated from the Academy in June 1933, went through flying training at Randolph and Kelly Fields, receiving his wings in October 1934. On June 2, 1942, at the Army War College, he married Kay Fechet, daughter of Major General J. E. Fechet, former chief of the Air Corps. In February 1944 he left for overseas as Commanding Officer of the 464th Heavy Bomb Group, which he had trained at Pocatello, Idaho. On June 26, 1944 he led his group on a raid on the Shell-Florisdorfer Oil Refinery, at Florisdorf, a suburb of Vienna. His plane was hit by flak and he became missing in action. He was finally declared dead by the War Department on November 12, 1945. He was awarded the Silver Star, Air Medal, and the Purple Heart, all posthumously. He is survived by his wife, Kay Fechet Bonner; his mother; and his sister, Margaret Bonner.</p>
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Such is the record—brief, incomplete, cold, and heartbreaking. But Maxie’s life, though all too brief, was anything but incomplete, cold, or heartbreaking. His host of friends and total absence of enemies testify to the fact that no one could know Maxie without respecting him, admiring him, and loving him. Aside from being an outstanding officer and leader of men, he was, in a word, a gentleman.</p>
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There have been countless definitions written as to what a gentleman is. None is adequate, for the simple reason that a gentleman is the kind of man every other man looks up to as the kind of man he, himself, would like to be. To call a man a gentleman is, I think, to pay him the highest possible compliment. Maxie was a gentleman!</p>
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All who knew him know that, but not all know how completely he lived up to it. Though he never shouted religion from the “roof tops”, for in all things Maxie was modest and reserved, he lived up to the words of the Cadet Prayer as fully as any man I have ever known. Particularly did he guard against “flippancy and irreverence in the sacred things of life”, and was never “content with the half-truth when the whole could be won”.</p>
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In moral courage and physical courage he was never wanting. The former he displayed through his constantly unflinching hatred of all hypocrisy, pretense, intolerance, and Injustice. The latter he displayed most forcibly during the last days of his life while in combat, for he had gone on so many missions, and always the worst ones, that he had received orders to go only once a week. So he made it his practice to go only on Mondays. It was Monday, June 26, 1944 that Maxie did not return.</p>
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Little is known of Maxie’s last moments, but this much is known. The mission was, perhaps, the worst his group had encountered. His plane caught tire after being hit and shortly after, it exploded. Maxie was believed to have been the last to attempt to leave the ship, and it is also believed that he stopped, in the flaming ship, to assist the turret gunner who had been badly injured. Whether or not these are the exact facts will never be known, nor is it important. What is important is the fact that if Maxie did see the wounded gunner, you can rest assured that he most certainly did stop to help him. Maxie would never have done otherwise.</p>
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Then came the long days and weeks of waiting, and hoping, that Maxie had gotten safely out of the plane and would one day be with us again; days when we prayed over and over, “Not Maxie, he must come back”. At such times, it is little comfort to know that others have gone and others have yet to go. But no trace of his plane was ever found, and we knew then that Maxie was gone.</p>
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These are the heartbreaking facts. But no life was ever lived in vain, and most certainly not Maxie’s. We cannot look back on his life with any feeling of despair, but only with a feeling of deep joy that such a person lived, and that we knew him so well. So fully did he live and love life, and so fully did he cast his personality upon us, that he lives for us today as surely as if he were physically present.</p>
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I think one of the most beautiful bits of poetry that was ever written is the following simple stanza:</p>
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Into my heart’s treasury I slipped a coin<br />
That time cannot tarnish nor a thief purloin.<br />
Oh, better than the minting of a gold “Crowned King”<br />
Is the safe kept memory of a lovely thing.</p>
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The memory of Maxie will, indeed, be safely kept, nor will it ever tarnish, or be taken away.</p>
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<em>— V. H. K.</em></p>
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