A Matter of Honor

In February 1945 the Flying Fortress Star Dust was struck by flak over Berlin. With two engines dead, another crippled and only the fourth putting out full power, Star Dust's pilot, Lieut. George F. Ruckman, abandoned all hope of getting back to England and headed east. Losing altitude steadily, he finally made a crash landing at a Russian-held airstrip near Torun in Poland.

For the next month and a half, resourceful Pilot Ruckman and his crew worked to get Star Dust back into the air. Working under intermittent fire from German snipers and artillery, they repaired two of the plane's engines with tools they had found in burnt-out machine shops. Bribing military police to look the other way, they salvaged an engine and a wheel from another downed U.S.

Fortress. In return for Ruckman's wrist watch and fountain pen, a Russian major lent them a truck to carry the salvaged parts back to Torun airstrip. To get the salvaged engine into place, Ruckman traded his own, non-G.I. revolver for the use of a hoist. By mid-March, Star Dust was able to limp to Italy, then back to England, where Ruckman rejoined his outfit and flew ten more missions, eight of them in Star Dust,

After the war George Ruckman, now a leather salesman in Springfield, 111., put in a claim for $250 to cover part of his personal expenses in repairing Star Dust. In 1951, after the Army Finance Center coldly informed him that it was "not authorized to develop claims involving accounts where the disbursing officer is in doubt as to the propriety of payment," George Ruckman took his case to Illinois' Senator Everett Dirksen.

This week, eight years after the rescue of Star Dust, President Eisenhower signed a bill awarding Ruckman his $250 without interest. In Springfield, Businessman Ruckman, who considered his claim "a matter of honor," was philosophic about the delay. Said he: "I think the Government should be frugal and consider things like this carefully."

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