Description
Physical description
Silver-coloured pin-back metal badge in the shape of eagle wings. In the centre of the wings is a shield with embossed vertical stripes.
History note
Lonnie ‘Tex’ LeRoy Moseley was born on 7 April 1921 in Silsbee, Texas, and spent the majority of his younger life in Delta, Utah. In December 1941, just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he married his college sweetheart, Carol Cottam, with the knowledge that war was coming and he would soon have to enlist. Moseley enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Fort Douglas, Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19 August 1942, and spent the next one and a half years at AAC/AAF training centres Rankin Field (Primary), Lemoore Army Air Field (Basic), Luke Field (Advanced) and Harding Field (Transition to Fighter). One month prior to Moseley’s enlistment, Carol’s brother Garth B Cottam, a P-39 Aircobra pilot with the 40th Fighter Squadron, 5th Air Force, was lost in bad weather near New Guinea.
In May 1944, after having trained as a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot, 2nd Lieutenant Moseley was posted to active duty overseas and arrived at RAF Duxford (known by the USAAF as Station 357 (DX)) as part of the 84th Fighter Squadron, 78th Fighter Group, 8th Army Air Force, at the end of the month. On his third combat mission on the morning of 4 July 1944, Moseley’s squadron was detailed to attack a hidden airfield to the northwest of Paris, but low cloud cover diverted them to their secondary target near Rouen, Normandy, where the squadron was met by enemy anti-aircraft fire. Moseley began to experience engine trouble, forcing him to bail out near Routot, Normandy at 5,000 feet. Caught in a dangerous spin after leaving the aircraft, he opened his parachute at 100 feet, which was seen and reported by his wingman 1st Lieutenant William Newton III (killed in action over France the following day). Not long after hitting the ground, Moseley was met by a French farmer named Lucien Lestang, who quickly helped him hide his parachute and took him into his home. With his wife and mother informed that he was listed as missing in action, he spent the next two months with the Lestangs, at first hiding in a barn and then assuming the identity of a deaf-mute farm labourer, for which he was provided false identity papers by the Maquis (French resistance). After several occasions of coming into direct contact with German troops and failing to arouse suspicion, Moseley walked through German lines in plain sight to the nearby town of Hauville, recently liberated by British troops (likely elements of the 7th Armoured Division), on 28 August 1944, and returned to England by air two days later. After getting the train from London to Duxford, Moseley remembered the look of ‘seeing a ghost’ on the faces of his squadron mates when, still dressed as a French civilian, he returned to his barracks.
As was the USAAF policy for evaders, Moseley did not return to combat duty and was instead posted back to the United States where he joined a training unit at Harding Field, Louisiana. After the end of hostilities, he returned to civilian life but re-enlisted in early 1949, flying reconnaissance aircraft for X Corps Aviation, US Army in the Korean War. During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, in December 1950, Moseley made repeated landings under Chinese fire in an L-5 Sentinel, picking up 21 US Marines who had been wounded in the battle. For these actions he was awarded the Silver Star. After Korea, Moseley served as Aide-de-Camp to General William P Ennis Jr., and then with the 42nd Field Artillery Group in Baumholder, Germany, followed by a tour in Ethiopia.
In 1971 Moseley deployed to Vietnam as a staff officer with the 1st Aviation Brigade. One of Moseley’s sons, Russell, had served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969 as a helicopter (Huey) flight engineer and left door gunner in the 101st Assault Helicopter Battalion, while his other son Roger was serving as an A-36 Dragonfly fighter pilot. Moseley retired from the Army in July 1974 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and as acting base commander of Fort Douglas, Utah, which was where he enlisted in 1942.
The Moseleys remained close friends with the Lestangs in the decades following the war, visiting each other on several occasions, and this relationship continues between the descendants of both families.