Posted by BG RM Ong (Ret) on May 19, 2016:

Just a week after receiving his pilot's wings at Reese AFB, Lubbock, Texas, Warren Brooks Battis Jr., of Dedham, Massachusetts was killed in a car accident while vacationing at Cape Cod. "Oz," as he was known to his friends, was a great sports enthusiast. While at West Point, he played hockey for four years, and to him each game was either a personal triumph or tragedy. His favorite games were those played near home, where, perchance, he might beat some of his old rivals from high school days. Of golf, it has been said that he would rather play that game than eat. While he was captain of the golf team, he twice achieved that dream of all golfers -- a hole-in-one. Wherever he could find a spot large enough, he would practice putting, at times even resorting to the living room rug. Warren's twenty-third birthday fell on that fateful day, the 22nd of November, 1963. His mother wrote to him at the time: "What a sad birthday this must have been for you. You will always have a special reason to remember the day on which you lost your Commander-in-Chief." Flying, to him, was a tremendous challenge. He often remarked that there was no other feeling quite like it in the world. Upon graduation from Pilot Training School, he was assigned to Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The location was an ideal one, situated as it was about half way between his parents' home in Dedham, and his brother's apartment in New York. Warren was deeply religious in a quiet, unassuming way. One of his classmates said recently that he never knew anyone so well prepared for Eternity. We like to feel that the shiny new wings he never had a chance to wear were not earned in vain, but merely exchanged for others. -- Mrs. Frank (Joan) Mandill, his cousin

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