We’re glad you’re here.
He was born in Texas but became a California kid, a track star and an Olympic gold medalist. Then he entered the military, and like a lot of people who served during World War II, some of the details of what happened next are out of focus, and some are forever to defy certainty.
One example: It is unknown exactly when Foy Draper died, or how.
What we do know is that Draper was 31 years old when he was last seen by those on the ground. By then, Draper was an Air Force captain, a pilot attached to the 47th Bomb Group, Light, 97th Bomber Squadron. He flew a twin-engine attack aircraft called the A-20B ‘Havoc.’
On this particular day, Draper and his two-man crew departed their base in Thelepte, Tunisia. Their mission: engage German and Italian Axis troops on the ground. The location was near the Kasserine Pass, a two-mile wide gap in the Atlas Mountains of west-central Tunisia, in far North Africa.
It was the fourth day of January, 1943.
Foy Draper could fly. He was born in Georgetown, Texas, north of Austin in the central part of the state. At some point his family moved to California, and it was there that Draper, though he grew to be only 5-foot-5, became a heralded sprinter.
Competing for Huntington Park High School in Los Angeles, Draper won California’s individual state championship in the 100-yard dash in 1931, and the following year he finished second in both the 100 and 220 finals. He attended the University of Southern California and won the national collegiate championship in the 200-meter dash. The story goes that Draper had a hand-timed 9.4 seconds over 100 yards, which would equal the world record held in those years by the great Jesse Owens.
Draper and Owens were competitors but also country-mates. In 1936, in Berlin, they joined two others, Ralph Metcalfe and Frank Wykoff, to win Olympic gold in the 4x100 relay. With Owens running first, Metcalfe second, Draper third and Wykoff the anchor, the U.S. men smashed the world record with a time of 39.8 seconds that would stand for 20 years. Italy was second, Germany third.
It was a huge win for the Americans at the Berlin Games, presided over by Adolf Hitler. But it was controversial in its own right, as just before the trial heats, U.S. officials had pulled two Jewish sprinters from the relay team and replaced them with Owens and Metcalfe, a move seen by some as an attempt to placate Hitler by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Still, it was a sweet moment for Draper and his teammates. Then the Games ended, and the Third Reich rolled onward. A couple of years later, with World War II under way but the U.S.’s involvement not yet official, Foy Draper enlisted in the Army to become a pilot.
By Jan. 4, 1943, German and Italian troops were pressing hard through Tunisia, and Allied forces were launching attempts to drive them back. Those efforts would lead to the Battle of Kasserine Pass, a bloody conflict initiated by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Military historians describe it as a 10-day skirmish, from Feb. 14th to 24th of that year, meaning that Draper’s involvement — though in the same area — lay somewhat outside the official parameters.
(The Battle of Kasserine Pass itself marked a significant defeat for the young, inexperienced U.S. Army, but in the end, Rommel’s larger objectives for Tunisia and beyond were foiled. The Allies regrouped and began pushing Axis forces back, and Rommel finally bid a retreat across the desert.)
Draper and his crew had departed Thelepte and flown toward this looming danger on Jan. 4. They were not heard from again. By most accounts and some presumption, their A-20B Havoc was shot down near or in the pass, but almost no details are known. The question of whether Draper and his two crew members had ejected, were captured, or were in their craft at the moment of their passing is lost to time. It does not appear that the bodies of any of the men were recovered.
Thus, Draper’s death date has been variously reported. Many sites list it as Feb. 1, 1943, which may have been when the U.S. military made it official. Draper’s gravestone, at the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial, sets it at Jan. 4, 1943, the day of the crew’s fateful mission. He is memorialized there, in Carthage, a long way from home.
He was an Olympic champion. He had three brothers, all of whom survived him, one of whom, Weldon Allen Draper, had been an Olympian himself in 1928. His mother, Bess, lived two decades more after her third child went forever missing in action.
The poet and sermonizer John Donne once wrote, “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee,” and this has been widely interpreted as suggesting that what happens to any of us happens to all of us — that we as a humanity are minimized, diminished slightly, by any single person’s passing. On Memorial Day weekend, that sounds right.
Great… 🇺🇸
Thanks for a great Memorial Day reminder