U.S. Army Air Corps in WW II Was More Than Pilots: Stamp Collector and Fuller Brush Salesman Robert K. Schink

What comes to mind when you think of the United States Army Air Corps during World War II? Maybe you picture the heroic pilots who flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses on bombing missions deep into Germany. Perhaps you think of the aces who escorted those B-17s in their North American P-51 Mustangs, the bomber’s “Little Friends,” or who strafed the feared Panzer Tiger tanks in their Republic Aviation P-47 Thunderbolts.

Those brave wartime fliers, who were officers for the most part, are worthy of every bit of praise and honor. But do you know who they credited for the success of their missions? It was the ground crews. Nearly two million enlisted Army Air Corps personnel served during the war, and most never took to the air. Indeed, the ratio of ground to flight personnel was seven to one. According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, “routine bombing missions required at least 500 separate skills” including repairing and maintaining planes, building and guarding bases, cooking meals, monitoring weather conditions, drafting reports, and caring for the wounded. These duties were conducted in challenging conditions.

Robert Schink was one of those unsung heroes of World War II (Figure 1). He was also a stamp collector, and the covers he sent back to the United States in 1944 and 1945 show that his passion for the “King of Hobbies” remained strong even in the midst of war.

Figure 1 – Corporal Robert Kelly Schink, circa 1943-1944. Location unknown. Courtesy of Kenton Baughman.

Robert enlisted in the Army on August 14, 1942, just a few days shy of his 21st birthday. He grew up in Joplin, Missouri, the son of Dominic and Cleo Schink. His father ran his own consulting engineering firm, and his mother was a homemaker. He had one sister who was four years his junior.

Robert, who started collecting stamps in the mid-1930s, graduated from Joplin High School in 1940 where he was business manager of the Spyglass, a student newspaper, and an active member of the school’s Reserve Officer Training Corps. At the time he enlisted, he had finished his second year at Missouri Southern State University and worked part-time as an usher at the Fox Theater in Joplin.

He was able to afford college, in part, because he was awarded a $1,500 loan for higher education by the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia for outstanding salesmanship. Starting at age eight and continuing through high school, Robert walked door-to-door in Joplin selling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal. His accomplishments as a salesman were celebrated in a front-page story in The Southwestern newspaper of December 23, 1938.

Robert was assigned to the 368th Fighter Group that consisted of three squadrons of P-47s: the 395th “Panzer Dusters,” the 396th “Thunder Bums,” and the 397th “Jabo Angels.” Robert served in the 395th and designed its “Panzer Duster” logo (Figure 2).

Figure 2 – The 395th’s Logo Designed by Robert K. Schink. Courtesy of Kenneth Kik.

Robert was in Army Air Corps’ technical supply division. Based on an Army manual from the time, his duty was to maintain proper levels of “hand tools, mobile repair equipment, nuts and bolts, and miscellaneous aircraft parts and replacement items such as hydraulic units, batteries, electric cables and engine parts.”  He had to be familiar “with aircraft maintenance operations and have a working knowledge of the nomenclature of parts, equipment and tools used in various phases of aircraft servicing and repair operations.”

The three squadrons of the 368th Fighter Group all flew the P-47 Thunderbolt manufactured by Republic Aviation (Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Painting by Nick King of the “Slick Chick” P-47 in the 395th Fighter Squadron. Courtesy of Kenneth Kik.

The P-47 was a fearsome fighter plane appreciated for its ground-attack role. Nicknamed the “Jug” because of the way it looked if stood on its nose, the P-47 weighed a hefty eight tons when fully loaded with ammunition for its eight .50-caliber machine guns and ten 5-inch rockets or 2,500 pounds of bombs. It had a sturdy airframe that could absorb considerable damage and still return to its home base.

Robert’s squadron, which consisted of roughly forty officers and 250 enlisted men, trained in Massachusetts and New York before embarking for England aboard the U.S.S. Argentina on December 28, 1943. Training continued in England until March 14,1944, when the 368th Fighter Group flew its first combat mission over the French coast.

From that point until the war’s end in Europe in May 1945, it was nonstop action for the Robert’s 395th Squadron and the other two squadrons of the 368th Fighter Group. They flew many sorties out of their base in England starting at 5:20 a.m. on June 6, 1944, as the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy unfolded. On June 19, they became the first fighter group to be permanently stationed and operational from France. The squadron would continue to move east with the advancing troops (Figure 4) and see action at the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. They continued to fly air support as the Allied forces reached Germany, and they would move their base to German territory on April 15, 1945. After the German surrender on May 7, 1945, the 368th Fighter Group would become part of the occupational force and would remain stationed in Germany until August 20, 1946, when the group was inactivated. Of the roughly 1,200 officers and enlisted personnel of the 368th Fighter Group, sixty-five officers and two enlisted personnel died in training or war, including twenty-one pilots of the 395th Fighter Squadron.

Figure 4 – Base Locations of the 395th Fighter Squadron January 13, 1945, through August 20, 1946. Source: Mapped on Scribble Maps using data from Combat Squadrons of the Air Force World War II, Maurer Maurer, Editor, Office of Air Force History, 1982, pp. 485-486.

Robert ended the war unscathed, other than a short stay in a military hospital for gastroenteritis in June 1945. But that does not mean the war was a cakewalk for him. As photos of him from the time show, he was very much in harm’s way (Figures 5 and 6).

Figure 5 – Robert K. Schink. Date and location unknown. Courtesy Kenneth Kik.

Figure 6 – Robert K. Schink in Front of “Miss Second Front.” John Dombos, pilot. nose painting by Andy Vanta. Courtesy of Kenneth Kik.

Of course, like most Army personnel, Robert was a prolific letter writer, but there was a definite philatelic bent to the covers he sent. I have five covers in my collection that he sent back to the United States that tell an interesting story of their own (Figure 7-11).      

Figure 7 – Free Frank Postmarked APO 595 June 1, 1944.

Figure 8 – Sent Via Airmail at the Prevailing 6-cent Rate. Postmarked APO 596 July 17, 1944.

Figure 9 – Free Frank Postmarked APO 161 August 3, 1945.

Figure 10 – Free Frank Postmarked APO 179 September 2, 1945.

Figure 11 – Franked with Allied Military Government 5-pfenning Stamp. Postmarked APO 179 October 5, 1945.

Let’s start first with the frankings. Three of the five covers Robert mailed (Figures 7, 9 and 10) were free franks, which was a privilege granted to military personnel by Congress in March 1942. The soldier or sailor simply had to endorse a letter with the word “Free” in the upper right-hand corner and include their name, rank, and service designation in the left-hand corner. (Robert was promoted to sergeant in September 1945, and you can see that change reflected in his return address.) This free franking privilege ended in 1947.

If the individual were seeking faster delivery, they could pay the air mail rate, which was set at 6-cents per half ounce for personnel of the United States armed forces serving outside the continental United States. The vast majority of military mail sent via airmail was franked with the 6-cent Twin-Motored Transport Plane stamp of 1941 (Scott C25), but Robert posted his with a 1-cent National Defense Issue of 1940 (Scott 899) and a 5-cent Overrun Countries Issue with the flag of Czechoslovakia (Scott 910). Robert must have had something mighty important to send on July 17, 1944, or perhaps he just wanted to ensure that the cover with the “Let’s Go!” cachet made it to its destination (Figure 8).

Robert also paid to send a letter to his mother, Cleo, on October 5, 1945 (Figure 11). (Sadly, Robert’s father Dominic passed away on October 14, 1944, while Robert was stationed in Belgium.) Robert franked this cover with a 5-pfennig stamp. This was not a German stamp but one of a series of stamps that the Allied Military Government (AMG) started to issue in 1945 for use in the American and British occupation zones. I would not be surprised if Robert franked this cover with the AMG stamp for his personal collection.

Next, consider the postmarks. Each cover has an Army Post Office, or APO, circular date stamp with a number that can be mapped to a specific location based on the date. The cover in Figure 7, for example, was postmarked June 1, 1944 (five days before D-Day) at APO number 595, which at the time was located at an airfield in Middle Wallop, England, about an eight-mile drive from Chilbolton where Robert’s squadron was located at the time.

The APOs of the other four covers track Robert’s journey east through Europe:

• APO 596 dated July 17, 1944 (Figure 8) was at an unknown location in northern France but probably near Robert’s base in Cardonville.

• APO 161 dated August 3, 1945 (Figure 9) was located in Herzogenaurach, Germany, about 20 miles from Robert’s base in Buchschwabach.

• APO 179 that appears on two covers dated September 2, 1945 (Figure 10) and October 5, 1945 (Figure 11) was situated in Straubing, Germany, the site of Robert’s final base in Germany before heading home.

You will notice that Robert included an APO number in his return address. That is the APO number that someone would have used to send a letter to Robert. I have not seen any covers addressed to him, but they likely exist in someone’s collection.

Then there are censor marks. The two earliest covers shown in Figures 7 and 8 bear censor marks in the lower left-hand corner; the other three, all mailed after the war in Europe ended, do not. Mail sent by enlisted personnel was typically censored by an officer in his unit, and it was not a task officers relished. Enlisted men also disliked the practice, often complaining in letters that they couldn’t say much because of the censors. So, when the 368th Fighter Group’s commander announced the end of censorship on May 22, 1945, the group’s official history reported:

To the enlisted men, todays [sic] announcement that censorship of their mail will no longer be required is probably the best liked directive (next to the declaration of V-E Day) they have seen since coming overseas. Immediately following, Headquarters outgoing mail was tripled. The Officers were also overjoyed at being relieved of the responsibility of seeing that certain girls letters were placed in the right envelope.

Finally, there are the cachets. Patriotic cachets on World War II covers are not uncommon. In fact, Lawrence Sherman in his 2006 book titled, United States Patriotic Envelopes of World War II, lists nearly 12,000 different cachets produced by more than 650 artists and printers. Unlike in the Civil War, the variety of patriotic covers increased as World War II progressed and were sent civilian to civilian, soldier to home and vice-versa, and collector to collector.

Collectors of first day covers will recognize the individuals who produced the largest number of designs: Herman Fluegel, George W. Linn, Walter Crosby, Ludwig Staehle, and William Linto, to name a few. ArtCraft was one of the major publishers. One of ArtCraft’s designs is the cachet on the envelope in Figure 8. Like many cachets as the war’s end approached, this one depicts Axis leaders being crushed by Allied forces. The designer and publisher of other cachets are unknown, which is the case for the one printed on the envelope in Figure 7.

Of the 661 designers and publishers listed by Sherman, about two dozen were in the miliary, including Robert who is listed as artist/publisher number 530. Robert produced a single cachet, that being the logo of the 395th, which he had printed on envelopes in black and white and two different color combinations with a customizable return address. One of the individuals to whom Robert mailed one of his covers – Walter Czubay – was a noted designer of World War II and naval cachets.

Robert was honorably discharged in November 1945. He returned to Joplin and reenrolled in college, but by 1947, he was living in Cleveland where he would earn a degree in business from Western Reserve University and begin his career working for RCA Service Company. That was a division of RCA that provided repair services for RCA appliances. Robert started off managing a stock room, which would have been similar to his role in the military. He eventually became a branch manager for an RCA service center in Cuyahoga Falls, about 35 miles southeast of Cleveland.  

In 1958, however, Robert returned to a career that sent him on his way to college in 1940: sales. In July of that year, he looked up the Fuller Brush Company, and he was hooked for life. For the next 50 years, he would be a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman.

After hitting the pavement for two years in the cold Cleveland winters, Robert and his life partner, James Battle, moved to Plantation, Florida, just north of Miami. From that point on, Robert was a fixture in southeast Florida peddling brooms, dusters and boar-hair brushes.  As Fuller Brush salespeople became rarer and rarer, Robert would be featured in several newspaper articles between 1985 and 2003 (Figure 12).

Figure 12 – Robert K. Schink as pictured in the August 9, 1995, Sun-Sentinel, with the caption, “Shaded by a broad hat from the Florida sun, Robert Schink carries carpet sweeper and packed sample case on one of his calls.” Printed with permission of The Sun-Sentinel.

 Robert’s other passion – stamp collecting – would also feature prominently in his life after the war. In September 1947, he joined the Garfield Perry Stamp Club in Cleveland, and from all indications, he was an active and respected member. He got a prominent mention in the February 1958 issue of the Garfield-Perryscope, the club’s official publication, for becoming only the second member to drive a foreign-made car – a Ford Anglia – at a time when only a tiny fraction of registered cars in the United State were foreign.

He joined the Hollywood Stamp Club (HSC) after he moved to Florida, and it appears that is where he really hit his stride as a collector, particularly of 19th century American stamps. (Interestingly, given his time in the Army Air Corps, he took no apparent interest in aerophilately.) In March 1985, he made a presentation to the HSC on his development as a philatelist from swapping stamps to building a collection by selective auction buying. He must have amassed an impressive collection because in 2006, Shreves Philatelic Galleries, Inc. held an auction that featured “The Robert K. Schink Collection of Used United States Stamps.”

Like many a collector, Robert bemoaned the proliferation of stamps. He told the Miami Herald in 1987, “Used to be that you could collect stamps from all over the world. You can’t do that anymore; there are just too many countries printing too many stamps.”

Robert passed away at age 89 in 2010 in Plantation, Florida. He was described in his obituary as a “remarkable man,” cited for his service during World War II and remembered for his love of stamp collecting and sales.

What is most striking to me is that after the experience of war and adjusting back to civilian, Robert’s passions for sales and stamp collecting remained strong. He obviously got joy from both. May we all be so lucky to find similar passions in our lives.