Of Love and Loss and Love Again
By Rebekah K. Bohannon-Dalton


This story is a tragedy and a victory. As all true love stories begin, a young, beautiful lady fell in love and married a dashing fellow. Josephine Trice of Franklin, Tennessee, fell in love with the valiant John Colton of Nashville, a beloved cousin to Colonel Hensley Williams, in 1939. With the world at war and the United States on the fence, John wrote to the Tennessean in June 1940, to voice his view of our responsibility to the Second World War:

John volunteered his service to the Army Air Forces in October of 1942, foreseeing his duty to his country in this war. He trained at several southern bases and in March of 1944, received his orders to fight overseas in occupied Europe. In the dragon’s keep, 2nd Lieutenant John Colton flew in 13 missions and in late May of 1944, at the age of 26, he would fly and fight his last. According to the report, the B-17 Bomber was hit by antiaircraft fire flying over Kiel, Germany, and was said to have exploded in midair. It was not, however, reported until a year later, when the War Department declared John dead, that Josephine had received word from those of her husband’s crew who were able to jump. They had been taken as prisoners of war in a jail in Frankfurt, Germany, shortly after they bailed. In the letters to her family about John, Josephine explained the true events the crew members revealed to her which left her without a husband and their four year old son without a father. The B-17’s were flying in formation and one of the crew members noticed one of their bombers flying overhead. They became aware that they were out of formation and made maneuvers with the bomber above to correct their position. The raiders, including John and his crew, were then at the appropriated targets and began to drop their bombs. When they did, the same B-17 had slipped back out of formation and was again overhead and subsequently dropped its explosives right onto the wing of John’s plane. One by one the crew members bailed, even the pilot to which John was the co-pilot. One of the last crew members who managed to bail got his parachute caught on the tail of the plane and didn’t make it. The rest were arrested and taken as prisoners of war. Going through the wreckage they found a body at the controls. It was John. In the words of his widow:

John really died a Heroes Death. He tried to save the plane, and he was thinking of the boys in the back.

Josephine took the loss and harbored it to be strong for her late husband and their son, until as she wrote in her letter:

My mind has been in one turmoil and I haven’t slept thinking over and over in my mind all details. I finally had a good cry yesterday. I kept it in my system as long as I could.

Josephine and her late husband’s dear cousin, Colonel Hensley Williams, USMC, who had also fought in World War II, found happiness and love and commitment in each other and were married in 1947. Hensley, Josephine and John Jr. became a family and started a new life together as he loved his wife and raised John Jr. as his own son. Hensley and Josephine had two more sons, Clay and Maxwell, and continued to vacation with their family in Monterey, at their personal resort, The Hemlocks, as they had for generations. Josephine and Hensley enjoyed 50 years of marriage before her passing in 1997. As a wife then mother, widow and single parent the titles which plagued family stories all too often after the Second World War, she found she would, against the odds, be blessed with another dashing hero and with him would complete her family. And Josephine’s life story of loss and love is one that has loss but in the end was love.