In a nation poised to celebrate Memorial Day, it’s a fitting occasion to pay tribute to a former Maine governor who pulled off one of the most daring missions of World War II. He’s Tudor Gardiner. Descendant of the founder of the city south of Augusta that bears his family’s last name, Gardiner was the 20th century’s second youngest Maine governor – Ken Curtis was the youngest – when at 36 he was elected in 1928 to the first of two terms that ended in 1933.

In 1942, by then almost 50, at an age when most veterans would have figured their fighting days were behind them, Gardiner was among a small group of World War I veterans who volunteered for further military service, joining what Tom Brokaw termed “the Greatest Generation.”

By September 1943, the Allies had set their sights on an invasion of the Italian mainland. This was encouraged by a message from the Italian high command that they might surrender if the Allies invaded. General Eisenhower had hoped to land at Roman air bases, well behind German lines, but he still needed to know what the Allies might be in for if they did so.

Ike thus felt the need to send two of his most trusted officers to Rome to meet with Italian leaders. Even though some Italian acquiescence was expected, whatever German troops were on hand could be counted on to fiercely resist an invasion.

Former Maine Gov. Gardiner – by then an Army air colonel – and Gen. Maxwell Taylor stepped forward to volunteer for Ike’s high-risk mission. Among Gardiner’s attributes was his fluency in French, the language in which discussions were to be conducted. With cooperation from an Italian naval intelligence officer Gardiner and Taylor posed as aviators captured at sea in order to minimize the risk of detection by Nazi sentries on the way to Rome. Were their presence discovered by the Germans, it would have meant almost certain execution. Gardiner, who had hoped to remain in Rome to coordinate the planned U.S. air landing, learned from meetings he and Taylor had with Italian leaders that the Americans had badly underestimated German strength. Instead of the expected 11,000 Germans there were more than 36,000.

A U.S. air landing would thus be disastrous. Thanks to Gardiner and Taylor, the scheduled air landing was called off only an hour before it was set to begin. The almost certain loss of many thousands of Americans was thus narrowly averted by the intelligence their mission had developed.

The personal peril for Gardiner and Taylor was by no means over: they still had to escape Rome. Sympathetic Italians arranged for them to be placed in an ambulance. A long column of Nazi infantry stood only an arm’s length outside the ambulance when it had to slow up to pass by it. The Italian plane that then took them back to Tunis escaped a British fighter that circled but did not shoot them down.

Besides the Legion of Merit for the mission to Rome, Gardiner was also awarded five other decorations for air combat in North Africa and post D-Day air force intelligence operations in Europe.

To be sure, Gardiner’s military accomplishment does not measure up to those of Civil War General Joshua Chamberlain – one of six Civil War veterans who became a Maine governor – but it is one that is frequently overlooked.

Nor should Gardiner’s heroism be allowed to eclipse that of another Maine political leader who had a close brush with death: future U.S. Senator Bill Hathaway, a navigator on a B-24 Liberator shot down over Romania in 1944.

Moreover, Gardiner was not the only Maine political leader to have served in both world wars. That distinction also belongs to First District Congressman James “Big Jim” Oliver, an army infantry major in the first world war and a Coast Guard lieutenant commander in the second.

Gardiner and Hathaway, like several other major Maine political leaders, had a fascination for aviation. The governor of Maine at the time of Gardiner’s 1943 mission, Sumner Sewall, had been in the aviation section of the Army Signal Corps in the first World War. Gardiner’s predecessor as governor, Owen Brewster, had first world war service that did not include military flying. His political career after leaving the Blaine House, however, and going on to Congress featured such advocacy of the interests of one airline that he was sometimes referred to as “the Senator from Pan Am.” His famous 1947 confrontation with TWA’s Howard Hughes over Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” airplane was portrayed by Alan Alda in the 2004 movie, “The Aviator.”

Frederick Payne and James Longley, both Lewiston natives who became governor, were in the Army air corps in the second World War.

Margaret Chase Smith, herself a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force reserves, played a leading role in establishing the Air Force as a separate branch of the military. She was also one of the first women to fly in a plane that broke the sound barrier.

The chance to ask Gardiner himself about his courageous military adventure was cut short by his own death piloting a private plane in 1953 that was returning from a reunion in Pennsylvania of his World War I Infantry Association. Still keeping his hand not only in aviation but also Maine government, he was chairman of the Maine Aeronautics Commission at the time of his death at the age of 61. His daring WW II mission is but one of many reminders of the role that Maine’s political leaders, both in and out of government, have played in writing several chapters of the book of American military heroism.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine.  He can be reached by e-mail: [email protected]