Caterpillar Club Member Lawrence R Pote – One of a Kind British Jeweler Made Switlik Badge – WWII Pilot with a STERLING Career

In WWII there was a “club” called the Caterpillar Club (CC) which was a very unique and UN-official yet highly respected club to be in…..the unofficial ones often are, as these clubs are most often joined by acts which supercede the norm and tempt death…..

“Life depends on a silken thread” ….Caterpillar Club Motto

The then chief of the McCook Field Flying Station Lieutenant Harold Harris, on Oct 20 1922, was flying a Loening W-2A fighter monoplane which became disabled in flight. Harris plunged from the aircraft activating his chute and survived. Two reporters present from the two reporters from the local Dayton Herald realizing that there would be more jumps in future, suggested that a club should be formed. Harris became the first member of the Caterpillar Club and from that time forward any person who jumped from a disabled aircraft with a parachute became a member of the Caterpillar Club.

That same year, 1922, Leslie Irvin pledged to provide a gold pin to each individual who, in whatever circumstance, had his life saved by a parachute from the Irvin Company.  Several companies followed suit and created Caterpillar Clubs of their own such as the Switlik Caterpillar Club which is the club First Lieut. Lawrence R Pote was so fortunate as to join in 1943.

Lawrence R Pote was piloting a B-17 Flying Fortress on November 16, 1943 on a mission to Rjukan, Norway in an attempt to obliterate the heavy water formulation plan built by the Germans for the purpose of creating heavy water for nuclear weapons manufacture.  I have assembled an overview of Lawrence R Pote’s career of service and obituary in the attached file.

Lawrence R Pote- Info File

After Pote survived his bailout he went on to complete more than the required number of missions for rotation back to the states and noncombat duty.  First Lieut. Pote completed 28 missions for the 390th bomb group in the 568th Squadron and the 358th Squadron.  Pote went on to a phenomenal career in the Air Force which you can read about in his obituary, and was a true American Warrior, one of the Knights of the Sky. He was from a generation which still knew that duty was Righteousness revealed in a man’s character. These men still knew the Standard for a True MAN to acquire an awareness of what Righteousness is,  the Word of God. Although it was fading from the schools and the minds of children at the time due to Humanism’s (the worship of man as god) rise under Rockefeller, John Dewey and the network of people thinking man had reached a place of SELF sufficiency. God still Blessed us with a final generation holding tentatively to the Lord’s Truth, in America, resilient in fortitude of heart founded in the Word of God as THE Standard for foundation of ALL Righteousness. They still knew Righteousness is the VERY CHARACTER OF GOD revealed to us in His Moral Law summarized in the Ten Commandments. They knew the Truth of Salvation and a changed Life, that Righteousness, which was acquired by Christ from living a Life according to God’s Character (Righteous Life),  is given the Chosen or Elect, with forgiveness, unto Salvation. These men went forth KNOWING that THEY could NOT win this war of themselves but that the very Character of Righteousness was in them and that they were held up unto a Good Heart by the Holy Spirit….so they went and did what men unknown to God’s Grace, could NOT do….not in PRIDE, but HUMBLE DUTY….

Psalm 31:23 (NASB) ²³ O love the LORD, all you His godly ones! The LORD preserves the faithful And fully punishes the proud doer.