Born in Sherwood, Ohio to John Jackson and Eleanor M. (Bayliss) Langdon, in 1921, Rex Langdon must have held the dream of becoming a pilot. Right after his high school graduation at Sherwood High School in 1939, he signed up to serve in the Army Air Corps.
Major Langdon was one of the ace pilots chosen to fly the P-38 Lightning, a twin engine fighter with a single seat, used as a bomber escort and a tactical bomber, with a powerful engine to climb quickly. It was filled with armaments - four machine guns and a small cannon.
Although developed in 1939, it was not used extensively until November 1942 in the North African campaign. It also could fly at a low altitude to protect ground troops. For his expertise, Rex Langdon received the
Distinguished Flying Cross as a First Lieutenant.
The award read:
"...for extraordinary achievement while participating in actual flight in the North African Theater of Operations as pilot of a P-38 aircraft. On 2nd February 1943, Lt. Langdon's squadron escorted six B-25 (bombers) in an assault on an enemy convoy in the Sicilian Straits. Enemy fighters made repeated attacks on the formation. In the face of intense aircraft fire from the enemy ships, Lt. Langdon shot down one enemy aircraft and aided in the destruction of six others, thereby protecting the bombers. Three ships of the convoy were left sinking or in flames.
The skill and devotion to duty displayed by Lt. Langdon in many combat missions reflected great credit on himself and the armed forces of the United States."
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| Distinguished Flying Cross |
"The Army could not make up its mind where it wanted to send the town's Major Rex Langdon for discharge, and as a result, he was delayed about a month in getting home, but it is good to see him around, vital and fit, the best kind of hero there is -
an extremely modest one."
After arriving home, he married Miss Hazel Diehl at the Sherwood Methodist Church in January 1947. In 1949, the couple were vacationing in Michigan with their small son and an unborn baby, when Rex was stricken with polio.
His obituary telling his story appeared in the local Sherwood paper:
CHARLES REX LANGDON 1921 - 1949
"Friends numbering in the hundreds paid their final respects to Charles Rex Langdon, one of the heroes of World War II, over the weekend. They came from all sections of the county and district with more than 600 of them passing through the Moats Funeral Home on Saturday evening alone.
Mr. Langdon died at 2 o'clock last Thursday morning in St. Luke's Hospital, Marquette, Michigan, of polio of the bulbar type. The news of his sudden passing came as a great shock to his family and to his legion of friends, for he had left Sherwood only the previous Saturday in apparent perfect health, bound for a two weeks' vacation in Hessel, Michigan, in the company of his wife, Hazel, and his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wesche of Greenville, Ohio. The party arrived in Hessel, where Mr. Langdon had spent vacations since boyhood, Sunday morning, and in the afternoon, they went out on Lake Huron, trolling and hunting for a likely spot to fish the next day for bullheads. When they returned to their cabin that evening, Mr. Langdon was not hungry enough to want any supper, and he reported a mild sore throat.
The following morning (Monday), his condition had not improved, so he rode to Pickford, Mich., with Mr. Wesche and visited a doctor, who gave him medicine for what he termed a light case of intestinal influenza. Later that day, a doctor visiting at Hessel looked at Mr. Langdon, but found no evidence of a serious ailment.
Tuesday morning, however, his throat had become very sore and Dr. Richard Dietrick, son-in-law of Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Saunders of Defiance, just arrived at Hessel from Pasadena, California, recommended that Mr. Langdon be removed to the hospital at Sault Ste. Marie. That evening, doctors diagnosed the illness as polio, and Mr. Langdon was taken in an ambulance to St. Luke's, in Marquette, the center for treating polio in upper Michigan.
Mr. Wesche talked with Mr. Langdon Wednesday afternoon and found him in excellent spirits. Several muscles in his throat had been paralyzed, but he was able to talk without impediment and there seemed every reason to believe that two weeks would find him well on the road to recovery. Therefore, at Mr. Langdon's insistence, Mr. Wesche started home with his wife and Mrs. Langdon that afternoon. They did not learn of Mr. Langdon's death until they arrived in Mark Center Friday evening.
Funeral services were held Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock from the Sherwood Methodist Church, with the pastor, Rev. Anthony Drake, and the former pastor, Rev. E.E. Roberts, officiating. Burial was made in the Moats Cemetery, with graveside services by the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. On Saturday evening, Masonic rites were performed at the Moats Funeral Home by officers and members of Sherwood Lodge 620.
Surviving beside the wife are a son, his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Langdon, and two brothers, Jack of Muskegon, Mich. and Ned, of Corpus Christ, Tex.
Mr. Langdon was associated with his father in the gasoline distributing business, and he lived with his family in Defiance.
Rex Langdon was born and reared in Sherwood and graduated from the high school here in 1939. He had an early premonition, or belief, in the inevitability of war, and on the night of his commencement, he told a classmate, 'There is going to be a war and the sooner we get in it, the better it will be for the world.' In October of that year, he enlisted in the Army, and in November, he was called to active duty.
Rex Langdon went from buck private to major the hard way - on ability and intestinal fortitude. As an enlisted man, he was trained to fly the P-38, then in experimental stages, and with a squadron of other enlistees, he received his first wings. He was not commissioned until just before he sailed with his squadron for Ireland on September 28, 1942. And from Ireland, he went to North Africa in January of 1943, and thereafter participated in the African campaign, the invasion of Sicily, several invasions of Italy, the attack on Naples and helped give fighter protection when Rome was bombed.
He finished the war front assignments in Burma, and was discharged in October 1945, with the rank of major after 150 missions.
Of his original squadron, he was one of a pitiful handful of survivors of the North African campaign, where the experienced German Luftwaffe tested the green Americans in the hot fires of battle. He had many brushes with death and once had to slam his plane into a suicide dive at the water to escape three Nazi airman who had been forcing him to fly in tight circles. Only a few hundred feet from the water, a current of air caught his plane and leveled it out so that he could escape. 'It was then,' he said later, 'that I understood about God.'
Rex was a Sherwood boy to the core; he and his wife talked many times of buying to building a house in this community, and he was happiest when with his friends of long standing. Proud of his family and growing in stature daily as a businessman, he had a warm, pleasant future ahead of him, but it now seems that Rex Langdon was predestined to give the major portion of his adult years to the defense of his country, and in this high calling, he never failed -not even one second"
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| Moats Cemetery |
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