Chapter 2 ~ Matt Gordon
Elizabeth Short lived in Florida at different times, beginning as a teenager when her mother sent her south for her health.
It was in Miami Beach that she met the man she later claimed was her husband, Matt Gordon, Junior. Gordon was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. He was a student at Pueblo Junior College and, at 21 years old, enlisted in the United States Army.
Two years later, on August 17, 1942, Matt Gordon, 23, arrived in Miami, Florida, attached to the Army Air Corp. He trained as a pilot with the American Volunteer Group (AVG), the Flying Tigers, who flew P-40 fighters in battle with the Japanese in China .
In his three years of service with the 14th Air Force, Gordon was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for participation in more than 50 combat missions and destroying two Japanese Zeros. He named his P-40 the “Nipponese Nemesis” and became an “ace,” with victories over five enemy aircraft in aerial combat.
On February 25, 1944, Gordon was injured in a crash while flying an L-SB Sentinel reconnaissance plane. He was searching for a downed pilot when his own aircraft went down. He survived the crash and eventually returned to active duty.
Matt’s mother, Mrs Matt Gordon, Sr, said Matt first met Elizabeth in Miami in 1944. She said Matt and Elizabeth developed a romance through letters. Mrs Gordon first heard of the love affair in a letter from Matt in India, dated May 5, 1945. “Mom do you think she really loves me,” Major Gordon wrote his mother. “It kind of looks like she does. In 11 days she wrote me 27 letters.”
Elizabeth traveled to Georgia in March, 1944 to see Matt. He had been injured in a plane crash in India the month before.
When he was overseas, Elizabeth wrote him, saying, “yes, I’ve dated since I’ve seen you last, and most of them disgusted me. Naturally, there are exceptions. If you want to slip away and be married, we’ll do whatever you wish, darling. I’ll wait, no matter how long.”
In another letter, she wrote,
“Darling, if only all men were like you. When you come home, I’ll never let you go. It’s real love, because I have not had you out of my thoughts since we met. Now that I know that you love me, there could never be another man meant for me. Now that you have asked me to be your wife, I do not date.”
Matt asked Mrs. Val Gordon, his sister in law, to correspond with Elizabeth, and her reaction was that Elizabeth was a “refined and educated girl.” Mrs Gordon said she never advised her son one way or the other when he asked if she thought Elizabeth really loved him. His mother said she wrote to him that was old enough to pick his own wife and that she trusted his judgment.
Matt wrote a letter on July 29, Beth’s birthday, to his mother saying that he would be home in the last part of September with his bride, who he intended to marry in Medford, Massachusetts.
But Elizabeth and Matt were never to see one another again. On August 10, 1945, Maj. Gordon was killed while piloting a P-51 Mustang near Kalaikunda in West Bengal, India, shortly before the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945. Matt was 26 years old.
Mrs Gordon sent Elizabeth a telegram Informing her of Matt’s death. The telegram was pasted in one of the memory books she kept. An engagement ring was sent to Beth by one of Matt’s fellow officers, but the wedding ring was sent to Mrs. Gordon. Matt’s mother said that Elizabeth wrote her, saying she was “grief-stricken” and that now she would never get that wedding ring on her finger. After Matt’s death, relations cooled between the Gordon family and Beth, reportedly because Beth asked for money from the family.
Major Matt Gordon, Jr would earn the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star (posthumously) for his courage in the China-Burma-India theater of operations as a fighter pilot with the 1st Fighter Squadron, 2d Air Commando Group, 10th Air Force.
After he died, Beth carried a newspaper clipping of his death and showed it to people, telling them that she was Matt’s widow.
