Lieutenant Colonel, Headquarters, IX Air Support Command; U.S. Army Air Forces. Entered the service from New York. Awarded the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. A veteran of WWI, Hitchcock left school to join the Lafayette Flying Corps (a.k.a. the Lafayette Escadrille). He was shot down and captured by the Germans, but while on the way to a prison camp he escaped by jumping out of the train. He hid in the woods during the daytime then walked more than one hundred miles on foot for eight nights to reach the safety of Switzerland. The son of Thomas Hitchcock Sr., a leading polo player in the early 20th century and later a Hall-of-Fame horse trainer, in 1924 Thomas Jr. competed in the Paris Olympics, winning a silver medal in Polo. He was killed while test-flying an experimental version of the P-51 Mustang fighter. In 1990 Hitchcock was inducted posthumously into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame.
Lieutenant Colonel, Headquarters, IX Air Support Command; U.S. Army Air Forces. Entered the service from New York. Awarded the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. A veteran of WWI, Hitchcock left school to join the Lafayette Flying Corps (a.k.a. the Lafayette Escadrille). He was shot down and captured by the Germans, but while on the way to a prison camp he escaped by jumping out of the train. He hid in the woods during the daytime then walked more than one hundred miles on foot for eight nights to reach the safety of Switzerland. The son of Thomas Hitchcock Sr., a leading polo player in the early 20th century and later a Hall-of-Fame horse trainer, in 1924 Thomas Jr. competed in the Paris Olympics, winning a silver medal in Polo. He was killed while test-flying an experimental version of the P-51 Mustang fighter. In 1990 Hitchcock was inducted posthumously into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame.
