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- Lieutenant in France at time of his brother, Neville's, death.
He was a graduate of the University of Georgia. He was a captain in World War I and was wounded at Chateau Theirry.
Oaklawn Cemetery, Peach County, Georgia
Capt. Ralphiel Phillipps Bassett
12 September 1891 16 April 1951
"Daddy Bill"
Henriette Blanche Alphonsine Bourdier Bassett, wife of Capt. Ralphiel Phillipps Bassett
26 October 1894 20 Apr 1971
"Mama"
Beulah Henriette Bassett Fricke, daughter of R.P. & H.B. Bassett
17 February 1922 28 August 1976
"Mama"
John Albert Robbins, Jr.
5 December 1914 4 March 1992
The following excerpts are from a book titled The Arnold Scheme by Gilbert S. Guinn published by www.historypress.net Reprinted with permission of the publisher
USAAF BASIC FLYING SCHOOL: COCHRAN FIELD 371
While at Cochran Field, Frank Norman Bate of Class SE-42-F met a family from nearby Fort Valley and therefore had an extra morale boost from this close family relationship while undergoing the harsh discipline of basic flying school. Between June 1941 and December 1942, the Bassett family, which included Papa, Mama and daughters Marguerite, Simone, Maris and Patsy, regularly "adopted" members of every RAF class and entertained them in their large rambling home at Pineola Farm, a few miles northwest of Fort Valley.
Ralph Bassett, a Georgia native and graduate of the University of Georgia, served in France as a United States Army officer. While in the army of occupation just after the war, he met and married his wife, Henriette, in Paris, and since about 1920, they had made their home in Georgia.
Mrs. Bassett, who as a girl had studied in Leicester, England, was anxious to welcome and provide true Southern hospitality to the young British students who were so far from home. When she and her husband contacted the morale officer at Cochran Field, Mrs. Bassett asked him to be sure to send any cadets from Leicestershire, where she had attended school, and that was the beginning of a long and warm relationship between an American family and dozens of British cadets.
As Norman Bate, a native of Leicester, described his experience at Pineola Farm and Cochran Field, his words give evidence of increasing maturity and obvious adjustment to his new environment:
How much it meant to experience a fairly well-off family in such restful surroundings; well away from the harshness of Cochran Field and the coldness of Macon city itself. .. Evenings on the porch were spent drinking cocktails; mint juleps; whilst from inside one heard the piano and the singing of Maris. Here I was to have my first real experience of household chores, and for this I have also been grateful, for, if need be, I am fully independent of others in the running of a home, cooking representing no problem.
Papa Bassett wished his girls to take up professional careers as doctors or teachers. I think I have known as many as sixteen Britishers present at Pineola Farm on a single occasion or one group leaving as one arrived. Papa, whose health seemed ailing, listened intently in his room to every single news bulletin from around the world; he was a shrewd man, and a good judge if character.
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The Bassett family of Pineola Farm, some three miles northwest of Fort Valley, sought out numerous British cadets in order to welcome and entertain them during their stay in Georgia. Ralph P Bassett, a graduate of the University of Georgia, had served in France as an officer in the United States Army during 1917-19. While stationed in France, he met and married Henriette Bourdier. After the war, Ralph returned with his bride to Fort Valley, where he was an agent of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Ralph was also a partner with his brother, Noble, in the operations of Pineola Farm. Henriette had grown up near Bourges and attended schools there and in Paris. Although she considered herself a Parisienne, she had also attended the Arnold School on Regents Road in Leicester, England, where she learned English.
Other French war brides came to the United States and scattered to a number of different states, pledging to keep in touch with each other. In Georgia, Henriette and Ralph began to convert a rambling old farmhouse into a home. A part of Henriette's natural loneliness was absorbed in homemaking and in giving birth to five daughters. She also maintained contact with several of her "war bride" friends and new friends she developed in her adoptive hometown in Georgia.
Originally named Fox Valley because of the presence of so many foxes in the rolling hills and woodlands of the region, the town reportedly became Fort Valley by accident of misinterpretation of someone's handwriting. During the post-Civil War era, a post office and State Normal School and Mechanical Institute for Negroes were established in the village.
By 1900, Samuel H. Rumph had moved from his native South Carolina to establish Willow Lake Farm at nearby Marshallville where, following lots of hard work and experimentation, he began to produce excellent freestone peaches commercially. He gave the new peach strain his wife's unusual name, Elberta. Rumph's pioneering efforts encouraged others to develop large orchards and new varieties of peaches. From these efforts came the creation of Peach County, with tiny Fort Valley as its governmental seat.
However, since peaches were not selling well, peach trees were replaced by cotton. Then the boll weevil destroyed the cotton and peaches came back again. New strains of peaches, such as R.H. Hiley's Hiley Belle, were developed, and pecan groves were also planted as a supplement to fruit culture. Even though many trainloads of peaches and other crops were shipped out of the county during the 1920s and 1930s, the town and county still did not prosper. These were depression years for American farmers, and small towns dependent on farm populations could not support many businesses, so vacant stores became a standard feature of the community during the lean years extending from 1925 to 1938.
During that latter year and succeeding ones, many changes came to middle Georgia and elsewhere in the nation. The economy shifted, more peaches were being sold at better prices and new businesses moved into vacant shop buildings. The Blue Bird Bus Body Company, builder of school buses, was expanded, a huge milling operation that processed both wheat and corn was established and several new public and commercial buildings were built. In addition, the State Normal School and Mechanical Institute for Negroes was renamed Fort Valley State College. In early March of every year, that institution continued to celebrate a Ham and Egg Festival.
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In June 1941, Cochran Field and Camp Wheeler military bases opened near Macon, and the gigantic USAAF air depot at Warner Robins Field followed soon thereafter. The number of aircraft flying over the area increased phenomenally and, as these defense installations expanded, many new people sought houses and apartments in Fort Valley. Between August 1941 and December 1942, Royal Air Force student pilots arrived at Cochran Field every five weeks.
Since Henriette Bassett knew loneliness and the problems of adjusting to a different culture, her heart went out to the British boys who came to the airfield some eighteen miles away. She was prominent among the group of ladies who invited the first group of RAF cadets to Fort Valley for the Labor Day weekend. And when they arrived in small groups aboard the huge army trucks, it was she who always asked to meet any young men from Leicester, where she had attended school many years before.
Pineola Farm, the Bassett family home, was an enchanting place to the RAF boys, especially to those who had grown up in an urban environment. The Bassett daughters were young and attractive flirts, and the rambling old L-shaped house was comfortable and homey. One entered from a driveway with pine trees scattered about. Porches virtually surrounded the house, at least across the front and halfway down each side. At ground level, shrubbery and flowers were cultivated in a broad band along the porch, and in one section vines climbed a trellis to ward off the direct rays of the sun.
The continuous porch was under a roof and contained a number of rocking chairs, and on one end a porch swing was supported by chains attached to the ceiling. Other contiguous screened porches completed the outside of the huge house. Pineola Farm encompassed more than one thousand acres of land and was almost completely self-sufficient. For home use, the farm produced vegetables, chickens and eggs, pork, grain for flour and cornmeal, pear and fig trees and many pecan trees. Its fields produced hay, oats, corn and other feed for farm animals.
Life was good at Pineola Farm and in the nearby small town, and the added six hundred hours of flying were not only valuable additional experience for the RAF instructors, but were fun as well. Royal Air Force student pilots and flight instructors at USAAF basic and advanced flying schools were fascinated with the beauty and the soft, lovely drawls of Southern girls, and some RAF men married American girls from Georgia and Alabama.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1891 - 1951 (59 years)