The Journey Home
After being relieved as commander of the 351st Bomb Group in late March 1945, Bob's war was over. He took a train to Prestwick and an Air Transport Command C-54 to Washington, with stops at the Azores and Newfoundland. From there, he went to Mississippi for two weeks of leave.
Then: Miami Beach.
"The war was over for me. I took a train to Prestwick and an Air Transport Command C-54 to Washington, with stops at the Azores and New Foundland. I went to Ecru for two weeks, and then to Miami Beach where I was quartered at the Cadillac Hotel with Thornton Wilder as my roommate."
The Cadillac Hotel
The Army Air Forces had converted Miami Beach hotels into rest and reassignment facilities for officers returning from combat. AAF Redistribution Station #2 (AAF RS #2) provided a transition period—a few weeks in the Florida sun before the next assignment.
Bob was quartered at the Cadillac Hotel. His roommate: Thornton Wilder.
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), Our Town (1938), and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). Served in WWII with Army Air Forces Intelligence in North Africa and Italy.
The Conversations
What do a B-17 combat commander and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright talk about when quartered together at a Miami Beach hotel in May 1945?
We know that the conversations influenced Wilder's next major work: The Ides of March, published in 1948. The novel is an epistolary reconstruction of Julius Caesar's Rome, told through fictional letters and documents. Wilder's time with Bob—hearing stories of command, leadership, combat decisions, and the weight of responsibility—shaped his thinking about power and leadership in ancient Rome.
Bob's granddaughter Becky Burns later published an article in the Thornton Wilder Journal exploring this connection: "The Cadillac Hotel: Thornton Wilder and Robert W. Burns" (Vol. 5, No. 2, DOI: 10.5325/thorntonwilderj.5.2.0253).
The Correspondence
After Miami Beach, Wilder and Bob stayed in touch. Four letters from Wilder to Bob survive, written between September 1945 and April 1946. The letters are preserved in the RWB archive's supplemental materials.
The correspondence reveals a genuine friendship—Wilder asking about Bob's new assignments, Bob sharing news of his radar bomb scoring unit at Mitchell Field and his approaching marriage to Ruth. Two men from very different worlds, brought together by chance assignment to a Miami Beach hotel in the spring of 1945, at the moment when Europe's war was ending and both were transitioning to whatever came next.
After Miami Beach
Bob's stay in Miami lasted only a couple of weeks. He got orders to Headquarters 2nd Air Force in Colorado Springs, where he spent about a month as a returnee waiting for a job. Then he was asked to form a new radar bomb scoring unit, which he established at Mitchell Field, Long Island—chosen specifically to be close when Ruth returned from Europe.
Wilder returned to his writing, working on The Ides of March and other projects. The two men's paths diverged—one to continued military service and eventual retirement as a Major General, the other to continued literary success and a second National Book Award.
But for a few weeks in May 1945, they were roommates at the Cadillac Hotel. And the conversations they had—about leadership, command, responsibility, and the human cost of war—found their way into one of the 20th century's notable historical novels, published three years later as The Ides of March.