Twenty-seven-year-old Army Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham had served admirably in the Second World War. Two years after the war ended, he was thrust back into duty in another kind of war. What that duty was is not entirely clear; what happened to him is not at all clear.

The post-World War II life of decorated World War II Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham reads like the plot of a John Le Carre novel.

Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham

Like millions of Americans, Dorothy Hickingbotham breathed a sigh of relief when World War II ended in September 1945. Her beloved husband Ray emerged from the war unscathed, and he was finally coming home to her and their three-year-old daughter, Carol.

Ray Comes Home to His Family

The young family settled in Arlington, Virginia, and eagerly looked forward to postwar life. It was the happiest Dorothy had ever been, but the feeling was short-lived.

The ending of World War II was supposed to bring the Hickingbothams the best years of their lives; instead, the dawning of a new kind of war took away those years. The Cold War was looming, and the Army again came calling for Ray.

Ray and Dorothy

As he settled into postwar life, Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham was assigned to the Army’s intelligence department and given housing on the Vint Hills Farms station in Arlington. The base also housed a top-secret radio operation.

The Soviet Union, an uneasy ally during World War II, was now America’s nemesis. Ray is believed to have been one of a group of code-breakers trying to decipher the covert communications originating behind the Iron Curtain. In the summer of 1947, the group was absorbed into the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Ray was transferred to another top-secret group.

The Cold War had commenced and Ray’s new assignment required being covert with his family; he did not tell Dorothy of his new role. He had moved from battlefield fighting to clandestine operations. The latter could be as dangerous as the former.

A New War Means a New Role

In October, while Dorothy was visiting her parents in Long Island, she tried to call Ray, but was instead connected to an Army personnel officer. He told her that her husband was on leave without offering an explanation.

Dorothy soon learned the Army had, again without explanation, hired a moving crew to clean out their apartment. Two weeks later, a van arrived at Dorothy’s parents’ house and unloaded, what they claimed, were all of the contents from the Hickingbotham’s apartment. Ray’s possessions, however, were not among the items.

One month later, Dorothy received a letter from the Army starting Ray had gone AWOL (Absent without Leave) ten days earlier, on October 14. Thirty days later, the Army informed Dorothy that her husband had been declared a deserter, meaning she and Carol would lose all of their military benefits.

Each inquiry Dorothy made to the Army about her husband’s supposed desertion was ignored. Further stonewalled by the CIA and FBI, she was certain the Army, and the government, were hiding something.

No trace of Army Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham surfaced for over thirty years.

Declared a Deserter

In 1979, Ray Hickingbotham’s daughter, Carol Solstad, requested her father’s military records under the Freedom of Information Act. She was shocked to find there appeared to have been no official investigation into his disappearance.

Like her mother, Carol butted heads with the government for years before changing course in going to the media. After doing so, she received a prompt response.

In June 1987, within hours after an article about her missing father in the Arlington, Virginia, newspaper hit the presses, Carol received a phone call which seemed like something out of the movies. For the rest of her life, she was not sure what to make of the exchange.

The caller identified himself only by a code name, “Archangel.” He nervously told Carol that the three-hour-old published article had already rattled the CIA.

Article has an Immediate Impact

Archangel told Carol her father had been investigating sensitive leaks regarding atomic energy and that the Soviets had tried to kill him in August 1947, two months before he was declared AWOL. Archangel said the Army brass then decided to put Ray underground while making it appear he had deserted.

As bizarre as the claim was, it was eclipsed by Archangel’s next statement. He said, for nearly twenty years, Ray had lived only three miles from Dorothy and Carol, hidden by the government in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Despite the close proximity to his family, Archangel said the Army prohibited Ray from contacting them. He ended the phone call by telling Carol that her father was living under the name of Nelson in a democratic country that was a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member.

Carol never heard from Archangel again, but she soon received other letters and calls supporting his claims that her father was still alive.

Numerous sightings of her father were reported across Europe, others said he was serving in the Middle East, while another claimed he was in South America. Sightings were also alleged closer to home as one man said Ray was teaching school in El Paso, Texas, under another name. A retired Tacoma, Washington, dry cleaner was adamant he had regularly cleaned a Lieutenant Hickingbotham’s uniform as late as 1949, two years after Ray’s disappearance.

Carol, however, found no evidence supporting any of the rumors or sightings.

Sensational Claims about the Long-Lost Lieutenant

Dorothy Hickingbotham remarried a man named Wahl. She died in 2004 at age eighty-two.

Dorothy and Young Carol

Motivated by her father’s disappearance, Carol Solstad became a private investigator, specializing in reuniting families. She helped locate over two-hundred lost family members as well as determine the fates of several lost in war. She was, however, unable to crack the case at the top of her wish list.

Carol died in 2014 at age sixty-nine, not having learned the fate of her father.

Carol Solstad, Ray’s Daughter

One way or another, Lieutenant Ray Hickingbotham lost his life to the Cold War.

A Cold War Mystery

SOURCES:

• Bluefield (Virginia) Daily Telegraph
• Lawton (Oklahoma) Constitution
• The Oklahoman
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post