Posted on 05/25/2020 3:57:14 PM PDT by Retain Mike
Thank you for the link. I added it to my list of references.
A courageous young World War II gunner and aspiring cartoonist, trapped in the belly gun of a B-17 aircraft with the landing gear destroyed, has only his imagination as a force that might be able to save him.
One of my brothers was a bombardier on a B17 and was shot down over Wiesbaden Germany on August 15th 1944 on his 17th mission when I was 11 years old and it has left a emotional scar to this day even though he survived as a POW. I can still remember my mother getting MIA telegram from the war department and the joy when she & dad were notified he was alive but a POW. He returned home, married and had 3 kids and worked his butt off and lived into his 80s. My older brother was drafted about the same time and was in a unit that was involved in D Day invasion and the first Bailey bridge across the Rhine. A sister in-listed and served stateside. Her husband was in the unit that built the first P47 airfield behind Omaha beach and other airfields across France. My other sister’s husband served in the Naval battles of the South Pacific and came home and drank himself to death...
“Back in the day when men were men... Patch them up and send them back into the line...”
We still are.
Much of America was cut from a different cloth in those days, a much better cloth, although we still have many thousands of heros, like your brother, who give it all and have given it all for those of us on the homefront.
May God give us the strength and smarts to honor them properly, forever, and hold on to what we've been given. Regrets for your other b-in-law who gave everything he had too, and just had not enough left to give at home.
A remarkable family, remarkable story and again, many thanks for telling it.
No, not Smith but Williams was the characters name....geezer memory problem here.
And thanks for posting the link, what a story!
I so identify with the picture. I make a point of not watching the news, but recently a couple reporters interrupted I golf tournament I was watching. The director must have made them hyperventilate before they went on camera to talk about covid-19. I intend to keep my own council and not share the popular anxiety. My attitude has been determined by the generation recently gone and that now leaving us. My grandparent’s generation acquainted me with WW I, Spanish Flu, Depression, and WW II. My parents’ generation acquainted me with Depression, WW II, and Korea. For me then the Cold War and service in three Vietnam campaigns was simply a rite of passage into adulthood and this flu is almost a non-event.
Wow. Somebody got way out of formation. The bombers arranged themselves so that bombs always had a clear path to the ground.
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