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My Father in Law passed away yesterday. He was a WWII radio man and gunner on B17 - crew called it “Pride of the Yankees”... shot down over Switzerland and interned. He and buddies escaped across the Alps and ended up with the French underground. He was a true hero... he saved a fellow crew members life who had been severely injured by flak. An amazing man. He gave us a recording of an interview that the daughter of the Pilot of his plane made with him in May of 2001... four tapes. My husband and I listened to this today and it brought back the enormity of what this man who was just barely in his twenties did to protect this country. He was shot down April 13, 1944 and he passed away on April 13, 2013. I guess this was one battle he couldn’t best.

My condolences for your fathers passing. I thank him for my freedom. Sadly but as it is all in Gods grand design day by day, we're losing the hero's, the men and women who fought and struggled , bled and died that we today can enjoy the freedoms that they, the “Greatest Generation’’ defended and secured for all of us. They were young once and had the war not happened their lives would have gone on to the normal, even mundane of going to college or getting a job, getting married and raising children. Instead they were called on as no generation had ever been, before or since, to defeat pure evil and imperialist aggression such as the world had never seen in the single most cataclysmic, brutal and life-altering event in mans existence to date.And as a repudiation of the evil and the horror and death that is war the young men, like your late father, and the young women came home and were responsible for the single greatest population boom in the history of the world. War may destroy but it's love that conquers.

Your FIL had a full, rich life..he was about 90 when he passed, and was married, had kids, and got to see grand children and maybe great kids. Celebrate, rejoice in his life.

What is just staggering, and awe-inspiring to me is that when we consider that the casualty rate for 8th AF and RAF Bomber command was 65%, and the KIA was above 25%, a 25 mission tour was a near-suicide assignment, yet they went up, and back up day after day.