Those like me, most of my uncles served in WWII and almost all of them came home. There's so many jobs all our veterans did over so many battles, wars and during peacetime military service that very few of us could ever understand or appreciate without some personal experience stories from those who were there.
Thankfully my Dad did relate some amount of his experience flying 50 missions in a B-24 as a flight mechanic, another was a sailor on a destroyer in the Pacific, yet another worked in Army heavy equipment transport after D-Day, yet another lost his life during the Battle of the Bulge.
I'm going to try to contact my B.I.L. To see if he has any comments on your story from the pilots perspective. Again thanks.
I am glad you liked it.
I am a historian at heart, but I find WWII history fascinating and just horrible. But history hinged on that war like no other.
I think of all those men who were small town guys, all ending up in the same place on the other side of the world handling jobs with huge responsibilities at very young ages.
My favorite movie of all time is, hands down, “The Best Years of Our Lives” which won Best Picture in 1946, back when the Oscars meant something.
I grew up around those men, ordinary men who had to to extraordinary and sometimes terrible thing, but they did them because they had to.
I came to revere those men, and I still feel that way today.