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The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume II: War in the Air—From the Great Depression to Combat

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Matthew Rozell

The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume II: War in the Air—From the Great Depression to Combat

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HOW DO YOU THINK YOU FEEL when you wake up in a hospital and find out you killed your own mother?JUST WHAT DO YOU DO in that moment when your plane’s been hit, and you are about to crash far from home? — “I spent a lot of time in hospitals. I had a lot of trouble reconciling how my mother died after reading the telegram she opened, saying I was shot down and missing in action; I didn’t explain to her that ‘missing in action’ is not necessarily ‘killed in action’, you know? I didn’t even think about that. How do you think you feel when you find out you killed your own mother?” —B-24 bombardier, shot down, taken prisoner Dying for freedom isn’t the worst that could happen. Being forgotten is. — “I was in the hospital with a flak wound. The next mission, the entire crew was killed. The thing that haunts me is that I can’t put a face to the guy who was a replacement. He was an 18-year old Jewish kid named Henry Vogelstein from Brooklyn. It was his first and last mission. He made his only mission with a crew of strangers.” —B-24 navigator Maybe our veterans did not volunteer to tell us their stories; perhaps we were too busy with our own lives to ask. But they opened up to a younger generation, when a history teacher taught his students to engage. — “The German fighters picked us. I told the guys, ‘Keep your eyes open, we are about to be hit!’ I saw about six or eight feet go off my left wing. I rang the ‘bail-out’ signal, and I reached out and grabbed the co-pilot out of his seat. I felt the airplane climbing, and I thought to myself, ‘If this thing stalls out, and starts falling down backwards, no one is going to get out...’” —B-17 pilot As we forge ahead as a nation, do we owe it to ourselves to become reacquainted with a generation that is fast leaving us, who asked for nothing but gave everything, to attune ourselves as Americans to a broader appreciation of what we stand for?This is the second book in the masterful WWII oral history series, but you can read them in any order. — “You flew with what I would call ‘controlled fear’. You were scared stiff, but it was controlled. My ball turret gunner—he couldn’t take it anymore… I guess he was right. He’s dead now. But he had lost control of the fear. He never got out of that ball turret; he died in that ball turret.” —B-24 bombardier It's time to listen to them. Read some of the reviews below and REMEMBER how a generation of young Americans truly saved the world. Or maybe it was all for nothing? — “A must-read in every high school in America. It is a very poignant look back at our greatest generation; maybe it will inspire the next one.” Reviewer, Vol. I
Pages
314

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