A History Lesson

If you had a souped-up DeLorean with a flux capacitor and the 1.21 gigawatts of power necessary to travel back to East Haven, CT in 1965 … and for some reason found your way into Mrs. Esposito’s American History class, you’d find approximately 21 smiling students.  Mrs. Esposito was a very popular teacher … everybody liked her.  Well, almost everybody.  I hated history and didn’t care much for Mrs. Esposito.  The feeling was mutual.  Once high school was over, I never took another history course, or for that matter, read another history book unless it was novelized history like Laura Hildebrand’s Unbroken.  So, upon your return to 2013, you’d certainly be surprised to find me reading Stephen E. Ambrose’s The Wild Blue, a straight up history of the pilots who flew the B-24 Liberator Bombers over Germany during World War II.   As it turns, I had mentioned my father’s service in Italy during the war a ground crew supervisor for B-24s to my friend Ralph, a genuine history buff … and the next time I saw him, he handed me the book.  I took it wondering if I’d ever get around to reading it.  And on this Top Sites Tuesday #224, I’m here to tell you that I’m glad I did.

The Wild Blue tells the story of how a diverse group of very young men with no aviation experience were recruited by the Army Air Corps, then trained in a very short time into the largest and most effective strategic bombing force in history.  It describes the training and the process by which the fight crews were chosen from the thousands that wanted to fly.  A primary focus of the book was pilot (and later Senator) George McGovern, who was married during his training then shipped off to Italy, just as my Dad was.  While Ambrose focused on the flight crews, he talked about the dedication of the ground crews as well.   I had no idea that the casualty rates for flyers was as high as 50%, or that thousands of B-24s were lost during the war, many during training flights or accidents during take off and landing.   I suppose as a young man, knowing Dad had been on a ground crew, I wondered, How bad could it have been?  But reading The Wild Blue was like reading my Dad’s story and made me understand why he talked about his experience so little.   But I could also see how the experience shaped his character, particularly his penchant for always doing a job right.  He’d learned, after all, under genuine life and death conditions.

So, Thoughts on this Top Sites Tuesday?  Well … Thought Number One: Once you read The Wild Blue, you will fully appreciate what the flight and ground support crews endured to bring about victory over Germany … and what a price they paid.  It’s a great read.  And Thought Number Two:  I wish I’d read The Wild Blue while Dad was alive so I could have talked to him about it.  Still, I have clearer picture of a part of his life because I read it … and even more respect for The Man.  Maybe I was wrong about history.

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