A Call to Arms

About the Book

In A Call to Arms a highly-decorated World War II U.S. Navy pilot recounts his experiences searching for Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic and providing air support during the Allied invasion of Southern France. Written in 1988 while the author was dying of lung cancer, the book provides a personal account of a Navy pilot’s life during the war and a thoughtful, and at times excruciating, moral self-evaluation from the point of view of a war veteran as he faces his own mortality many years after the war. Part personal chronicle, part examination of conscience, A Call to Arms is unique among military memoirs.

About the Author

After graduating form the University of Notre Dame in 1940, Gerald Griffin “Jerry” Hogan entered the U.S. Navy where he served as a carrier-based pilot involved in anti-submarine warfare. Later he provided air support to Allied troops during the invasion of Southern France. After the war, he married and joined his brother-in-law in starting Templegate, a Catholic religious goods store and book publishing business with locations in Springfield, Illinois and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He retired from the business world in 1968, earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh, and taught high school English at Shadyside Academy in Pittsburgh for ten years. He died of lung cancer in 1989.