Youth the First Victim of War

About the Book

In late January 1944, thousands of young men, as ordered, arrived at Westover Field, Massachusetts. Each had recently graduated from different military schools at many different air fields around the country, and thus were now qualified pilots, navigators, bombardiers or gunners. This story tells what happened to one air crew brought together at that time: their training to operate as a crew of a B-24, four engine, heavy bomber; their flying a brand new one to the 15th Air Force field in southern Italy; their introduction to the war; and the war as they experienced it and the aftermath.

About the Author

I enlisted in the Army Air Corps in late 1942, and in early 1944 became a bombardier. Assigned to a heavy bomber air crew, we flew twenty-three missions with the 15th Air Force when I was critically injured on June 26th; the target that day was an oil refinery outside Vienna. After ten months in Army hospitals I was released from the Army and shortly after entered Yale, subsequently receiving a degree there and degrees from the universities of Virginia and Michigan. I became a staff member of the Library of Congress, retiring from it in 1982.