The Things Our Fathers Saw - Vol. 3, The War In The Air Book Two: The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA

[THE NEWER, LONGER, 2ND EDITION OF THIS BOOK IS THE 2020 EDITION TITLED "The Things Our Fathers SawThe Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume 3: War in the AirCombat, Captivity, and Reunion". IT FEATURES A DIFFERENT COVER and can be searched up on Amazon or MatthewRozellBooks dot com.] WHAT DO YOU FILL YOUR POCKETS WITH when youre rousted awake in the middle of a freezing German night to be death-marched across Germany? WHEN YOUR BUDDY STAGGERS AND FALLS by the side of the road, and no longer even knows who you are, do you keep moving to keep yourself alive? The next day we marched almost twenty hours, so now we were coming up to a town, now everybody is falling over, but I was in a group where everybody made a pledge to watch each other. I found myself off the side of the road and I lay in the snow and I said to myself, Wow, this is so warm. I was so damn cold, I didnt know my name or anything, or where I livedI was gone! B-24 bombardier, shot down, taken prisoner Dying for freedom isnt the worst that could happen. Being forgotten is. We got shot down around noontime by a Messerschmitt. I was in the top turret shooting at them, and I could see [their faces] as clearly as I'm looking at you. They wiped us out completely.I'm following him with the top turret gun and you could see bits of the plane coming off his tail section, but not enough to bother him. As I'm turning, the electrical cord on my flying suit got caught underneath the swivel of the turret. I ducked down, I untangled it now I got back into my turret. Fellas, the turret wasn't there anymore. That son-of-a-gun who had been eyeing me came in and he hit his 20mm gun, took the top of that Plexiglas and tore it right off!The fighters made another pass. They hit a couple of our engines; they made another pass and they shot away our controls! We peeled off into one of these spiralsyou've seen them on television where the plane will come over on its back and just spiral into the ground. Trees are coming up at me; I had my hand on the ripcord and out I went, headfirst. B-17 engineer I was standing on the train in Paris right next to an SS colonelhe had a satchel handcuffed to his arm, and a guard with a Sten gun. The train started up, and the SS colonel bumped into me. And he turned around to me and said, 'Pardonne moi.' I thought, Oh, my God! B-17 crewman/evadee, shot down on his first mission 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 third book in the masterful WWII oral history series, but you can read them in any order. What made me cry was this is a guy from Texas, and even if he didnt like blacks, or he didnt like Jews, or Catholics, or whoever, no German was going to tell him what to dono general was pushing him around! He says, We are Americans in this camp, and we are all the same. They asked him for a list of all Jews, and he said, Youre not going to get itif youre going to shoot them, youre going to shoot us all, because we are not going to tell you which ones to pick out. So these are the things that make me feel damn proud to be an American! Lead navigator, PoW 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