Coming in 2011: New Book about the 95th Bomb Group

The new 95th Bomb Group history 'Into the Wild Blue Yonder and Beyond' is in its final publication stages with Potomac Books and will be released in 2011. The book tells the story of the Bomb Group and its subsequent Foundation from its inception through the current day. Included are chapters on wives, POWs, ground crews, entertainment and London, the British, and much more. The book is arranged, for the most part, chronologically, except for specialty chapters such as wives or Entertainment.

My Recent Writing on WWII in the Pacific

Bataan Death March survivor Ed L.

Ralph L., Bataan Death March and POW in Japan.

The USS Indianapolis.

Hap Halloran, top center, with B-29 crew.

The little girl at right watched the Pearl Harbor attack from Pearl City, only a few hundred yards from Ford Island.

Pete Benavage is my old Western Civ teacher from high school. He was a sergeant on Iwo Jima. This photo is captured from a Japanese TV documentary about Iwo Jima.

Bill Morrison, Iwo Jima Marine.

Bill Lynne, Navy Corpsman with 1st Marines.

Bob Crowton's Navy Cross, awarded for heroism at Okinawa.

Bob Crowton's wife Marge admires his Navy Cross.

Kay Morris, B-24 copilot, flew many long over-water missions against Japan.

Bill Lynne, Navy Corpsman, Pacific.

Bill Harten, USS West Virginia, Pearl Harbor survivor.

Joe Lajzer, Bataan Death March survivor and survivor of four years in a Japanese prison camp.

I have been working hard on Untold Valor: Pacific and have some fine stories. The book will be arranged chronologically by battles/campaigns and each chapter will feature two to three men or women who were there. Chapters so far include:

Pearl Harbor: Interviews, Pearl Harbor survivor from USS West Virginia; lady who was a 6-year old whose dad was stationed at Pearl and who watched the attack from Pearl City.

Wake Island: Interview: a civilian construction worker who was captured and spent the war as a POW.

Bataan Death March: interviews with three Bataan Death March survivors who also survived hellish POW camps and Hell Ship trips.

Pilots: interviews with two pilots who flew long over-water missions to Japan.

Navy Corpsmen: Interviews with three Navy corpsmen who served with the First Marine Division on Saipan and Okinawa.

Okinawa: interviews with Marines and Navy Corpsmen who were there, including a Marine Lt. who won the Navy Cross there.

Iwo Jima: Interviews with three Marines who were there.

USS Indianapolis: Interviews with three men who survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, sunk by a Japanese sub in 1945. The survivors spent days in shark-infested waters before rescue, and most died waiting for rescue. Also interviewed Hunter Scott, who as a young man called attention to the fact that Captain McVay was wrongly accused of negligence.

B-29 POW: Interview with a man who was shot down and was a POW in Tokyo during the March 10, 1945 firebombings.

Possible one or two more chapters, but it depends on if I can find the men to interview. I would like to interview a carrier pilot and a Seabee.

Where in the World Have I Been?

Marine Second Lt. Robert 'Bob' Crowton's Navy Cross, awarded for heroism at Okinawa.

My former teacher Pete Benavage as a Marine Sergeant before heading to Iwo Jima.

Joseph Lajzer as he appeared after over three and a half years of Japanese captivity, including the Bataan Death March and slave labor in Japan.

Have been interviewing a gentleman who was on the Clark Field Baseball Team in Philippines before war broke out. He was on the Bataan Death March, then helped build the airfield at Palawan as slave labor, then took a Hell Ship to Japan and spent a long time "digging coal for the Emperor" at Hiroshima Omine and saw the A-bomb fall thirty miles away that fateful August day. He is in the photo above. (Name withheld)

This youthful gentleman was my Western Civilization teacher in high school. He is Major Pete Benavage, United States Marine Corps (Ret.). As a young sergeant of Marines, Pete helped lead a platoon on Iwo Jima. This is a photo capture from a Japanese TV program about Iwo Jima entitled 'Island of Death'.

Pete Benavage, teacher and friend.

Marine Second Lt. Robert Crowton's "Old Breed" First Marine Division patch that he wore on Okinawa, where he won the Navy Cross for heroism.

Marine Lt. Bob Crowton's lovely wife, Marge, admires his Navy Cross, awarded at a hospital in San Diego after he had undergone surgery to shrapnel damage to his face. (Bob Crowton collection)

Bob's Purple Heart and the box for his Navy Cross.

Bob awarded his Navy Cross in San Diego, CA.

William Morrison, who as a young Marine guarded a gun emplacement at the base of Mt. Suribachi and saw the flag go up.

Navy Corpsman William 'Bill' Lynne, who served with the First Marines at Peleliu and Okinawa. The corpsmen fought alongside the Marines, and saved many lives in battle. (Bill Lynne photo)

The wounded Corpsman in this famous press photo is Bill Lynne. (Bill Lynne collection)

Greetings to my faithful readers, all 26 of you. :)

Sorry I have not written on the blog much lately. I've been very busy working on my next book, and since it is not about WWII airmen, this page hasn't gotten the attention it did before

Right now, I am deeply involved in researching a book about the Pacific War. Lately, I've been working on two chapters in depth. The first involves the men who were on the Bataan Death March and the ensuing years as POWs. The second involves men who were at Iwo. These are but two chapters but I tend to immerse in just a few at a time. I've already put a lot of time into Pacific aviators and into Okinawa, the USS Indianapolis, and Navy Corpsmen. I have also been interviewing several Pearl Harbor survivors. This on top of the fact that I work sixty to seventy hours a week in the highly lucrative field of teaching high school.

I am putting a small sampling of photos of some of the guys I'm writing about at the moment, and who will all appear in the book when it comes out next year.

Stay tuned. I will be back.

Lack of Posts

Just and update to let readers know I am still alive and working on stories. What you may not know is that I am a public high school teacher (in the US, public means public not private). I work at a school that is officially a Title I school, meaning it has such a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students that it gets extra government help. Also, though I teach a high school level, the 9th grade is in a junior high. Go figure.
I have been at this school since 1989, other than for a six-year hiatus resulting from the necessity to distance myself from a corrupt former administration which is now gone. (This administration tried to ruin a fellow teacher, defamed his character, and later lost a large monetary settlement in the ensuing lawsuit, not to mention their collective jobs). But that's another story.
Teaching requires massive amounts of daily work, and it doesn't end when the final bell rings. Ten-hour days are the norm. Weekends are full of planning.
On top of that, I am putting finishing touches on the 95th Bomb Group book, and also working on my next book. This weekend will continue to work on a chapter about an amazing man who got the Navy Cross on Okinawa. He lives right here in town so I can drive over and see him.
It seems there are not enough hours in the day to do everything, and the first thing to suffer is this blog, but rest assured, things will pick up again.

Update

Readers, so sorry for the lag since the last entry. I have been very busy finishing up the 95th Bomb Group history (it is now done) and also working on my next book, about World War Two in the Pacific. I had an amazing interview yesterday with a man who was in the Big Red One on Okinawa and won the Navy Cross for heroism. Like most heroes, he doesn't accept the classification as such. When his story has been vetted and okayed by him, I will post it here. Suffice it to say it is amazing and literally brought me to tears writing it. I am blessed to know these great men who put their lives on the line so that the world could be free. I hope we never let these men down and forget their sacrifices.

A Writer's Lesson Learned

My wife Geri, 100th Bomb Group Pilot Herb Alf, and I back in 2002 in Roseburg, Oregon, with fragments of Herbs memoirs, written on both sides of sheets of Prison Camp toilet paper. Herb passed away a few years after this photo. His book, 'Petals of Fire', is perhaps the greatest novel of the air war over Europe and the POW experience.

In the past week, I have had a lesson driven home to me not once, but twice, concerning my vocation as a writer of World War Two military aviation history. I have been reminded, not once but twice, to refocus on the Big Picture. It has also humbled me, brought me new insight, and made me a better human being.

By nature, I am a very busy person. I rarely let up. Till recently, I juggled four jobs. I taught school, I taught night classes, I operated on online sales business, and I wrote books and articles. I went from one job to the next, rarely resting, and weekends were just another word for grading, planning lessons, and writing or editing projects. This past summer, I spent 12 hour days, seven days a week, writing the unit history of the 95th Bomb Group. I only made one trip to my beloved Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks all summer, and when the school year began, I felt like I was working less, not more.

Twice this week, members of our Greatest Generation have basically taken me out behind the woodshed and reminded me that I need to focus on my commitments as a writer. It has not been an easy thing to hear. But it was needed. Members of the Greatest Generation expect that when you commit to something, you will follow through, and without delay. That's the way they were brought up, that's what made them successful, and that's what they expect of others.

As a result of my encounters this week with two men I very highly respect, I have come to the realization that I need to prioritize better. I am therefore, as of today, no longer working night school, and am shutting down my online business. Hopefully, these moves will free me up to spend more time doing what I really should be doing---and that is telling the stories of World War Two airmen.

Life is full of lessons learned, some of them painful. The lessons I learn pale in contrast to those learned by the men I admire and for whom I write. I will not let them down again.

95th Bomb Group Unit History Update

It's been a busy summer. Each day I try to be up by six and start writing, knocking of between two and three in the afternoon for lunch and then my daily run, then more writing and research in the evening. There are 30 chapters in the book, and I have 23 of these complete in their rough draft format, and am halfway through the 24th. The amazing thing is I've managed to interview nearly sixty members of the 95th Bomb Group directly. Fortunately, in my capacity as a writer of other books, I interviewed some key members of the 95th before they passed away as well.

Add to this reading over 300 mission reports (some of which are fifty to sixty pages), dozens of MACRs (Missing Air Crew Reports), roughly fifty self-published memoirs, hundreds of personal letters, over a hundred books on the subject, plus conducting on-site interviews in Horham, England and all over the United States, and you can see how this project has pretty much been my whole life for the past several years.

Projected completion for the rough draft of the book is two-three weeks. I am very fortunate to have a number of qualified individuals reading/critiquing and editing the draft. Also, the book will be filled with photographs selected by the 95th Bomb Group Foundation, and there has been talk of adding a CD-Rom in the back as well with mission lists, MACRs, and photos.

Current word count is roughly 125,000 words, with another 35,000 projected.

That having been said, I'm taking the day off tomorrow to go hiking in Yellowstone. It will be the first time I've been in my favorite Park in over two years.

Military Writer Eric Hammel Opens New Website

This book is due out this fall. Wish I had it now to use while working on my own 95th BG book!

Eric Hammel is one of my favorite military authors. I've been enjoying his books for years before I 'met' Eric via the internet. Eric has opened a new website that is visually stunning and is packed with interesting and useful information about military history books and military history in general. Drop by and take a look. You'll be glad you did.

Here's the link: www.erichammelbooks.com

95th Bomb Group Book

The last B-17 lost in WWII was from the 95th Bomb Group, and went down during a Manna/Chowhound Mission to drop food to the starving people of Holland in May, 1945.

When I signed on to write the unit history of the 95th Bombardment Group (Heavy), one of the premier B-17 Flying Fortress groups of World War Two, I knew that in order to get a rough draft done by the end of 2008 I would have to work pretty much non-stop all summer. I spend most of the day either reading material, mostly primary source stuff, or writing. Breaks for lunch and for my late afternoon run keep me fresh.

When school starts in mid-August, I will be in a new school with a new assignment, which means extra work for the first year or two. There won't be a lot of time to write then. As Elvis used to say, "It's now or never."

The 95th BG Memorial in Horham, England.


There's no shortage of material. It's likely I'll end up with a thousand pages of rough. Luckily, I have a 95th BG pilot, John Walter, vetting things for me as I go, and my co-author, Ian Hawkins, will also bring his fine-tuned writer's eye to the project, so it will be pared down and much improved by the time we're done. In the meantime, I feel like I have stepped back in time and am living on the 95th Base at Horham, East Anglia in the early 1940's, surrounded by young American men half my age who go off to face near-certain death on a regular basis, or by the brilliant support crews on the ground who made it all possible. I've been along on more missions than I can shake a stick at, been shot down a dozen times, evaded a few times, including once by walking over the Pyrenees into Spain with Chuck Yeager, and pretty much been absorbed into a different place and time. Having been to Horham and walked the runway and through the village, I can visualize the interactions between the villagers and the Yanks, especially after interviewing so many villagers this June. They had a special relationship that continues to this day.



In any case, the Square B B-17s of the 95th, the men who flew them, the men who kept 'em flying, and the Brits who lived near them, have populated my life this summer and seem as real as if it were only yesterday. We are well on our way to writing what I hope will be the best unit history ever written about an American bomber group.

Home From Travels for 95th Bomb Group

The 95th's main runway at Horham.

An old hardstand on the 95th Base at Horham, rapidly being reclaimed by the verdant vegetation of the region. My host Alan Johnson, who put me up in his house for six nights. We had fish and chips, went to a party, and hoisted a few beers when not working. Here Alan stands in front of the Red Feather Club, a passion of his for many year. Alan grew up near the base and has dedicated his life to remembering the American servicemen who came to the small town many years ago.
With my mentor and co-author of our upcoming history, Mr. Ian Hawkins, at his home in Bacton.
Christine and Richard Havers outside their home in the Scottish Borders. In the background is the spacious, luxurious guesthouse where they put me up for the night.

Looking out a window in the old base hospital at Horham, home of the 95th Bomb Group.
James Mutton in front of his old school in East Anglia.
Traveling in style with Alan and James, we took their wonderfully-restored original JEEP to the 100th BG base at Thorpe Abbotts.
One of several brilliant murals painted on the wall of the Red Feather Club on the 95th base at Horham, lovingly restored by the Brits who keep the memories alive.

Temple Bar, downtown Dublin. River Liffey, Downtown Dublin.
Roses of Tralee, Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland.

Just home today from my business trip to the England with a side trip to Scotand and Ireland. There to write the 95th Bomb Group (H) history, one of the great B-17 outfits of WWII, based near the small town of Horham in East Anglia.

Looking out towards Dingle Harbor, County Kerry.

I will post a travelogue over the next few days of the trip.

My thanks to my hosts, including Alan Johnson, Norman Feltwell and James Mutton in Suffolk and Richard and Christine Havers in the Scottish Borders. Such gracious hosts! I can't thank you enough.

This Blog off the Air Till June 20

This blog will have no new entries until June 20 or 21. I am leaving tomorrow for England to do research for the unit history on the 95th Bomb Group, stationed at Horham, England during World War Two. The 95th was one of the first bomb groups to fly in the war, and distinguished itself throughout the war in combat, earning three Distinguished Unit Citations and becoming the first American heavy bomber group to strike Berlin.

Time will be spent in Horham, at the Cambridge American Cemetery, at Duxford Air Museum, at the old bases at Horham, Framlingham (390th Bomb Group) and the 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe-Abbotts. All three bases are in East Anglia.

Remembering D-Day: Frank Irgang's Etched in Purple

Omaha Beach, D-Day, June 6, 1944. The 29th goes ashore.
Omaha Beach today. France.

The following is the tentative final draft of a magazine article about my friend Frank Irgang and his experiences in World War Two as a medic and scout in the famed 29th Infantry Division. Story is copyrighted 2008 but please enjoy.

"When 23-year-old Frank Irgang returned from World War Two, he had the bone-tired, old-man look common to GIs who had seen heavy combat. His closest friends had been killed in action or were lying maimed in veterans’ hospitals. “An inventory of myself revealed a battered hulk, confused and restless,” he wrote. A 1945 photo of Frank as an MP in Berlin shows a war-weary man trying to smile.

He relived the war each night in his sleep, his nightmares filled with the ghosts of his comrades, of the maimed and dying he’d tended as a medic, of those he’d killed after becoming an infantry scout, and of the bodies of his comrades floating in the heaving sea off Omaha Beach on D-Day. Ensconced in a basement apartment on one of Idaho Falls’ numbered streets, Frank Irgang discovered that though he’d left the war, the war had not left him. Fortunately, his boss at Idaho Falls’ Daniger’s Furniture Store was a hardened World War One veteran who told of how he’d finally beaten his demons by writing his experiences down. He suggested Frank do the same. Each evening, Frank sat down with a lined tablet and let the words flow. It was, he says, “a catharsis”. The result is perhaps the finest infantryman memoir to come out of World War Two, Etched in Purple (Potomac Books, 2008. Reprint edition. Originally published by Caxton’s, Caldwell, Idaho in 1949).

When Etched in Purple came out in 1949, the Los Angeles Times called it “one of the most brutal war books published” and said that “Frank Irgang has succeeded in doing what at least a million others who served with the infantry during the war wished they could have accomplished.” The Cincinnati Enquirer called it “a taste of the brutal truth”. The small press run of 3,000 quickly sold out, and the book became a rare jewel that few Americans knew existed. In 2008, Etched in Purple was re-released by military publisher Potomac Books, available for the first time to a worldwide audience. This is the story of the man who wrote the book, and of the book itself, one of the greatest books ever to be written in Idaho Falls.

A native of Michigan, Frank Irgang was born in 1922 and raised during the Great Depression, a hardscrabble experience he credits with helping “the American soldier to beat the overwhelming odds he faced from time to time.” Before entering the Army, Irgang worked as a schoolteacher and a blast-furnace operator.

Drafted in 1942, Irgang received training as a medic, surgical technician, clerk-typist, psychologist, pontoon-builder, and finally as a heavy-bomber navigator. While in flight training at Santa Ana, California, he met his future wife, Virginia Daniger, at a USO dance. Virginia was from Idaho Falls, a 1943 graduate of Idaho Falls High School who had moved to California to attend Santa Ana Junior College. They were married before he shipped out. Santa Ana Army Air Base, California, during World War Two.

While in Santa Ana, “the order came through that we were preparing a full-scale invasion of Europe and that anyone with ground force training had to report,” Frank recalls. “They needed medics to support the invasion, so they gave me a seven-day furlough and then shipped me out to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where we got our shots and then headed for England.”

“We went over in April of ’44 in a convoy of ships as far as the eye could see. We ended up in a tent city at Bournemouth, England, somewhere in southern England, in big tents. All the roads, all the lanes, were loaded with half-tracks and tanks and equipment. You’d think the whole island of England was going to sink.”

“I was a replacement among thousands that had gathered for the invasion. I was assigned to the 175th Regiment of the 29th Division as a medic” The 29th had been rehearsing beach landings in England since fall of 1944. Before long, his new comrades were calling him ‘Doc’. Troops preparing to board ships on D-Day in Weymouth, England.

“On June 5, 1944, we boarded a troop ship at Weymouth, England. There were a couple thousand men on the ship. It took us across the channel until we were maybe 150 yards from the shore, then it lowered the nets. We scrambled down the nets into an LCI-Landing Craft Infantry—and then the landing craft circled until each unit was all on the water. All this time, we were being shot at.” An LSI similar to Frank's lands on a beach on D-Day.

“The 29th Division landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. The 175th landed about noon. The others had come in at around five or six a.m., and many of these men were dead and floating in the water.” Etched in Purple’s opening scenes follow seasick men plunging with full packs and equipment into the water as machine gun fire rakes the beach. When the men hit the beaches on D-Day, tens of thousands of water-logged packs of Chelsea cigarettes bobbed in the angry surf. Each man had been given a carton before boarding the invasion ships.

By the time the 29th had all come ashore on D-Day, casualties ran at 390 men killed, 511 wounded, and 27 missing. Among these were 19 men from the small Virginia town of Bedford.
The French have not forgotten. Omaha Beach in foreground, American Cemetery in background. France.
The following weeks saw the 29th engaged in fierce hedgerow fighting and in street-to-street combat in French towns. Afforded some protection by the red cross on his helmet, Frank struggled to treat the overwhelming number of wounded and dying men, often treating them under fire where they fell. An Army medic administers plasma to a wounded soldier in Sicily.

Shot through the hand in October of 1944, he was evacuated for treatment, but soon found himself thrust back into the front lines at the Battle of the Bulge, this time as an infantry scout, whose average life span could be measured in days or weeks. With a license to kill, and a burning anger at what he had seen, Frank often became one of the first Americans to enter contested towns and cities.
Fighting in sub-zero conditions during the Battle of the Bulge.

As the fierce fighting raged across France, Belgium and Germany, Frank found himself faced with the moral and ethical grayness of warfare. Prisoners on both sides were sometimes shot, as were civilians. A moment of great cruelty could be instantly followed by a moment of kindness, forgiveness and redemption.

Certain sights were etched into Frank’s memory, only to reappear in his book. A German tank drives on top of an American foxhole, locks one tread, and grinds the unfortunate Americans into the ground. A new GI fastens the strap on his helmet, only to have his neck broken by the concussion from an artillery shell. A buzz bomb hits a village, killing everyone in a three-block radius. A German pilot refuses to surrender to anyone of lesser rank. He is shot and a ring cut from his finger. Mere luck determines whether a man lives or dies. Every man feels as if his time is up, or past. Some of the injured manage to hang on despite gaping wounds and missing limbs. Men draw achingly close in battle, depending on each other and bonding in hardship, only to be wrenched apart by sudden and violent death.

In eleven months of fierce fighting, the 29th took heavy losses. 3,720 men were killed, 15,403 were wounded, 462 were missing, and 526 were captured. The total battle casualties ran 20,111 men out of a unit of 15,000. 8,655 non-battle casualties brings the total up to 28,776—a staggering casualty rate of nearly 200%, made possible by the fact that as men died, other fresh faces were thrown in to replace them, many of whom met a similar fate.

Trained as an MP after recovering from his injuries, Irgang spent time in Berlin at the end of the war. A photo of him taken in Berlin shows a man aged beyond his years, his smile belied by sad and haunted eyes.

“I took some notes during combat, but didn’t start to seriously write until I got home to Idaho Falls,” remembers Frank. “Virginia had moved back to Idaho Falls during the war. Housing was at a premium at that time. We lived in a basement apartment on one of the numbered streets. The home was owned by Eugene Pratt, who at the time was the superintendent of schools for Idaho Falls.”

Virginia showed Pratt several pages of Frank’s writing. Pratt was impressed and told Frank to type it up. Frank got a Montgomery Wards typewriter and typed the manuscript. Pratt took it to Caldwell, Idaho, to Caxton’s Printers, and showed it to the publisher, Frank Gibson.

“Gibson wasn’t sure about the book,” says Frank. “But he looked it over and about six weeks later I got a letter that said that with editing, we could get the thing published. One condition Gibson had was there could be no swearing and no sex.”

“The book came out in 1949. It sold 3,000 copies in the first printing. The original price of the book was $3.50. Over time, the book became more and more rare. Eventually, copies would go for two hundred dollars or more.”

Original book and dust jacket, Etched in Purple, Caxton Printers, Idaho, 1949.

Sometime in the nineties, the author of this article was shopping at the Idaho Falls Deseret Industries, and came across a worn purple hardback book. I noted it was a war memoir and that it had been signed by the author, Frank Irgang. I paid my forty-nine cents and took the book home and began reading. With the turning of each page I was more and more certain that I was reading a masterpiece. I tracked down Frank Irgang, who now lived in San Diego. A more recent photo of Frank.

We began a correspondence. Many years later, after my own book had been published, I suggested to Potomac Books that they look into re-publishing Etched in Purple. I sent one of my prized copies to Don Jacobs at Potomac. He read it and was awe-stricken by it as I had been, immediately negotiating with Frank for publishing rights. The book was re-released by Potomac Books in May of 2008. The Re-discovered classic infantry memoir, Etched in Purple (Potomac, 2008)

“I wrote… of my experiences and the experiences of my comrades with the hope that our witness of war’s senselessness might be known and recognized,” Frank explained to his publisher nearly sixty years ago. In the book’s final paragraph, he writes: “I looked at the lights (of New York Harbor) and…tears came to my eyes. ‘Welcome home; thanks for a job well done’. Yes, we had helped do the job, but many were not here who had given more. To them we should all be forever grateful. As long as I lived, I would never forget my brothers-in-arms, who fell like leaves from the trees among which they fought. They memory of them would stay with me forever and a day—it had been etched in purple.”