Outstanding B-24 Video: Watch it Here

My friend Marilyn Walton, whose father was a B-24 crewman, emailed me about this outstanding B-24 tribute on Youtube. I checked it out. It is outstanding. Watch it by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0GnJ9T2Fc

If this incredibly powerful video does not choke you up, nothing will.

These were brave men.

Author of 'Rhapsody in Junk' on radio this morning

I just received word that my friend and colleague Marilyn Walton, author of 'Rhapsody in Junk', (see my previous story on the book at this link: http://untoldvalor.blogspot.com/2007/07/daughters-love-fathers-service.html ) is giving an interview on a Cincinnatti radio station in roughly an hour. I know that's short notice for most readers, but hopefully a few will be able to listen. Marilyn's dad flew on a B-24 and was shot down, becoming a POW. Her extensively researched and intensely personal book is the result of years of work, a real labor of love on her part and a fine tribute to her late father.

Marilyn writes:
I am being interviewed on Cincinnati radio this afternoon. If you are bored and not doing anything, you can listen to the interview on. http://www.wmkvfm.org/ at 1-1:30.
Since this is easy to do, all the Germans I met are listening! Boy, my dad would have gotten a kick out of that!

The link doesn't appear to be hyperlinked. However, when I cut and pasted it into the address box, it popped up fine for me.

That's one o'clock Eastern Time, noon central, eleven Mountain, and ten Pacific.

Give Marilyn a listen. It's sure to be interesting!

A Daughter's Love, A Father's Service

As you know from my post yesterday, I just finished a wonderful book by my friend Marilyn Walton entitled Rhapsody in Junk: A Daughter's Return To Germany To Finish Her Father's Story (Paperback - AuthorHouse, May 2, 2007). This story would be of great interest to any Air Corps enthusiast, especially the sons and daughters and grandchildren of the men who flew the heavies over Europe in World War Two. I asked Marilyn if I could share some photos from her story on this blog, and she graciously accepted, so here are some photos of Marilyn's search for her father's story, direct from her new book.

Photo above is of Lt. Thomas Jeffers, B-24 bombardier, Rhapsody in Junk. Mr. Jeffers passed away in June of 2004 at the age of 83 after a series of debilitating strokes.

The B-24 Liberator 'Rhapsody in Junk'. Thomas Jeffers served as the bombardier on this aircraft when it was shot down over Germany in 1944. Nine of the ten-man crew survived by parachuting from the stricken plane. The tenth was found dead on the ground, after either striking the tail section on bail-out or from being killed by German civilians.

Above, the field where Jeffers landed after bailing out.

The farmhouse, built in the seventeenth century, that was almost hit by Rhapsody in Junk before it crashed into a nearby wood.

A few years ago, Marilyn and her husband John returned to the town and interviewed witnesses of the crash. Here, one witness motions to a point in the woods where the plane impacted. There are still four craters created from the plane's massive engines, and one tree still bears the scars of impact. Though most of the plane was removed by the German government within a day or two of the crash, locals kept some pieces and used them to make everyday household objects, including coat hooks and a tea strainer. Marilyn was given these pieces on her visit.

A write-up in a German newspaper about the visit, which generated great interest in that area of Germany. The Waltons found the Germans to be helpful, and learned how the German civilians had endured during the war. Much of the translating was done by the young man in the above picture, Matthias Martensen, seen wearing the jean jacket.

A tea strainer and a coat hook, made by local German civilians from the wreckage of Rhapsody in Junk. Also shown is a piece of the aircraft's rubber tire, found in the woods.

Some of the articles found at the crash site later, using a metal detector and other techniques

My thanks to Marilyn Walton for sharing these photos. The photos are to be found in the book, but are shown here in color.

Book Review: Rhapsody in Junk

I just finished this book last night. It's a great read and highly recommended. Marilyn Walton has produced an important addition to the Air Corps history that deserves to be read by anyone interested in this period. What follows is my book review of Marilyn Walton's Rhapsody in Junk: A Daughter's Return to Germany to Finish Her Father's Story.

"This book is both great history and a wonderful personal narrative.

Thomas Jeffers is an aging bombardier suffering the debilitating effects of a series of strokes. His daughter, Marilyn Walton, becomes determined to find out all she can about her father's World War II experiences as a B-24 Liberator bombardier and prisoner of war. Her quest, through the miracle of the internet, phone calls, and snail mail, takes her to his long-lost crewmen, to an understanding of his wartime experiences, even to the spot where her father's plane crashed in a German wood sixty years ago. During her journey, she learns much about her father, the nature of courage and suffering, an incredible array of Air Corps history, and about herself.

Jeffers and his crew mates on the B-24 Rhapsody in Junk were shot down over Germany and forced to parachute at low altitude. Their plane crashed into a wood near a small German village. Jeffers endured interrogation and imprisonment in one of the German Luftwaffe's Stalag Lufts, the same camp where the Great Escape took place. Near the war's end, as the Russian Army threatened to recapture the camp, the men of Stalag Luft I were force-marched great distances in one of the coldest winters of the twentieth century.

Like most of the men of the Greatest Generation, Jeffers returned from the war and put it behind him, raising a family and living an exemplary life. As strokes began to rob him of his memories, Walton became determined to re-discover them before it was too late. She educated herself in the maze of official paperwork recounting her dad's training, missions, and the demise of Rhapsody in Junk. She studied the MACR for clues about where the plane came down, and where the men were captured and moved. She tracked down surviving members of her father's crew. And with the help of a young German high school student, she made two trips to the German village where the plane crashed, even finding pieces of the plane that had been salvaged by villagers and turned into everyday objects. Her journey also brought home the point that the war had brought great suffering to civilians on both sides, and she shares stories of the German people she met and befriended on her visits.

In the end, Walton successfully pieces together, from beginning to end, the story of her father's war experiences, using primary documents, interviews, and good old-fashioned heavy reading. It is a book which will appeal to anyone who has had a father in the Air Corps in World War Two, especially one who was a Prisoner of War. What makes the book truly special is that Walton is a born storyteller, and she mixes personal observations about her relationship with her father both in the past and in his final days with her war story. It thus becomes a book not only about one man, one air crew, and the war they fought, but an intensly personal book about a daughter's love for her father and her need to preserve his story for future generations.

Here is the Amazon link for the book. http://www.amazon.com/Rhapsody-Junk-Daughters-Germany-Fathers/dp/1425974864/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6987722-7900953?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183308036&sr=8-1