A Thousand Shall Fall

[D-Day_Dodger]

I really think you'll like this book, Currahee. There is no false bravado or patriotic rhetoric, just his honest report on what he saw, preserved in stacks of letters sent home to his parents.

He mentions at some length the time that American crews spent training his RAF sqd on B-17's and the close bond that grew between them and the Allied air crew. He mentions an American Liberator that landed at his aerodrome due to bad weather one night. They were eagerly welcomed into the officer's mess where a good time was had by all. When the weather cleared enough to take off, the party ended and 20 minutes later the Liberator crew were dead; the weather had closed in again.

The book is liberally sprinkled with incidents like that. In fact, when "Bomber" Harris wrote to the author, in the same letter he which he said he thought this the best 'war' book he had ever read, he also said,

"I have only 2 criticisms to make 1/That at all times it made me so sad that I found it hard to retain the moisture within my eyes:-
2/The one ref you made to Bomber Command bombing our own troops is not quite correct... (Harris goes on to comment on Bomber Command's bombing of Canadian troops near Caen).

I found one part of the book even had a personal connection for me. In the epilogue, Peden describes the 1970 reunion in Winnipeg, Manitoba of air crew who had trained in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. 1300 vets gathered from North America, England and Europe. Among them were such luminaries as Group Capt Douglas Bader, Britains legless ace; Air Vice Marshall Johnnie Johnson, Britain's highest scoring ace and commander of the Canadian Wing; Air Commodore Johnny Fauquier, Canadian commander of the "Dam Busters" Sqd and General Leutenant Adolf Gallant, ace and commander of Germany's fighter forces at the end of the war.

Also in attendance was Sqd Ldr Donald F. McRae, DFC, a Coastal Command pilot who flew 'Leigh Light" equpped Wellinton's on night time operations and was officially credited with destroying 3 U-boats. He was also my father and a great dad.