Independence author’s book covers long-lost World War II air mission

The idea for the book first took flight at a meeting of the Commemorative Air Force in Olathe, Kan. I have been a pilot and flight instructor for more than 30 years and own and fly a restored World War II scout plane. At one of our monthly meetings a few years ago, Lee Lamar stood to say that he had received an email from someone who claimed to be a Croatian archaeologist, and who might have found the remains of his B-24J Liberator nicknamed “Bottoms Up” while excavating a 1st century A.D. Roman villa.

Lamar had been co-pilot of the four-engine bomber in November 1944 when it was shot down over Croatia. He and his entire 10-man crew had safely parachuted out of the crippled aircraft, but Lamar and three others were captured and spent the remainder of the war as prisoners of the Germans.

He was a bit skeptical of the email, but it turned out to be authentic. It sounded like a wonderful opportunity for college students to obtain hands-on experience regarding a compelling story, so Park University provided funding for a study-abroad class for eight students. We stayed in constant contact with the archaeologist over the summer of 2007, and in August of that year we traveled to Croatia. It fit in perfectly with a course that I developed and teach occasionally, The Literature of War: World War II in the Air.

Research for the book was exacting, and had to be done while I was teaching full-time. Over the course of the next couple of years, with time out for a Fulbright grant to Morocco, I obtained mission reports, unit histories, official documents and aircraft manuals and read extensively on everything to do with combat flying in World War II. I interviewed other veteran airmen, studied cockpit photos, read memoirs and corresponded with the Air Force Historical Research Agency, all the while pouring over Lamar’s extensive collection of artifacts from his service career.

The trip to Croatia was absolutely the trip of a lifetime, no question. Not only was it a unique learning experience for my students, it was a way for Lamar to find some answers to questions that had nagged at him for more than 65 years. What happened to his parachute, which he had quickly buried after bailing out? How were six of his men aided in their escape? And, of course, it was a last goodbye to a bomber than had served him well for many of his 21 missions.

Lamar was a fixture on the nightly news while we were there, and his story and photos of our excursions to the crash site were in the newspapers, so it was impossible to walk down the streets of Pula without being stopped and hugged by Croatians, many of whom suffered terribly under the German occupation. Lamar was a genuine hero to them. We also met several of the Partisan (irregular resistance fighters) who had rescued so many of Lamar’s crew. It was very, very emotional to watch as they spoke with Lamar, with Bekic as interpreter, reliving their experiences from the war.

Lamar, who never saw most of his crew again, learned that one of them had broken his ankle when Partisans cut his parachute cords to release him from the tree in which he was entangled. The leg turned gangrenous, and they had had to leave him for the Germans to find and take to a hospital. The crewman survived the war.

Lamar also met a Croatian farmer, who as a young boy had discovered his partially buried parachute. He had quickly carried it to his house, where his mother that night cut up the silk canopy and made shirts and blouses for the entire family. Lamar was pleased that the Germans did not get it.

I have always been fascinated by the air war of World War II. My dad was an 8th Air Force veteran, stationed in England during the war, where he met and married my mom, an English girl. I grew up with their stories. Dad’s brother was a B-17 navigator, so he added to the collection of tales. My father-in-law was a gunner on a B-29 in the Pacific, and he added even more. I became a pilot, learning to fly single- and multi-engine planes, seaplanes and gliders, and when it came time to buy one, it had to be a “warbird.”

I think the most fascinating thing I discovered during research for this book was how absolutely humble all those World War II veterans are. They were skinny kids, 18 to 24 years old, and they were asked to do incredibly dangerous things – climb into a spartan aircraft, heavily loaded with fuel, ammunition and bombs, fly in tight formations where their friend’s plane might ram them, then let people shoot at them from fighter aircraft or antiaircraft artillery. In the early days of the war, more than half of the flight crews were lost. Not one of them ever will accede to being a hero. Then they came home, went back to school and rarely if ever talked about the war.

I teach a course in literary criticism. One of the schools or types of criticism is New Historicism, which holds that all texts, novels, poems, plays, histories, essays, whatever, are artifacts that arise out of a particular milieu. My Ph.D. is in English and history, so naturally I tend to locate writing within a particular time and place, tied to events which brought it forth. It is impossible, for me at least, to teach “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” without a thorough consideration of the institution of slavery in the U.S. or to ignore the alienation engendered by the slaughter of World War I when teaching “A Farewell to Arms.” To me, history and literature are inseparable. I bring history into every literature course I teach.

I am currently researching another book on World War II about the formation of the Air Commandos and the campaign in Burma behind Japanese lines, a joint operation with British troops known as “Chindits.” Among the pilots was a former Hollywood child actor named Jackie Coogan. It was a free-wheeling organization, with many colorful characters, and it strongly influenced how military special operations are conducted today. Last year, I worked on an Air Force grant-funded study of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – drones), and at some point I will be writing about the development and future of aerial warfare as remotely piloted aircraft become more ubiquitous.