These are the dramatic stories of ordinary young men—some of them still teenagers—who were thrust into action in World War II, and of how they coped with the dangers they faced.
In New Guinea, George Boggs leaps into a shell hole to escape an artillery bombardment only to encounter a Japanese soldier leaping in at the same time. Over the North Sea, tail gunner Forrest Clark, his plane "full of spent shells and blood," is ordered to bail out. He looks down at the frigid white-capped waters and hesitates. On Okinawa, Roland Winter's lieutenant orders him to set up a machine gun in a position Winter knows is exposed to Japanese fire. Bomber pilot Bob King is parachuting from his burning B-24 over Austria when he sees an ME 109 heading directly for him. Franklyn Johnson, shot in the chest by a sniper on D-Day, tells his second in command, "Take the men back, Gardner. I'm dying." Andrew White is swimming away from his sinking ship in the English Channel when he sees his last chance for rescue—a tugboat—barreling past him. Morton Sobin, on a secret mission to neutral Sweden, is attacked by German night fighters, and with three of his five-man crew dead and the other dying, tries to nurse his crippled plane back to base.
What all have in common is that they survived those dangers and lived to tell their stories. This book relates their experiences, and those of others, through growing up and college days to the fate that took them to the far corners of the world and back—all in their own words.
