Serenade to the Big Bird E-Book

Bert Stiles

• Herausgeber: Arcadia Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Bert Stiles (1920-1944) was an American author of short stories who was killed in action during World War II while serving as a fighter pilot in the US Army Air Forces.His mother commemorated his memory by having his book published in 1947 in England (Lindsay Drummond Ltd.), with its first U.S. publication in 1952 (W.W. Norton & Company). Entitled Serenade to the Big Bird, the book achieved cult status among aviation enthusiasts for its honest depictions of bomber combat and also won favorable literary reviews for its spare, Hemingway-style prose and its anti-war sensitivity.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

1 - FIRST CREW

2 - TO BEGIN WITH

3 - FIRST MISSION

4 - CO-PILOTS’ HOUSE

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

5 - AIR MEDAL

6 - GROUNDED

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

7 - MAC

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

8 - BLOOD ON MY HANDS

9 - VOTING

10 - TEN GUYS

11 - DREAM GIRL

12 - D-DAY

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

13 - ANY MISSION… ANY DAY… FOR A WHILE…

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

14 - NEW ORDER

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

15 - FINIS

16 - NEW CREW

A DOLL NAMED AUGUST

17 - THE SHADOW

18 - SO TO FINISH UP

Bert Stiles

SERENADE TO THEBIG BIRD

Arcadia Ebooks 2017

[email protected]

www.arcadiaebooks.altervista.org

Copyright © 1952 Bert Stiles

Serenade to the Big Bird

(1952)

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

BERT STILES was a student at Colorado College in 1942 when he joined the American Army Air Force. He received his commission in November, 1943, and went overseas to

Great Britain in March, 1944. He was awarded the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross and was a veteran of thirty-five bomber missions. Instead of returning to America when leave was due to him, he requested to be transferred to fighters. On November 26, 1944, he was shot down in a P-51 on an escort mission to Hanover. He died at the age of 23.

SERENADE TO THE BIG BIRD

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO MAC

who was a good guy

1

FIRST CREW

1st Lieut. Samuel Newton, Pilot. 23 years old, of Sioux City, Iowa.

1st Lieut. Bert Stiles, Co-pilot. 23 years old, of Denver, Colorado.

1st Lieut. Donald M. Bird, Bombardier. 24 years old, of Oswego, New York.

1st Lieut. Grant H. Benson, Navigator. 22 years old, of Stambaugh, Michigan.

T/Sgt. William F. Lewis, Engineer. 20 years old, of Grand Island, Nebraska.

T/Sgt. Edwin C. Ross, Radio Operator. 23 years old, of Buffalo, New York.

S/Sgt. Gilbert D. Spaugh, Toggleer. 21 years old, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

S/Sgt. Gordon E. Beach, Ball-turret gunner. 34 years old, of Denver, Colorado.

S/Sgt. Basil J. Crone, Waist-gunner. 24 years old, of Wichita, Kansas.

S/Sgt. Edward L. Sharpe, Tail-gunner. 21 years old, of Hot Springs, Arkansas.

SAM and I both went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and were fraternity brothers. Neither of us did very much except play around at school before we went to the cadets. It was pure luck that we ran into each other in Salt Lake City. We finally talked some WAC into putting us on the same crew.

Don used to work in a bank before the war. He joined the crew in the middle of phase training at Alexandria, Louisiana. He was a bombardier-instructor and he didn’t have to go to war at all, but he wanted to see what a war is like and he wanted to wear the ETO ribbon with a star on it.

Grant went to school for a while at Michigan State before the war, and knocked around the country, and did a stretch in the infantry before he became a navigator. He joined the crew in Alexandria also.

Lewis drove a cab in Grand Island before the war, and ran around with a girl there, and spent a lot of time wishing he was back.

Ross was some sort of clerk in the daytime in civilian days, and a big-time operator at night. When the crews were cut from ten to nine men he used the right waist-gun instead of the roof-gun in the radio hatch.

Spaugh was the right-waist gunner when we had a ten-man crew, and checked out later as a toggleer-bombardier, when they tried to make a ground-gripper out of him. He didn’t do much of anything before the war except go down to the beach.

Beach was the only married man on the crew. He used to be a mechanic during the week, and a fisherman during the week ends.

Crone was the armorer and the only one on the crew who knew much about bomb racks. He’d lived all over and done most everything. Sheet metal was his trade, but he’d worked in the oil fields and had been around.

Sharpe lived on a farm before the war. For a while he wanted to be a doctor, and learned a lot of medical terms and took a clinical interest in almost everything. After the war he is going back to the farm and lie under a shady tree.

Except for the bombardier and navigator, the crew was put together in the 2nd Air Force combat pool in Salt Lake City, and shipped out together for phase training and later flew a new B-17 to England.

2

TO BEGIN WITH

IT WAS summer and there was war all over the world. There was war in Normandy and Italy and plenty of war in Russia. The same war was going on in the islands and in the sky over Japan.

The only part of the war I knew anything about personally was the air war from England. Above me on the wall was a map of Europe. Every time I came home again to England I drew another bomb on the map over the town we visited.

A good part of the time here, there is no past, and certainly no future. There is only now, the now of any oxygen mask and the now of Berlin or Kiel from 25,000 feet. That now is just as mixed up as the past, and sometimes just as beautiful.

The queer thing about this part of the war is that it never stays the same for any length of time. Sometimes it is as unreal as a dream, and as quiet and lonely as moonlight, and sometimes it is horrible and twisted with fear and the feel of death.

A lifetime is always a patchwork affair, I guess, with the seconds and hours and days thrown into a pile of other seconds and hours and days. Some of them add up into something else, and some of them are left way outside like a Fort out of formation, connected to nothing, all alone in mid-air,

I seem to be a hundred different people these days. The days take turns using the face and the body. No mood lasts more than a couple of hours. My continuity is shot.

The world is fine… the world is okay, maybe … the world is a weary hole… the world is a hopeless sickening mess… the world is blue shadows and full of sun… all that in a day, all that in an hour sometimes.