A WWII Journal: February 4, 1942 - January 7, 1946

By Randy Graham

This is the story of Dad's participation in WWII as a B-17 pilot stationed in North Africa. This remembrance is written from a compilation of Dad's letters, his diary and journal entries from the period 1942 through 1946. I began to write it shortly after our son, Robert, was born in 1986. Although it began as an effort to acquaint Robert with the grandfather he never knew, it ended as an important chronicle of one man's contribution to America's victory over Germany and Italy in World War II. Dad was a young man who had never ventured much further than a hundred miles from his hometown of Merced, California. When he and Uncle Bob decided to "join the fight and go win the war" he was barely twenty-one years old. The young man that joined the war effort shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor became a man both physically and emotionally during four years in the U.S. Army Air Force. He had been half way around the world and had real life experiences that most of us could only imagine. To see Dad's physical growth, compare the 1943 cover photo to the 1945 photo of Dad "completely at ease". To understand how the war began to weigh on Dad emotionally, read the chapters that follow. He may not have slugged it out on the ground, but in many ways this is his story of "To Hell and Back".

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1467981672
• ISBN13: 9781467981675
• Release Date: January 2012
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"