Price: $14.95
Quantity in Basket:
none
ISBN: 1-59824-336-5
Edition: Paperback, 221 Pages
Publication Date: October 16, 2006
At War: Me and My Charley-47 is a new
WW II book by an Army Air Force Troop Carrier pilot
about the “flying stevedores” of the Army Air Force
whose daily work was flying urgently needed gasoline,
blood plasma, food and ammunition into cow pastures up
front behind the armored spearheads and evacuating
wounded in the face of terrible weather conditions.
“Operation Varsity”, the Airborne crossing of the Rhine
is described in graphic detail along with his squadron’s
glider casualties.
This photo-illustrated book has an exceptional group of
never before published pre-war photos of Hitler,
Goering, Hess, Himmler, etc., at the mass party rallies
in Nuremberg stadium. These photos were “liberated”
under the noses of several hundred SS troops at
considerable risk to the author.
He takes you from his Aviation Cadet training to
becoming a twin-engine flight instructor before going
overseas to England with 600 like instructors for a
special mission, called “Eclipse”. His 62nd Troop
Carrier Squadron, better known as the “Yacht Club”
Squadron, gets a new, 23 year-old commander after the
former commanding officer is shipped home to avoid being
tried for shooting the King’s pheasants.
He is awakened to a “Red Alert” to Hitler’s audacious
plan to break out the German POW’s in England as part of
the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge.
You spend Christmas Eve, 1944 with him in a French
village, infiltrated by German soldiers and disaffected
French during the Battle of the Bulge. And the trip back
to England turns from “no place to land”, to a miracle.
He gets his kicks by buzzing enemy and allied farmers
and hunters in his Charley-47, to General Eisenhower’s
frustration, but one day he gets his come-uppance.
The squadron moves to Picardie in France and they decide
to build an officer’s club out of glider crates and then
throw a huge opening party with dancing girls from
Paris. He even lands behind enemy lines in the later
stages of the war and participates in a raid on a German
village.
At war’s end, he helps liberate Norway and by
happenstance, Copenhagen. His biggest thrill is
liberated French prisoners of war going “bananas” while
buzzing down the Champs Elysée in Paris and the Eiffel
tower before landing them at Le Bourget to a super
French reception.