I Wanted Wings

As a 10-year-old kid I thought my Dad's stories of his adventures in WWII were as good as the tales of Daniel Boone Davy Crockett and the Lone Ranger. A tail gunner on a bomber he bailed from a burning plane survived life on the run behind enemy lines was captured by the Nazis (whoever they were) and then to top it all off he survived life in a prison camp. All of that was rather heady for a kid with an over-worked imagination. Seven or eight years ago my Dad asked me if I would be interested in a box of old letters. They were WWII era letters he had received from family and friends. They had survived the cold molds and mildews of basement life and now all these years later he couldn't bring himself to throw them away. Of course I accepted them and as I began to read and then transcribe them I fell under the spell of their simple eloquence and historical significance. I Wanted Wings is the melding of my father's exciting stories and a family's diary-like record of life back home on the farm. It begins in 1942 with my grandparents seeing three sons off to serve in the military. In the letters my grandmother and aunts beg him to avoid dangerous duty. In his mind adventure was the very thing he craved. For the next three and a half years the letters and my father's experiences entwine into a slice-of-life narrative of a family caught in a world war that comes very close to home.