Description Before he was a celebrated politician, Senator George Mc Govern served as a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II.
Based in Italy, he flew thirty-five combat missions over Europe between 1944 and 1945.
My Life in the Service features a facsimile of the diary George Mc Govern kept from his first days of basic training until the end of the war.
Hastily jotted down in his exacting hand whenever he had the impulse to put his thoughts on paper, the pages convey the immediacy of Mc Govern's wartime experiences.
Each lined sheet is decorated with illustrations, alongside aphorisms on battle and democracy from some of history's greatest minds.
This document powerfully evokes an era, while it predicts the man George Mc Govern would become.
(For ease of reading, a typed transcription of the diary is included.
) As Andrew Bacevich states in his introduction, We also come to understand why Mc Govern, having experienced combat at first hand, was not in later life among those given to glorifying war or to sending their fellow citizens to fight when not absolutely necessary.
We are all heaving a sigh of relief that it is in the past, Mc Govern wrote near the end of his training, which took him from South Dakota to Missouri, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Idaho.
Yet Mc Govern excelled at flight school and became a skilled pilot.
He earned many decorations including the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving the lives of his crew.
My Life in the Service provides a lively and intimate glimpse into the Allied bombing of Nazi-occupied Europe.
The B-24, nicknamed the Flying Coffin, was unwieldy, uncomfortable, and, as Mc Govern himself learned, unreliable.
Needless to say old terra firma felt pretty good, Mc Govern wrote after one of many rough landings detailed in his diary.
Mc Govern endured dangerous weather, tire blowouts, and midair engine losses.
He returned home without a scratch, though many of his friends were less fortunate.
I hated like everything to see hi.
Franklin Square Press My life in the service: the world war ii diary of george mcgovern, hardcover/george mcgovern
