A talk: "The Army and the Air Force."
I was asked by a neighboring Rotary to come talk to them about the Army and the Air Force during the war. A couple things I made clear right away: it is impossible to give an adequate discussion about this in the space of one dinner and the Air Force was the Army. However, for the purposes of simplicity, and due to the limited time frame, I did talk about both as they were separate organizations. It was a fun evening.
To pull off this discussion, I had to be very selective about the information I gave. Essentially, I gave very high-level overviews of the Army and Air Force efforts and some interesting stats, mostly courtesy of the National WWII Museum:
After that, I tried to show and discuss examples of working conditions for the boots-on-the-ground and those in the bombers over Europe. I also talked about the Ghost Army, the Navajo Code Talkers, innovations from the war, and the minorities from the US who served in it. All of this was well received and many eyebrows were raised.
I included a brief discussion about PTSD, as I usually do regardless of what talk I'm giving.
Then, to make connections with individuals, to put people into this, I talked about an Infantryman (my favorite Liberator), a Crew Chief on a C-47, and my favorite pilot...
I stopped the flow of the talk for a minute when I talked about John Baughman, my favorite pilot. Lawrence and Joe and so many others created beautiful families during and after the war. John didn't - he had no children and he didn't have anybody close enough to him in his family to carry on his memory...
So, I 'drafted' the audience to think about John for a bit and all of us, for a few moments, proudly assumed the role of John's 'kids' to honor him and promise to keep doing so moving forward...for John and others like him so they won't ever be fogotten.
*****
As to what to leave the audience with, I made this slide for additional info and handed out a copy of it:
(If you only have time to read one book about the war, it should be Rose's.)
I really enjoyed this talk and putting together the info supporting it, and, of course, I passed around many artifacts so that we could make history tangible. These artifacts included, among others, Lt. Baughman's wings and his leather flight gloves.
And, of course, I had to brag a bit that I've flown in these aircraft: P-51, B-29, and C-47. :)
As always, I'll be happy to give this talk and/or tailor-make a variant of it for anyone or any group.
Thanks, Nick, good call.
For Lt. Baughman: a snappy salute and a handshake. Your wings will forever fly with me, sir.
