Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin: The Glider Pilots of World War II (free online event)

[JudyM]

Posting for DUers who might find this interesting:

Date: Tuesday, June 06, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: Virtual

In the first major history of American glider pilots, the forgotten heroes of World War II, author Scott McGaugh will discuss the story of no guns, no engines, and no second chances. This book distills war down to individual young men climbing into defenseless gliders made of plywood, ready to trust the towing aircraft that would pull them into enemy territory by a single cable wrapped with a telephone wire. Based on their after-action reports, journals, oral histories, photos, and letters home, the book reveals every terrifying minute of their missions.They were all volunteers for a specialized duty that their own government projected would have a 50 percent casualty rate. None faltered.

https://www.archivesfoundation.org/event/brotherhood-of-the-flying-coffin-the-glider-pilots-of-world-war-ii-2/

Actual patriots.

[crickets]

1. K&R for visibility.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. K&R Sounds worthwhile.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

3. "Suckers and losers", according to Mango Mussolini.

[Uncle Joe]

4. They had an extremely high casualty rate

Thanks for the thread JudyM

[VGNonly]

5. SPR-Glider scene

[link:

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[BlackSkimmer]

6. There was a volunteer who worked for us at one of my first jobs after college.

Fantastic man.

One day we were talking and as he learned my parents were teens in England and Wales during WW2, he told me of his experiences as a glider pilot in Operation Market-Garden, which sadly did not go so well.

He was very lucky to have lived. He still had extremely strong emotions about it. PTSD was not a recognized thing in those days, but looking back, I'm quite sure he lived with that always.

I'll never forget him...one of the sweetest men I've ever met, and I'd never have known that about him except for that chance conversation that day.

We had talked many times previously, but of course that wasn't a subject that would normally arise. I can see him quite clearly in my mind's eye even now, standing in the doorway of my office when he just started telling me about it.

[JudyM]

9. Sounds like a wonderful person.

And you knew a WWII true hero and carry him with you, that’s beautiful, BlackSkimmer. So touching.

[BlackSkimmer]

13. Yes, I would have loved to have heard more about it, but it was still immensely painful to him.

I was very young then, but knew not to ask too many questions.

He was one of our best volunteers at the agency, delivering meals every day, and he would look out for the very elderly on his route.

[nolabear]

7. My late father in law flew with them.

He wasn’t a pilot, but a passenger, part of Airborne Infantry. We were at the WWII museum in New Orleans once and he, a great storyteller, stopped at a glider on display and started talking about it. When we turned around it looked like half the museum attendees were listening.

[JudyM]

10. Wow!

That’s wonderful. Probably memorable to those listeners who are still alive, they may be telling their children about him.

Here’s to another brave man, your father in law, of blessed memory.

[nolabear]

11. He was one of a kind.

Literally born in a dirt floor cabin in the Appalachian mountains. After the war he became a surgeon, eventually one of the top in the world. And they were brave enough to be liberals in a very red state and still be connected to their conservative mountain relatives. Mr Bear and I have this in common, the deep, conflicted love for people and places whose ways of thinking are unfathomable in so many ways. But yes, my f-I-l had quite the life. All 98 years.

[JudyM]

14. Character. Even in the face of the unfathomable... that's so challenging.

[nolabear]

18. True dat.

[Aristus]

8. My 7th Grade bus driver was a glider pilot during World War II.

I used to sit behind him on the way to and from school, and he would tell me about flying gliders, about his buddies, anything but combat.

His name was Mr.Taylor. I’ll never forget him.

[nolabear]

12. Very cool. I'll bet he loved being heard so well.

[JudyM]

15. Time well spent

Imagine all those soldiers, what they experienced, then living in such a complete, almost oblivious reality afterward.

My dad didn’t want to talk about battle, either, but he'd talk about where they had been in Europe, and the training and living conditions, told in the context of the importance of appreciating fresh water to drink, a shower or a comfortable bed… he was awarded a bronze star but another man lost his life, and that was painful to him, especially because the other guy’s wife had recently given birth to his first child and he hadn’t met the baby yet. How many tens of thousands of stories are there like that, or much worse.

[Aristus]

17. I agree.

It really brought home to me the time-honored concept of the American citizen-soldier. Ordinary guys with no real military ambitions in life who dropped everything to answer the call of duty during wartime. And then, if they survived, coming home and picking up the pieces of their lives, and getting on with it.

Adolf Hitler was convinced that the disciplined, fanatical sons of totalitarianism would prevail over what he called the 'soft, spoiled sons of democracy'. The American, British, Canadian, and other Allied citizen-soldiers proved him very wrong.

[Mysterian]

16. Kick