This enthralling WWII biography combines a downed B-17 bombardier's unfinished memoir with letters from the French girl who saved his life.
Susan Tate Ankeny's father was a World War II veteran bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. After he died, she found his unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more than a decade tracking down letter writers, their loved ones, and anyone who had played a role in her father's story, culminating in a trip to France where she retraced his path with the same people who had guided him more than sixty years ago.
While piecing together her father's wartime experience, Ankeny discovered a remarkable hero. Godelieve Van Laere was just a teenaged girl when she saved the fallen Lieutenant Dean Tate, risking her life and forging a friendship that would last into a new century.
The result is a fascinating and dramatic World War II tale enhanced by personal interviews with participants. It traces the transformation of a small-town American boy into a bombardier, the thrill and chaos of aerial warfare, and the horror of bailing from a flaming aircraft over enemy territory. It distinguishes the actions of a little-known French resistance network for Allied airmen known as Shelburne. And it shines a light on the courage and cunning of a young woman who risked her life to save another.

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• Biographies & MemoirsHistoricalMilitary & WarsBranchesAir Force
• Biographies & MemoirsHistoricalEuropeFrance
• Biographies & MemoirsHistoricalEuropeGermany

• Publication Date: September 8, 2020
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 253 Pages
• File Size: 112 KB