Read The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 for Free Online

United States when he was eleven years old. When he was seventeen his father gave his permission for him to join the Army. He went to Panama, in the infantry, where he learned jungle warfare. Then it was back to the States to officer candidate school, where he earned his commission and was sent to Camp Walters.
    As Cooper recalled it, when Hannah reported, he didn’t say, “When do we eat?” or “Where do I sleep” or “When do we get paid?” Instead he pounded on Cooper’s desk and asked, “When can I go into combat?” Every day he came in to demand,”When can I go into combat?” Cooper reported each request to his commanding officer, who soon had enough. He told Hannah, “The next orders that come in, you’re going to be on.” The next orders were for a lieutenant to report to Attu, Alaska. As Cooper later put it, “Here this guy’s trained in jungle warfare. He spoke Arabic fluently. He was perfect for North Africa or, failing that, Guadalcanal. And the Army sent him to Attu.”16 Nearly all the young men who had signed up to join the Army Air Corps had to wait, often for a year or more, for the Air Corps to have enough airfields, airplanes, instructors, and barracks to start training them.  McGovern continued his education at Dakota Wesleyan. There he met and fell in love with Eleanor Stegeberg from Woonsocket, South Dakota. Among other attributes, including good looks, she had beat him in a debate in high school and outscored him in a test on current events at Wesleyan. In the first year of the war they got engaged, agreeing that they would not marry until the war ended. Stegeberg’s family was poor, so after her first year in college she dropped out to work as a secretary for a lawyer.  A friend of McGovern’s, Robert “Bob” Pennington, had joined the Army and was in training. He was dating Ila, Eleanor’s twin sister, and wrote McGovern to ask about their father. In reply, McGovern wrote that “he is a very different sort of person. His life was practically ruined when their mother died as he loved her more seemingly than life itself. He is consequently a little inclined to be brusque and a little unfriendly when you are first introduced to him. If you can just dig beneath that reserve and aloofness, you’ll find a heart there as big as your head. I think that the twins get that everlasting reserve of theirs from this same trait in their dad. Mr. Stegeberg, though, is one of the deepest men I’ve ever known.” McGovern added that one night “I talked with him from ten o’clock to 2:30 the next morning. That experience did me a lot of good. From that day to this I haven’t had a closer friend than Mr. Stegeberg.”17 McGovern was no athlete but he became a star pupil and was elected president of his class. His chief extracurricular activity was debate. His partner was Matthew Smith, son of the dean at Wesleyan. In early 1943 the two of them went to the national debate tournament at North Dakota State University. There were over a hundred schools represented. McGovern and Smith won the contest. Driving the dean’s car back to Mitchell, they were singing and carousing - or at least as much carousing as students at Wesleyan would do. They pulled up on the Wesleyan campus. It was February 12, 1943, and snowing hard. As McGovern remembered it, “There was Dean Smith standing there and when he saw Matt and me he just broke into sobs.” In his hand he had a big envelope. It was orders from the Army Air Forces. McGovern and Walter Kriman, the student body president, were to report to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, in seventy-two hours. Smith said he would write a letter to the Army Air Forces asking that George and Walter be allowed to stay at Wesleyan at least until the end of the semester.  “No, Dean Smith,” McGovern replied. “The time has come to go.” “Oh no, no, no, no . . .” the dean replied. Then he asked, “What will Eleanor say?” McGovern said he could handle that. He