RLM
Familiar Face
- Messages
- 69
- Location
- Atlanta, GA
by Bert Stiles. I've only recently heard of this book and felt compelled to read it, so after a brief search I found a copy. I received it Monday and finished it last night. Its a glimpse into the mind of a young B-17 bomber co-pilot in WWII trying to justify to himself that dropping thousands of pounds of bombs on cities and factories was the right thing to do. Knowing it had to be done and not liking it one bit, wishing he was anywhere else but there. Stiles was a novice writer, having only written a few short stories before this, and as far as I know nothing had been published outside of maybe his college literary circles. The book almost reads like a diary, kind of broken up with one entry maybe being about a mission and the next about a girl that sent him a letter, and in the next he may ramble about the state of the world and if there was any hope for it. There were a few moving passages, but overall it was a little dry, however, I think that may actually show what life was like to a lot of bomber crews: boredom, loneliness and aimlessness broken only by a few hours of horror every day or few days. Upon closing the book I felt like I knew him and was moved deeply by the entire reading experience. I felt something akin to embarassment or guilt, like I'd just picked the lock and read someone's diary. After completing 35 missions, Stiles transfered to a fighter squadron, and only 4 months later he crashed his P-51 and died. We'll never know what he would have been. He may have become a great and famous writer, or just some average guy with an average job, a wife and kids, but whatever he would have been, I believe he would have been great at it. Its a shame we didn't get a chance to find out. Its a shame we will never know what the other millions of men, women and children that died in those years might have become.
