Al's Odyssey, From Catonsville MD to Japan - Hardcover

Aldridge, Edward Albert

9780984121007: Al's Odyssey, From Catonsville MD to Japan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0984121005 ISBN 13: 9780984121007

Publisher: El's Research Studies, 2009

Before the United States involvement in World War II, the Axis leaders looked at America and decided we would never get ready for their kind of "total war." They regarded us as disarmed pacifists who liked to dance rather than march. Our leader was an old man who could not stand up without help and was having difficulty getting us out of a deep decade long depression. We did not have the big industrial military complex necessary to produce the needed weapons. The Japanese doubted we had the will to fight and that they could negotiate concessions from us and use us as a source of raw materials. To dictators and fanatics, democracies always appear to be in a state of weakened chaos and doomed to collapse. Al was just a nice young man from Pittsburgh and Catonsville, Maryland who did not want to go to war, but became caught up in the explosive growth of the Army Air Force, the most violent period of the war, and the implosion of the military after the war. When he enlisted, he was shipped to Miami, Florida; Amarillo, Texas; Fort, Meyers, Florida; Naples, Florida; Lincoln, Nebraska; Clovis, New Mexico; Topeka, Kansas; Mather Field, California; Tinian in the Pacific; and Saipan. Along the way he did his duty and contributed what he could. He ended up as gunner in one of many B-29 bombers that helped end a terrible war. Al's letters chronicle the everyday life of a typical airman during the World War II. The annotations in this collection of Al's letters offer enough background information to help the reader understand World War II, how it started, and how the U.S. Army Air Force was created. The book puts Al's letters in the context of his life before and right after the war, and describes events happening on the home front and in the war, and after the war. Al's letters illustrate the minute details of an individual's life during a momentous period in history, and the global policies that affected him. Hopefully, readers will find this a thought-provoking book, interesting and educational.

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