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the Allies defeated the Germans in the Battle of the
Atlantic, a turning point in the war.
    There is a photograph
taken during the war that each of us kids has displayed in our
homes. It was taken at Station 159, Wormingford, England in East
Anglia where nearly all of the US operational bases were located
and where my father’s older brother Tom was stationed with the
55 th Fighter Group. The photo shows Tom and our father standing in
front of Tom’s P-51 with the name of a third brother written on the
side of it. (The photo was taken several months after Jim had been
killed during a bombing mission on the Ainsworth, Nebraska Bombing
Range when his engine failed. He was the pilot of the B-17F and
went down with a crew of six.)
    My father had come down from London with a
photographer from the Stars and Stripes that wanted to do a story
about the two brothers. After the photographer got his shots and
was packing up his gear, Tom’s squadron, which provided escort to
the big B-17 bombers, returned from their mission and overflew the
field before breaking off into tight, sequential landing
patterns.
    This was always a dramatic and emotional
moment. As the two brothers looked up to count the number of planes
returning, the photographer knew that this was “the photo.” He
grabbed his camera, steadied it without a tripod, and took the
picture that would be forever etched in our hearts, and in our
living rooms from Jacksonville to San Francisco: two brothers, and
the memory of a third, in wartime.
    A couple of months later, Tom loaned the
“Prince James” to another pilot whose plane was in maintenance. He
got shot down but made it out okay, but the “Prince James” rests at
the bottom of the English Channel.
    After the war, my father sat in on the
Nuremberg Trials and then left the Army and moved to Paris for a
few years. From there, he moved with a childhood friend to Alaska
where he made and lost a fortune in some enterprise or another,
before the two of them decided to take advantage of the GI bill and
go to college. They enrolled at the University of Arizona.
    In 1949, Tom died of spinal meningitis. My
father returned to Indianapolis for the funeral, and met my mother
through a mutual friend. They married soon after, and my older
brother Tommy was born on the one-year anniversary of the day his
Uncle Tom died. My father was thirty years old.
    My father did not return to Arizona with his
new bride but buckled down to making a life in Indianapolis. He got
a job working at a menswear store by day and went to school at
night, majoring in pre-law at Butler University.
    Paris must have felt very far away to
him.
    I’m afraid married life came as a big shock
to my father. He had been a free-and-easy older college student
with no worries but the next class and the next bar tab. Now he was
selling jackets and shirts. Every dime went for formula or clothes
for a beautiful but nonworking wife. He no longer had enough time
or energy for the life of the mind he craved.
    In late 1950, my father was approached by
the US government to “come back,” this time to the reserves. At the
beginning of the Cold War, the US was taking precautions,
reactivating bases overseas and preparing for its part in keeping
Russia in check. There were reasons to fatten up the ranks.
    The Air Force promised to bring him back at
the rank of Major. They promised him a steady paycheck. They
promised him his first base assignment would be in sunny
Florida.
    It was always a surprise
to anyone who knew my father that he would accept the government’s
offer. He was known as an independent man who scorned authority,
idiotic rules and conformity. But I think he went back in because
he was tired of the struggle, of being constantly poor. My father
had expensive tastes (he lived at the Dorchester in
London , and was
known to keep his taxi waiting, meter running, while he dined in
restaurants). Champagne, foie
gras , jewelry, travel, and leather-bound
books were