A Daughter Discovers Her Long Passed Father Through His War Letters

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Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health-aid kombucha today. Wherever you are in the world, it's an exciting time in politics. Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The news agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why. From me, Emily Magus.

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Head to Roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, a listener's story from Loreto M. Thompson. Loreto is the author of An Unexpected Cuttywumple, the story of a father's sudden death, a box of World War II letters, and a daughter's life transformed. Today, she shares that story.

Take it away, Loreto. I never really knew him. I remember him shaving, being on the sink with him when he was shaving, and he'd put a dollop of shaving cream on my nose. I remember that I had pushed my younger brother off the chair. And then when my father asked me if I had done that, I said no.

I think the spanking that I received was more about the lie than about pushing my brother off the chair. And I remember the day that he died. He was 44 years old, and I was four. And our mother raised us, seven of us, for 10 years by herself. And we were dependent on the stories that our mother told us, stories that she would tell over and over again. And one of those was the story about how our father had written his mother every day when he was in World War II.

But it never really clicked that the letters still existed. And as she aged, at one point, we were at lunch, and she said, I have all the letters. I kept them because I always thought I would read them, but I'll never read them now because of her vision problems.

She had glaucoma and macular degeneration. So I said, well, I'll read them to you. And I couldn't imagine there would be that many letters because I'm thinking here's a 22-year-old guy, and he's really going to write his mother every day. But when she told me where the box was, I went down into the basement and brought it up and dusted it off. And when I opened it up, I had to catch my breath because I was shocked. It was packed full of letters, all handwritten script letters, perfect condition. And they were haphazard, thrown into this box.

Five hundred and twenty-two letters tossed into this box. Well, I had said I would start reading them to my mother. And so on Sundays after church, we would get coffee and it was quiet.

Nobody else was there. And we started to read the letters. February 9th, 1.10 p.m. Dear Mother Harry and Mike. Well, I guess I'll have to snap off a quickie. I planned on having an extra time yesterday, but since the barracks had a G.I. party, I was delayed again. January 27th, Company C Barracks Number 8. January 30th, 3 o'clock p.m. Dear Mother Harry and Mike.

Well, how are things at the old 450 and a half these days? I'm afraid I didn't get enough chicken, but I'm learning to give the cook that come hither look. I didn't really know too much about my father as far as his background. My mother, even in reading the letters to her, she said she didn't really know him at that time. He was only 22 and she didn't meet him until 10 years after he'd returned from the war. He and his brother were born in Buffalo and my father, Frank, would have been seven and his older brother would have been nine. When their father came down with pneumonia and within six days he had actually died. And so that left their mother with these two boys.

And I look at it and I think, wow, it's like history repeating itself because my older sister, Barbara, had been seven when my father died. When Pearl Harbor hit, he was too young for the draft. So he decided that he was going to sign up because then if you enlisted on your own, you got to choose what you wanted to be. So he signed up for the Army Air Corps and that he wanted to be a cadet, a pilot. He had to report in January of 1944 to Fort Dix, and this is so funny because his first letter postcard that he sends home is Dear Mother and Harry. Just arrived at Trenton was delayed when I got off at Quaker Town instead of Jankentown. But it proved worthwhile as they grow grade A redheads here.

They over for three hours. This was a great way to get here and people are still more fun than anybody. All is well and we'll start for Dix in a few moments. Love to all, Frank. And I thought, well, here we go, because my mother was a redhead. All in all, my mother had eight years with him and it's kind of a fairy tale relationship, how they met. My father was a doctor at the time. My mother had really bad allergies and so she was going to visit my uncle, who was her medical doctor.

However, he was out of town. And so this young doctor was filling in for him, Dr. Thompson. So he scheduled an appointment for her to go to the specialist. And then he also scheduled a follow up appointment with him in the beginning with the allergy shots.

Apparently you're supposed to have them like once a week and then it goes to once every two weeks. Regardless, it meant that she had to have quite a bit of visits. So what happened was they couldn't date. He was her doctor.

So I don't know how the decision came up, but he quit the practice, went back to school. And my mother at the time was working on her master's and she would take the bus to Buffalo State Teachers College. And my mother would say, well, you know, I'd be waiting at the bus stop and he would just happen to drive by and offer me a ride to school. She said, well, he said that it was on his way.

Well, we all know that Buff State is completely in a different direction than UB. We tried to tell her mom this was not a mistake. He was probably timing it out to make sure that you would be at that bus stop. Part of their courtship would be done while he was on house calls. And so he would pick her up and they would drive to the house calls and then she would wait for him and then they would drive to the next one. Eventually he proposed to her. And I'm not quite sure what he gave to her, but I did find a little card and it said something about how he had not put her last name initial on whatever this was because he was hoping to change that. They got engaged in 56 and they would have married in 57 and the first baby arrived in 58. And we're listening to a listener's story from Loreto M. Thompson about how she came to know her father. When we come back, we're going to learn more about this relationship, this relationship spawned through in the end letter writing, when Our American Stories continues. If you're like me and you have a couple gals depending on your income, then you should seriously consider having life insurance.

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Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health aid kombucha today. And we return to our American stories and Loreto M. Thompson's story, or more specifically, the story of her father Frank. When we last left off, Loreto, who never knew her father, had discovered his letters all 500 plus in her mother's basement and begun reading them to her mother. Frank wanted to be a pilot, it turns out, but the army had other ideas. Let's return to the story. At that time, they were saying they had too many pilots.

February 28th, 4.30 p.m. Monday, Greensboro, North Carolina. Well, I've been in the army a month now. A month to get a crack at what I did today. Today we took exams to qualify for air crew, but I fear I didn't do too well.

Some of the fellows even feel confident. I have no such feeling. Perhaps I've been away from concentrated mental endeavor for far too long. I don't know, but I'm not going to worry too much about it.

So it was really touch and go for a little while. And I have a little letter here. At this point, he's not only writing Harry and his mother, he's writing also his dog, Mike. So from here on in, all of his letters are dear mother, Harry and Mike, the dog, which just cracked me up.

Dear mother, Harry and Mike, we were interviewed today by examiners. This is in case we don't get cadet. And I believe that they are going to make a radio gunner out of me. I'm not too keen about this, but it is a good deal and that I shall be in school and in country for at least five months. You see, a lot of the boys who flunked out are sent directly to PoE, port of embarkation, which means they were shipped out immediately. And so that's when he embarked on becoming a radio operator and a gunner for B-17.

October 16th, 9 p.m. Monday. Dear mother, Harry and Mike, received no mail from you people today, but I did get three gazettes and a letter from coach. He slipped a couple of greenbacks in, which to me at this time was quite acceptable. Any loose changes just before you shipped to any place.

For somehow you always manage to spend more than you plan. Dear mother, Harry and Mike, I wrote to the aunts last night. They've been so good to me. Miss asked me for opinion in her last letter of coach going to Niagara Falls High School. Boy, I told them never would have said a damn thing if I had seen home.

Yes, I think I have special privileges since I'm away. Interesting for me in researching my father's life is there was a couple that were like grandparents to us. They were coach at Mr. and Mrs. Franklin. We called them Amy and Papa. And when we asked about where they related to us, my mother would just tell us that they were friends of your father's.

Well, I learned that the aunts who had no children and they were both teachers lived in the flat in the house next door to them. And so growing up, Papa, my father would refer to him as coach because he was a coach at the high schools. He served as the father figure for them growing up. And then as my father married my mom and the children came, Papa was just there for every event, every baptism, every first communion, every Sunday dinner, every holiday, Easter, every Christmas, every birthday.

They were just always there. I wish I would have known that when he was here. He lived to be 96 years old, but it was nice to find out that connection because apparently those boys, Frank and Harry, were like children to Maniat and Papa. And then they in turn got to have grandchildren in a way by taking care of all of us. Papa taught all of us how to swim.

They would go on vacations with my parents and they would watch the kids so that my parents could have a dinner without children. It looks as though I'll be off in a cloud of dust tomorrow at around 4 p.m. Yep, I'm on shipping orders. I've been assigned a crew. Looks like a fairly good crew.

I just went up to get the names of the fellows. Ah, yes, the destination will be Gulfport, Mississippi, I believe. The one thing I hope for is that they don't make New Orleans off limits to us.

Too bad we will miss the KFC supper dance this evening. But that's the way it goes. Love, Frank. He did write at one point about how he felt much safer in what he always referred to as the big birds. And he also felt good about his crew. And he says, our crew is, of course, very green. No men with combat experience on it whatsoever. And I still think we have the framework for a smooth working team.

The pilot is a tall six foot, my guess, Swede from Rhode Island. I'm glad to say he seems like a stand up guy. The quality of enthusiasm is priceless. This bunch seems to have it.

Frankly, I would rather have a young, eager bunch to work with than that experienced know it all attitude to fly with. This way, we will all learn together. He's been writing all these letters and talking about his antics and just normal life on the base. February 13th, Telegram. Dear folks, please telegraph 20 or 25 dollars as soon as possible.

Love, equal Frank. Sunday, 1210 Gulfport Air Force Base, Mississippi. Dear Mother Harry and Mike. First, the weather here, as you can realize, being right in the Gulf, it is essentially damp. Dear Mother Harry and Mike, from what I can see now, I will be a very busy boy. We will be on duty 10 to 12 hours when we fly. Dear Mother Harry and Mike, this morning they got us up for child late to go to mass.

So we fully intended to go at 1030, but the sack looks so good that we climbed back in. But you didn't really hear too much about whether or not he was afraid. And then I found this letter he wrote to Harry just before he left for the UK. Dear Harry, I've been meaning to write this little missive for some time now.

I've thought a lot about it, and besides, I've owed the only breadwinner in the family an exclusive one for some time now. And the truth of the matter is, I'm scared s***less. We all are. I'm trying not to dramatize it. A hell of a lot of darn good men have gone. But I expect that we are all at least a little leery of the unknown. I fully expect, if it is God's will, to return to you one of these fine days and begin anew something from which we've all derived so much pleasure, happiness and security. But just on the outside, if I don't quite make it, let's call this a final confession, or whatever the hell we will.

I don't honestly expect that what follows will influence you too much. I've been away for too long, and mainly, I have failed you for a year now to contribute to the prerequisite of our triumvirate, my presence. My bitching.

My morale. And, least important, my economic support. However, I would set a few things down here. A little advice, I suppose you'd call it. Even if you were in my obligation, I would not try to insist you consider them too seriously, for you are now the pilot.

So let's just call them ideas. God knows I don't leave you much, but you'll have two thousand cash, and mother will get sixty dollars a month for better for my government insurance. With her property, this should, in a very modest way, make her almost independent.

You will have to help some, of course, but it should not be too much, and should in a way give you even more of an opportunity to shape your own life. I know we both in our hearts always considered it a privilege if you enjoyed to live at home in our piano box with mom and Mike. But as you continue to succeed at your own work, you owe it to yourself, and mother, and me, to have a family of your own.

Please name one of the boys after me, huh? Your breeding so adequate, and by one hand alone, must dictate you to compromise with nothing, and accept only the best and most perfect. This means friends, the selection of a wife, and in living a life in itself. You are blessed with honesty and truth. Guard them zealously as you go along. I wish I had your spiritual faith.

It has, and will ever be, your best criterion in all things. I was most proud of you when you came in with two jobs one night, and also one afternoon when you bounced upon the high school stage and walked off with what represented three years of sweating out night school. I couldn't stomach that deal, and admitted it by doing so poorly. I never did get to do much that amounted to anything.

Honestly, seems like a man of twenty-four should have left a greater mark on life. Well, it still remains to be seen what I could do when I get back. I want you to keep on being a good boy, Harry. You're still the best buddy a guy ever had, and I have some pretty good ones now.

Don't show this to Mother, not now anyway. My special Tuesday blessing, fella. Love, Frank. And you've been listening to Loreto M. Thompson's story and the story of her father, Frank, a radio gunner on bombers in World War II. We'll learn more about Frank, his doubts, his fears, when we continue here on Our American Story.

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Head to Roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. And we return to our American stories and Loreto M. Thompson's story and the story of her father Frank Thompson, a radio gunner on bombers in World War II. When we last left off, Frank had gone to Britain. Let's continue with the story and with his letters.

Dear Mother Harry and Mike, the four things the British don't like about an American soldier. He's overdressed. He's overpaid.

He's oversexed. He's over here. I do want to talk about before he left for the UK. One of the things he learned before then is that they were training for a ditching and he wrote about it and he seemed really annoyed by it. They keep training us for the stitching.

December 20th, Wednesday. Dear Mother Harry and Mike. We had the usual ground school today. Had a three-hour session of ditching. You remember Jack Stoltz said, we get that till we turn blue in the face. Well, it has begun.

You know, it's the procedure involved in landing your ship in the water and safely abandoning it. December 21st, Thursday. Dear Mother Harry and Mike. Another long day up at 4 a.m. and up into the wild blue yonder. When we were down, I got my mail, gulped some pork chops and french fries at the base cafeteria and hurried over to the ditching drill.

Just finished eating again at the mess hall and I'm a little pooed out. And for me, because I was reading it in the present, he was writing in his present. I would be his future. He is my past.

And I want to tell him, you need to pay attention to this because you're going to need this. And I couldn't tell him and it was the strangest feeling because the more I read about what he was doing, the more I wanted to give him a heads up. And of course, you know, that was not something that would would happen. One of the things that also intrigued me was that I learned that while they were leaving the States to go to Europe, they had flown from Savannah, Georgia, to Gander, Newfoundland. Well, from Gander, they had to fly into Iceland, but they flew on my father's birthday. So I can imagine that they had themselves a little bit of a party the night before, because my understanding is that they were up quite late and then they had to fly to Iceland. Well, while they were flying, the pilot said, well, that he would take the first watch. The plane was on automatic pilot so all the rest could sleep.

Well, while he was on watch, he also fell asleep. And so here's this B-17 with an entire crew sleeping. It wasn't until the navigator woke up and said, well, where are we going? And the pilot woke up and realized that he had leaned on the joystick, which then started to take the plane off track. And so they had to quick hustle and manually calculate all of the what they called search problems in order to find their way back to the path they were supposed to be taking to Iceland. I read about this happening to crews, and there were well over a thousand crews that on their way to the European theater, they never made it. They got lost somehow and then they're never heard from again.

So, I mean, so it seems like at every step of the way, there were chances that he would not have made it. And he gets to England and he starts flying these missions. They were all declassified in 2010. April 4th, Mission 309, Kiel, Germany. Aircraft 4297-194, AKA Good Pickin'. Primary target, U-boat submarine installations. 37 B-17s took off, 37 returned.

Major flak damage. April 5th, Mission 310, Nürburg, Germany. Aircraft 448272, AKA Lisbeth II. Primary target, rail yards east of city. Unable to attack due to clouds.

Attack secondary target, moderate flak. Mission 315, Bird, Germany. Aircraft 4464-75. Primary targets, hangars and runways of Bird airfield.

Malfunctions left and right, from electrical systems to scopes to transmitters to engines. Attacked by MA-262s. Two shot down by P-51 Mustangs. Two B-17s hit by enemy aircraft and blown up. One behind aircraft 4464-75. No chutes seen exiting the bomber. April 10th, Tuesday. Dear Mother, Harry and Mike.

Just one of the unsatisfactory type. Purpose to let you know that all is well and my crew is fine. Please keep watching my boy Mike, and please don't forget to keep the crew in your prayers. Lots of love, Francis George.

You just have to ask yourself, you know, how did an entire crew come back unscathed? It was miraculous. This is London calling. Here is a news flash. The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead. Mission 322, Hague, Holland. Aircraft 4464-75.

One day after Hitler's suicide. Mission, dropping 700 tons of 10-in-1 rations. Food to the people of Holland. Dear Mother, Harry and Mike. I flew yesterday with a Captain Thomas.

He is finished but wanted to fly one of those mercy missions, so I went along as RO. This was the first time I'd been over Holland since the Krauts there capitulated. I don't know where they kept all the Dutch flags during the German occupation, but they were everywhere yesterday. They waved at us from bridges, horse stops, road junctions, everywhere. It was a wonderful sight. Krauts down there shaking their fists, tulip beds cut up the spell, thank you. Yes, delivering groceries to them was certainly worthwhile.

Makes you feel a little better to be dropping something constructive instead of those hell raisers. What the childhood missions were, there was a limited ceasefire on behalf of the Germans in order to allow the Allies to drop food to the Dutch people who were starving. And what my father didn't know at the time was his eventual wife, my mother, my mother's father came from Holland and some of those people that he was dropping food to could easily have been his future relatives.

Of course, that would never have occurred to him. May 8th, Tuesday. Dear Mother Harry and Mike, Today is VE Day. Her church shall speak and everything. No doubt you people are very elated.

I hear of big doings in NYC and also London. And while it might be, we have cause to rejoice and thank the good Lord for being so kind to us. And then too, the debt civilian Americans will never, never be able to repay. The debt owed to the men that did the job for them. Oh, I don't mean guys like me, but the fellows who really had it rough, the ones who really know what it's all about.

To a lot of us here, it is a little anticlimax. I flew with copilot while he took an instrument check yesterday. We had advanced information then. So we came back and opened up the Seagram 7, assembled the crew and started a little celebration of our own. After flying the missions, they had had VE Day and all of the crews now were preparing to come back to the States. But my father and his crew, they didn't realize they were going to be sent on a mission, but they were tracked down by the pilot and copilot.

And he said, it's called a Showtime, Showtime and engine. So this particular ship, the name of it was heavy date. And then they were told, well, they were going to do this dead reckoning mission the next day. And they took it out over the North Sea. Well, while they were out there, I knew that their plane had ditched because my mother had told me that their plane had gone down in the water, but it took a little while to figure out exactly what happened. And finally, I came across this letter that was written a few days after it had happened.

And again, it was written only to Harry. And you're listening to the story of Frank Thompson as told by Loreto M. Thompson reading her father's war letters. When we come back, more of this remarkable story and Loreto M. Thompson here on Our American Stories. Wherever you are in the world, it's an exciting time in politics. Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The news agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why. From me, Emily Maitlis. And me, John Sopel. With Global's award winning podcast, the news agents dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs. And the news agents USA in the race for the White House.

Listen to the news agents on Global Player. Get yours now at Amazon. Hey, gorgeous Paris Hilton, get the party started with my new album, Infinite Icon out now and stream the new single Bad Academy. I wanted this album to be an escape, take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure.

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Head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. And we return to our American stories in the final part of Loretta Thompson story on her father Frank, a radio gunner on bombers in World War Two, when we last left off the war it ended, but Frank had been sent up for another mission over the North Sea, that would end in disaster. Let's return to the story and Frank's letter about that incident.

May 31, Thursday, dear Harry, well oh boy following my lifetime policy of letting you in on all the poop, I'll get you this one off, which should serve the dual purpose of informing you and also keeping something for the record, under no circumstances do I want you to let mom read this, you'll only worry her. A few days ago we found out we had a Dr mission dead reckoning is a navigational training mission, and so we went to bed early and we woke up in the morning early. We got up went to more or less token briefing where we found out we were to fly over the North Sea.

Also, in addition to pilot co pilot navigator engineer and ro who must fly the ship. We took on our bombardier herb Robinson, who hadn't wanted to fly that day didn't really feel like it, but the squadron navigator wanted him to go along and get checked out on Dr navigation so that made six of us. When we got out to the big bird we found out that a C one maintenance man was supposed to go to see one is automatic pilot and we call him George.

He didn't show up at takeoff so we took off without the weather was bad, he couldn't fly over the stuff so we flew under it. I was supposed to send in position report every hour so about 10 minutes after nine I called the navigator for a fix. The bombardier told me that he was taking a double drift wind reading and would call me as soon as he was through. I was tuned up on my radio on an emergency TF frequency as soon as I had left the coast, and it called in and obtained a fix which was seven miles off according to the navigator, the trouble with accuracy was we were too low for a good transmission. When I found I couldn't get a fixed position report from the navigator, I tuned up to the base ground stations so I'd be ready when he got ready to give it to me for a was late already when I asked for the pilot had heard me and said we were too low to send it then we were too low for comfort.

I was unhappy because it was not much fun getting there all alone doing nothing so I called up the base station and got a frequency check okay and a maximum single strength. I was about to call again when I heard the co pilot over the interphone giving the order prepared to ditch. I better explain here that ditching refers to landing your aircraft on the water when you are run out of gas or in dire distress. We were losing altitude fast so I immediately changed my radio set up to the emergency. And by the time the navigator and bombardier had come from the nose through the bomb bay to the radio room. All members of the crew took places seated on the radio room floor with their hands locked behind their necks for when you were to ditch there's a terrific impact when you hit.

Figure it out for yourself. We hit the water at 105 miles per hour. I was hopelessly trying to get in an SOS to the DF station, but I knew that by that time we were far too low. I was sending into the blind for I had to listen to the interphone for the prepared to impact order until the three boys who were seated, so they'd be ready. The copilot kept asking me, are you ready?

And finally I said they were. And in a few seconds, he gave the order related to the boys. They got set. I pulled my chute and stuffed it between me and my radio to absorb the shock. And then we hit water came in from all places immediately. Although the actual shock had not been as bad as I expected.

That was a tribute to a damn good pilot. As soon as we observed the first shock, we started to climb out and turn from the radio room hatch. The cover had been taken off and thrown out and they came back. Joe got out first, I got out second to last, and it was then that I finally discovered why we ditched. The number four engine was burning, still going in the water.

Flames about six to eight feet high. When I got out, Herb, the bombardier, tried to lift the radio out, but he couldn't do so since the water was up to his waist. So we got out and into the dinghy. I was reluctant to leave the radio, so I finally got a hold of Herb's knife and tried to cut it out. With the impact, the radio had become jammed in the rack.

We used to house the radar jamming equipment on combat missions. It was impossible to cut her loose. I left the top of the ship just a few seconds before she went down.

We had to push our rubber boat away to avoid being hit by the tail, which was the last section to disappear under the water. Then we were alone, nothing on the horizon but water. It was cold, too, and no radio. This was unfortunate, for we knew there were ships, at least within 50 miles of us. As far as we knew, though, no one knew that we were down.

It was a chance in a million that my SOS had been picked up when we were so low. We were a bunch of sad-looking sacks. The four of us who had been in the radio room were drenched to the skin. We sat there about five minutes, checking to make sure no one was hurt, and then there was when Providence entered in. A beautiful big bird came over us. We frantically grabbed flare pistols and flares and shot them off like crazy.

We yelled like madmen, although we knew they couldn't hear us. At first it looked as though they wouldn't see us, but they did. Shortly after the end of the second hour in the water, a British plane arrived with a small boat tied to the bottom of it. The B-17 that had been keeping us company buzzed us and left. That ship had been on a dead reckoning from our base just as we had, but it was a wonder that their course followed so closely to our own. We waved her a grateful goodbye and turned our attention to the RAF ship. It made seven or eight passes at us and finally dropped the boat. None of the chutes on one end opened and when we had finally paddled to it in the dinghy, we found it splintered to pieces. We ditched at 9.30 a.m. and were picked up about 5.30 p.m.

Very little the worse for wear. We didn't get back until 1.30 that night for it seems we went down dead center in the North Sea, about 155 to 160 miles out. They fed us two quarts of good scotch and hot ham and eggs. We went to bed in nice warm English blankets. Joe got sick from drinking too much but got some sleep later. The Wrens woke us up at seven in the morning with a cup of tea. Oh, it was rough. We had breakfast with the naval officers and I got to mass and we got a chance to go through an English submarine before we left for an RAF base where a big bird picked us up and flew us back to the base.

Well fellow, that is it. We returned about 3 p.m. Sunday and at eight they told us we could have a 48 hour pass if we wanted it. So we took off for London. Herb Bombardier didn't go.

Had to have his back x-rayed. So I hope you at least will understand why I didn't write for a few days. Have to run off to lunch now except to take a cross country over Ireland this p.m. So be good, oh boy, and please keep remembering us.

We sure need it. Love, Frank. When I started on this project, I'll be honest with you, I didn't have a lot of attachment to my father. I mean I knew I loved him but I didn't know him. I just loved him because he was my father and I know he had died and I know he had been a doctor and he had helped a lot of people because I heard about it all the time. But there was no real emotion. Even when I watched the family movies from when he was alive, I didn't really feel a connection to him. But after going through this whole project, reading all of these letters that he had written, I feel as though I know him. And to me, what didn't seem to move me emotionally beforehand is truly heartbreaking to when you think about it. Here's a guy who fought in World War II, came home against all odds, became a doctor, helped all these people, started his family and to have his life cut short at 44 years old. And then we never talked about him.

I don't really know why. I mean, I realized after reading all these letters that that was really just a shame. How could this entire life, this man who had accomplished so much in such a short amount of time and then left us, all of us, could just be forgotten.

And that was one of the driving forces for me behind this project. And if it weren't for the pilot who told me to write the damn book, I probably wouldn't have shared this story. I can imagine that there are other adult children of World War II veterans that would have loved the opportunity to talk to their parents about what happened over there. And I think that my father speaks for a lot of them because he was an everyman. He wasn't one of these heroes that you see these films that are about. He represented the average G.I. and what they were going through and how they felt.

And the only thing that they wanted to accomplish was to get home, just get through this war and get home. And for him to leave behind 500 letters, I mean, it's miraculous that they even survived. One, his mother had to keep them, which he did ask in one of his letters. He said, you know, I'd like you to hang on to these. I'd like to read them to my grandchildren one day. Well, now his grandchildren are reading them. His story was meant to be told and he left those letters for us in order to give us his voice.

Superb effort by Monty Montgomery on the production. And again, a special thanks to Loretta Thompson, a listener and fan of the show. And we're fans of hers. And we became listeners. And that's what we love about this show. Sometimes we listen to you. The story of Loretta Thompson's father, Frank, a radio gunner on bombers in World War II, as she described him.

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