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U.S. Army Air Corps

An Airman’s Letters To His Wife

On November 23, 1943, a 24-Year-Old pilot named George Rarey, attached to the 379th Fighter Squadron, boarded the Queen Elizabeth and set sail for Britain.

Powered flight was born exactly one hundred years ago. It changed everything, of course—but most of all, it changed how we wage war.

Walter Boyne’s résumé makes for unusual reading. He is the author of 42 books and one of the few people to have had bestsellers on both the fiction and the nonfiction lists of The New York Times.

Operation Market-Garden promised to lay an airborne red carpet to victory, but its final objective proved to be “a bridge to far.”

It would have taken considerable effort to locate an Allied fighting man on the battle line in Western Europe on September 10, 1944, who doubted that the end of the war was just around the corner.

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