The Flyboys

This is a piece I wrote on my dear friends that was part of the collectible program for a film I helped produce called, Detroit: Our Greatest Generation.


THE FLYBOYS: AN INFORMAL BROTHERHOOD OF WWII BOMBER CREWMAN

They gather the second and fourth Thursday of every month, easily recognizable in their blue ball caps with “WWII Flyboys” emblazoned in gold thread. A band of combat tested bomber crewmen, they fill every B17 and B24 position from nose to tail: Pilots and copilots, bombardiers and navigators, waist gunners and tail gunners. Their missions took them over Normandy on D-Day, through deadly excursions deep into Germany, and island hopping in the South Pacific. Some flew three missions, others endured over thirty. A couple survived months and months of POW camps. Others lived to tell about crash landings.

And although not a single one of these Flyboys served with each other during the Second World War, the shared experiences over six decades ago has forged strong bonds today. Bonds that have helped grow an informal “group” of only two to nearly twenty. So informal, in fact, they’ve even welcomed a couple infantrymen into the fold.

They are a community in and of themselves. One in which, if you haven’t faced a volley of machine gun bullets from enemy fighters or lived through a flak-filled sky – you don’t belong. Not that you’re not welcome. They genuinely appreciate younger generations showing an interest. In fact – some are amazed that what they did over 60 years ago means anything to anyone other than to those who were there.

But they know that you, on the outside, can’t really relate. So they turn back to their own and find comfort and support and an unspoken knowing. It doesn’t matter if the guy sitting next to them shared a cockpit or simply shared the experience of wearing a uniform – they have a special connection, a unique language and an understanding found only among the WWII veteran. They laugh. They cry. They brag. They confess. They reopen, and in turn, heal old wounds. And they become boys again - youthful and indestructible.

And when they leave and return to the communities that you and I belong to, the communities they sacrificed for, they are able to walk tall again, with pride and honor and a sense of relief or closure, until they return to sit by their comrades and commune in brotherhood, and together, take to the skies once again.