BLUE YONDER

A daughter tells the story of her late father’s experiences as a bombardier in World War II.

When debut author Gemmill was young, she was curious about her father Bill’s military service, but his stories “focused mostly on the fun parts” and left out memories “still too painful to resurrect.” After she had a grown child of her own, however, her father was finally ready to expand on the events of his wartime experience. In this memoir, Gemmill retells these stories. Like so many high school seniors in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Bill waited in an Army recruiting line that stretched multiple blocks in his Chicago neighborhood in the spring of 1942. Although he received a deferment to play college football at DePauw University on scholarship, the crash of a ferried bomber behind his fraternity house prompted him to enlist in the Army’s aviation cadet program. As a cadet commander at the Hollywood, California–adjacent Santa Ana Army Air Base, Bill attended a concert on base by jazz master Duke Ellington and a dinner with movie star Dorothy Lamour. By 1944, his service took him to Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, and Hungary, where he would earn the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Legion of Merit, and an array of other medals. In short, engaging chapters, this book takes readers from lighthearted, humorous anecdotes about music and food to deathly serious tales of dramatic events, such as a plane crash that left Bill temporarily stranded in Yugoslavia. Gemmill’s sanguine writing style reveals her to be a skilled storyteller who shows great pride in her father’s accomplishments. But although the book is immensely readable, some historical purists may take issue with some of the author’s choices, which include using fictional names for real-life figures and inventing dialogue. The book also features original poetry by the author as well as an ample assortment of family photographs and scrapbook material, which will immerse readers in the particulars of her father’s service.

An often engaging story of a war veteran that’s optimistic and harrowing, by turns.