'Big Russ and Me'

Dad, I realized, had been one of them.

“This is amazing,” I said.

He looked at me and said, “It was a lot tougher for the guys who died.” Then he took back the clipping and put it away without another word. The conversation was over.

A year or two later, he told me about the Polish kid from Chicago who had saved his life when their plane went down. Dad has no memory of this, but he learned later that when the plane hit the ground, he and several other men had been thrown clear. Dad, who was badly hurt and evidently in shock, had climbed to his feet. With his clothing engulfed in flames, he had started stumbling back toward the burning wreckage. Bullets from the plane’s machine guns were bursting in all directions, but Dad was dazed and oblivious to the danger. Billy Suchocki, a friend of Dad’s and a fellow passenger on the flight, whose clothes were also on flre, was being helped by two British railway men who had run to the scene of the crash. As they rolled Billy on the ground to suffocate the flames, he pointed to Dad and yelled, “Help him! Help him!” The railway men ran to Dad and pulled him out of further danger.

One Christmas, when I was home from college, I looked up Billy Suchocki’s phone number in Chicago. I wanted Dad to be in touch with the man who had rescued him, and I knew he would never make that call on his own. With Dad’s permission, I dialed the number and put the two old army buddies on the phone. I heard only Dad’s end of the conversation, which was brief and unemotional. They wished each other a Merry Christmas and talked briefly about Red, the dog who went overseas with them, and who returned home with Dad after the war.

After the call, which seemed so casual in view of what had happened, I said, “Dad, this guy saved your life, and you’re joking about a dog? Why didn’t you thank him for rescuing you?”

Dad looked at me thoughtfully and said, “He knows, and I know.” Then he lowered his head. Enough had been said.

Later on, Dad told me a few more details about his experiences during the war, but I still hesitated to ask him about the crash. Years later, when my friend Tom Brokaw published "The Greatest Generation Speaks," a follow-up to "The Greatest Generation," the story of that brave and selfless generation of Americans who came of age during the Great Depression and then went on to fight for freedom and democracy in the Second World War, Dad opened up a little more. Brokaw had been kind enough to mention Dad in the book—which was a little ironic, given its title—and Dad was pleased to be acknowledged. He told me that the army experience had been good for him, that it had helped him become more disciplined and had taught him in a dramatic fashion that everyone has a role to play.

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There was so much more I wanted to know about Dad’s experiences during the war, but I have always respected his wish not to talk about it. Eventually, I realized that I could learn some of the details from other people, including Billy Suchocki and several other veterans from the 446th Bombardment Group, which Dad had been part of, and from a book about the 446th by Ed Castens, one of its members. Then, in early 2003, I received a letter out of the blue from Ron Tompkins, a resident of Bermuda whose older brother, Alva, had died in the crash that had almost killed Dad and Billy Suchocki. Mr. Tompkins, the seventh in a family of eight children, had been five when his eldest brother had been killed, and had spent much of his adult life investigating the accident. He had made two pilgrimages to the airfield where the plane went down and was in touch with several of the survivors. He sent me a packet of information that made it clear that this terrible event, which killed ten men and left ten others badly injured, could easily have been avoided. But before I had a chance to meet him, his son Christopher wrote to tell me that Ron Tompkins had died.

Dad had enlisted in November 1942, at the age of nineteen. “All my friends had joined,” he told me, “so there was nobody really left in the neighborhood.” Was he being modest, or was his decision to enlist really that casual? After being poked, prodded, and questioned at the induction center, he was sent off, by train, of course, to a training camp in Fresno, California, where he learned how to march, how to salute, and above all, how to be patient. Like millions of other recruits, he soon learned that the army’s unofficial slogan was “Hurry up and wait.”

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