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Full Description
In January 1943, not long after his nineteenth birthday, Ralph Sirianni was drafted for active duty by the U.S. Army. Ordered to the European Theatre of Operations in February 1944, Sgt. Sirianni served as the right waist gunner on a B-17. On his seventh mission over Germany, the plane--severely damaged by German fighters--crashed near Wildeshausen. With shrapnel in his legs and shoulder, Sirianni bailed out, and he spent the following 15 months in the infamous Stalag Luft I prisoner of war camp.
This memoir offers harrowing stories of combat, including detailed descriptions of each of Sirianni's combat missions; reveals the horrors of confinement and the despair of skin-of-the-teeth survival; and remembers camaraderie in the face of German abuse. Valuable for its vivid account of aerial warfare and imprisonment, this memoir is also a story of postwar reconciliation, both psychological and social. Appendices offer excerpts from Sirianni's POW log book and pilot George McFall's firsthand account of the ill-fated final mission.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. From High School Quarterback to Aerial Gunner
2. Combat Training
3. Going Overseas
4. The Missions
5. Captured
6. Dulag Luft Interrogation Center
7. Stalag Luft I: The First Three Months
8. Stalag Luft I: Things Get Worse
9. Stalag Luft I: The Last Days
10. Going Home at Last
11. Revisiting Stalag Luft I Years Later
12. Searching for the Plane's Crash Site
Appendix A: Ralph's POW Log Book
Appendix B: The Last Mission as Told by the Pilot, Lieutenant George McFall
Index
