Sardonic Satisfaction

This book consists of a series of letters written by a young man during WWII. He went from banker to bombardier. He underwent starvation, depravation and his moral conflict with killing the enemy to a fear of being able to do his duty. Dead bodies laying around, flies, filth, hurricanes, no smokes, no candy, no female companionship.These are some of the things he lived with all the while flying in a cramped nose of a B-24 bomber with his pet dog beside him on all forty eight missions.

He earned the moniker “Torchman Tucker” after firebombing a village which gave him much personal conflict. He says in a letter to his mother, “I wonder what God thinks of me.” Just before his first bombing mission, he wrote of his apprehension of being able to do the right thing for his crewmates and country. His letters also tell a story about America. His crew was all boys by today’s standard from all over the country. Busy with life farming, banking, and all the other normal things were suddenly immersed in the business of war. The farmer became their pilot, the banker became the bombardier, and the recent high school graduate became a waist gunner and so the story goes. In the end, they all did what was expected of them and they returned to America quietly trying to fit in society. But their lives had been changed forever.