My father, Richard L A Sterba, was a navigator and bombardier on a B-17 during the Second World War. He served with the 301st BG, 353rd Squadron and was stationed in North Africa and later Italy. My dad flew more than 400 missions and only stopped because he got shot down over Yugoslavia and was smuggled to safety by the Yugoslavian underground. The Air Corps' policy was not to send people out again after such an experience in case he should be captured on a future mission and tortured and thus might put those valiant resistors in danger, so they pulled him back to California for the last few months of the war to be an advisor for Hollywood war films. As we age we have to go through our parents' estates, which seem to comprise an awful lot of papers and I wanted to include a couple interesting ones here.
For example, this is a leaflet in Hungarian asking the people if their consciences are clear. The bombers would drop these to try and encourage resistance against the Nazis.:
Today I happened upon a poem written by my father about what those bomber missions felt like and I wanted to put it out on the web, because it is not only a historic document, but because I am sure it will resonate with others wh have had similar experiences.
