‘We’re Already Dead’: A D-Day story for Veterans Day
“That’s what we faced as young kids.”
Flying under the radar amidst all the online noise is a remarkable article from The Tennessean that tells the story of former Air Force Captain Jerry Neal, a 104-year-old World War II veteran who still speaks to students about the importance of service and sacrifice.
Neal, one of about 1,200 living WWII veterans in the state, reminds us that our freedoms endure because of those willing to sacrifice and put others ahead of themselves.
Neal offers up a vivid portrayal of pulling his B-24 bomber out of a nosedive over the English Channel on D-Day and then the crash, weaving in not just a story of his own survival but of faith and courage.
“We’re already dead,” he recalled thinking during the bombing missions over Europe, yet decades later, he tells young people he would serve again if able: “I really think we live in the best country in the world, even though there are a lot of problems.
Our attitude to survive was to be, oh, we’re already dead. We’re already dead. We didn’t ever think about tomorrow. We didn’t think about anything. It was a sad state of affairs.”
When I lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast I was able to get to know some of the men who flew bombing missions over Europe during World War II. When my father, a long-time Air Force pilot, retired at Keesler Air Force Base, he made a point to honor those men who had stopped everything in peacetime to fly dangerous missions to help liberate a continent. It was a reminder for me to always pay tribute to the individuals who had gone before you and remember that Americans stand on the shoulder of giants.
“Masters of the Air” by Don Miller is one of those great books I’d recommend Americans read. Apple TV turned it into a historical miniseries but it really doesn’t compare to reading Miller’s account.
I recall Miller noting that early in the war, when the Eighth Air Force began daylight bombing over Germany, a tail gunner had a life expectancy of about two weeks. Neal even notes in his account that even when you weren’t being shot out of the sky, it could reach minus 70 degrees in the aircraft, another brutal reminder of what those crews endured.
By the end of the war, the Eighth Air Force would have more fatal casualties than the entire United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre. This is why the B-24 Liberators, the plane Neal was piloting on D-Day, was often referred to as “The Flying Coffin.”
For American Habits, Neal’s story is a reminder of the civic spirit that sustains our federal republic, ordinary citizens rising to extraordinary moments. That truth remains essential to our overall American story and a necessity if we are going to thrive as a nation going forward.
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat