My father was a reconnaissance photographer for the Air Force in Europe during WWII. I have boxes and boxes of photos, negatives, letters and documents, through which I started digging with the idea to post a few photos for the Memorial Day weekend. I soon realized that the overwhelming contents of the boxes raised more questions than they answered, and that one simple post was simply not going to do the subject justice. I've been Googling, digging, reading old letters and clippings and talking with my older sister -  and still the endless questions come floating to the surface. So, here is where I begin my quest.  Follow-up posts will feature a wealth of my father's countless WWII photos. 

Dear Dad, 

 Our lives were always so very far removed from one another by time. I find myself wondering how I could possibly be your daughter, so long is the stretch between the the years that have passed since you began your  journey. Think of it, here it is 2009, and I am not so old, just 48, and with two little ones - your grandkids! - ages 3 and 5. And yet, I write in the here and now of a time some 70 years gone, of the days when you were in your prime, your glory. You've been gone since '79, since the cancer took you by surprise and by storm.

How I wish for a time machine. I would steal up close to you, eavesdrop on your conversations, you would never know who I was (who I would be sometime in your distant future), though there is no doubt that I look so very much like you. I would listen to you talk trash with your pals - yes you, don't try to deny it -  I've seen the hilariously raunchy carbon-copy jests written on an  old-fashioned typewriter (you would have loved computers) strewn amongst your old letters and photos. And the truly tasteless cartoons. All these things I love, because they speak of your fun-loving spirit. A spirit I never knew.

But, alas, there is no time machine, so I am left to speculate and ponder, to muddle my way through a one way conversation. Couldn't you at least have kept a journal? Ah sorry, no complaints, not really. How could I complain when you have left me with hundreds of sepia colored photos, aromatic with the musty smell of time. 

When did the war start?  Or, perhaps more aptly put; when did it start for you? Historians still can't decide. Did you enlist for the glory, for the adventure, for the duty?  Did I get my fearlessness, (recklessness?) my love of adrenaline pumping thrill from you? I would have loved to have known you, the person your were in the days long gone, long before I came to this world.  All I got to experience in my childhood was you driving like a madman on the expressway on the way from Ohio to Kansas to visit Grandmother for Christmas. It was rather fun to see all the other cars at a standstill while we flew by on the shoulder...  but, I digress. 

 In 1937, the year you graduated from El Dorado High School in Kansas, the Japanese invaded China, marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. In March of 1938 Germany annexed Austria, while the other European powers barely blinked.

So started the march of Hitler's ever increasing greed and thirst for domination. 

Had you had it your way, I know you would have been a pilot, (as my mother, your second wife was, but that is another story for another day) but your poor nearsighted eyes (something I inherited from you, gee thanks) put that possibility out of your reach. Instead, you used your skill with the camera, a relatively new and rare thing in those days, (I'm impressed) as your ticket to the sky. I found your newspaper clippings, kept safe all these years, and they told me many things I never learned from your lips. On October 18, 1938 you, Lloyd Eldon Davis enlisted in the Air Corps. In December of that year you entered the Air Corps Technical School in Chanute Field Ill, graduating in July of 1939. Your colleagues and fellow servicemen admired you, they valued your mentorship and advice, both personal and professional. This I learned from their letters to you. 

 In September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and France and Britain declared war on Germany. In September of 1940 Germany ordered all Jewish citizens to visibly wear yellow stars as identification, a humiliation that was Hitler's precursor to an attempted annihilation of an entire people.

 What did these things mean to you? What did you think the future held? 

 I found a photo of you, Army Air Corps Corporal rank patches on your sleeves. The date 2-10-41 scrawled on the back; 

The inscription, also on the back, is irreverent. "Studious - Not me -" You made me grin.

 You look so impossibly young. In fact, you are 23,  just past being a kid. But then, you never really had the chance to be a kid. The orphanage and the Great Depression took that from you. But that is also a story for another day

 With the impending war looming on the US horizon, several of your friends got married, as did you. I found their wedding announcements amongst your things, your treasures. On November 2, 1941, you married Bonnie Marie Bobbit, your hometown sweetheart. (She was to die young,after giving you two daughters, but you of course didn't know that then. And what should I think of that? Had she lived, I never would have been born)

 On December 7, 1941 everything changed. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  In 1942 you moved your family (with your new daughter, my sister)  from the West Coast back to Kansas because you thought they might get bombed, just like Hawaii. You and your comrades-in-arms were going to war. Did war seem so far away? Did it seem real? 

I'm coming to see you in this way back when. I'll be looking over your shoulder.  

'Till next time, 

Your loving daughter 

Coming soon; Part 2 & 3, Prelude to War, and  Your Eye in the Sky (with as many photos as I can scan and fit on these pages)

 Related Posts;

 Now THAT was a man who could wear a hat.....

A walk in Dad's shoes-Piccadilly Circus, London