Looking out his window, Co-pilot Steve Stanley observed, “Swanee River is on fire. Why don’t they get out?”

The pilot, Captain Chase Champion, saw the same thing, “I don’t know but they better …” At that moment Steve and Chase were horrified as Swanee River exploded before their reluctant eyes.

“My God,” said Chase, “it just disintegrated!” The sky suddenly went dark as the Rose flew through the debris from the explosion.

“Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! There’s blood and guts all over our nose,” bombardier Wyman lamented. He just shook his head as the blood ran down the Plexiglas in several different streams. Navigator Clark Clifton began to gag but didn’t throw up in his oxygen mask.

And so it went, mission after mission, kids who had worked at the corner drug store, kids who had thrown the Sunday paper, scored the winning touchdown, or failed algebra. Captains of the clouds, they took the giant B-17 bombers deep into enemy territory, higher than men could breathe. At temperatures of 50 below zero, they endured relentless attacks from German fighters and blankets of deadly flak, fastened to life by short hoses of oxygen. They were the boys of the 8th Air Force who were expected to carry out the American theory of high-altitude precision, daylight bombing, regardless of the loses.

From early 1942 until D-Day, several million Americans landed in Britain on their way to fight on the European Continent. First Lieutenant Steve Stanley, from Austin, Texas, and Captain Chase Champion, from Dallas, were two of them. Stanley respected the English and their women. Champion was the complete opposite; a crass, arrogant, brash, self-centered Yank who contributed to the bad impression of Americans and couldn’t care less.

To the war-weary British, these upstart Americans were "overpaid, oversexed and over here." So, while the Yanks had come to Britannia — their men were fighting in Burma, India and North Africa — the cocky young Americans filled the void.

Despite resentments on the part of some, many memorable friendships and love affairs developed between lonely American servicemen and English village women. Some married, some had affairs and some left women with babies who would never see their fathers. Many of the Yanks, especially the crews who flew the giant B-17s deep into Germany without fighter cover, did not expect to survive and just wanted to grab as much of life as they could seize in a moment.

An entire world at war — these were not normal times.