This is a somewhat unusual book, in that it's a mix of a historical detective story on the one hand, and literary analysis on the other. The author goes in search of material regarding his grandfather, who was shot down over the North Sea in 1943, when his father was very young. The other part of the book talks about war poetry, and in particular, the war poetry that was tied to both the Blitz and the Allied aerial counter-offensive. For those not too keen on poetry, those interludes threaten to be a drag, but the fact that they are still compelling, and tied into the main story of the search for the grandfather, works in the author's favor. He (the author) also reveals one fact at the very end of the book about the grandfather's death that puts a seal on things. Interesting book. ( )

Sometimes I wait a few days to write these, to get around to it. In this case I rushed to record my thoughts. This is an amazing book that will stick with me for a long time. I felt like I should clap when I finished the last line.

I have had this book for a while, I remember seeing it at the Borders in Lawrence (RIP), and when the store was closing I bought it at... some percentage off.

The premise of the book is simple, if tragic. The author's grandfather, his father's father, was shot down as a bomber pilot in WWII when his son was four. The grandson sets out with his dad to find out more about the missing man. They know he was shot down over the Channel, and that his body washed up on a Dutch beach.

The process is ingenious, through archives, logs, letters, and eventually war poetry. He visits RAF reunions and cemeteries, target city libraries, taxis in a Lancaster bomber, and walks the beach (where dozens of airmen ended up) to tell a tale.

The ending is superb, bringing together Auden and Icarus in an obvious move that I wouldn't have imagined.

'I don't know who Icarus is for you. but for me he is Acting Squadron Leader James Eric Swift of 83 Squadron, Bomber Command, who fell to the sea of the coast of Holland on the morning of 12 June 1943. He was returning from bombing Munster. His given name was James, but everybody called him Eric. But that is not quite true: for really, nobody calls him anything. When I was beginning to write this book, my father and I spoke of how we might refer to him, for he did not yet have a name. Names imply a role in the ever-shifting arrangements of a family - Daddy can become Grandpa, and titles like 'your aunt' or 'my brother-in-law' make sense only at certain times - and this man's family role ended on a summer day sixty-five years ago. As Ovid reminds us: Daedalus, 'the unhappy father', was at that moment 'no longer a father.'

An earlier observation, on his grandfather crashing just before his unit took part in the firebombing of Dresden, and guilt, quoting from Orwell: 'Now no one in his senses regards bombing, or any other operation of war, with anything but disgust... [but] there is something very distasteful in accepting war as an instrument and at the same time wanting to dodge responsibility for its more obviously barbarous features. War is by its nature barbarous, it is better to admit that. If we see ourselves as the savage we are some improvement is possible, or at least thinkable.'

Failing improvement, we owe our falling boys honesty. ( )

http://airminded.org/2010/11/03/bomber-county/ ( )