Back in the fall of 2016, I recorded a series of clips of myself in the Oregon Cascades reading excerpts from Indestructible, the first book I wrote for Hachette. Indestructible is the story of P.I. “Pappy” Gunn and his family during the Pacific War, and Pappy’s frantic efforts to liberate his wife and children from Japanese captivity in the Philippines.
Interviewing Nathan Gunn, Pappy’s youngest son, in 2014-15, the story I read in this clip came up. We talked about it at length. Neither of us ever figured out what happened to the boy in the leg braces, and I still wonder if he made it through the war and the final weeks before liberation.
Writing military history from the perspective of personal experiences–not the macro level grand strategy & movement of armies or navies, but how such things impacts human beings caught up in such machinations– it takes a lot out of me, especially since we lost Taylor Marks in Iraq in August of 2009. The pain families and friends go through after the contact team arrives in their community is one I know all too well. To counter the rugged subject matter, I write in the woods above a lake in the Oregon Cascades. There’s something about our forests and mountains that is just chicken soup for the soul.
I never posted these little clips–too self conscious at the time. Eight years later, I look at them with a different eye. The bridge I’m on in this clip is gone now. In fact, two weeks ago, I was crossing the stream below it, slipped and knocked myself out. Kinda wish we still had the bridge. 🙂
Digby, the cat in the frame with me, was my writing cat from 2012 to 2017 when he passed while I was on the road doing research for Race of Aces. His full name was an homage to RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain: Digby Baxter Boscombe Downe–all names of Fighter Command airfields during the summer of 1940. He and I and Gwen, my Jordanian dog, would spend weeks at a time up there in the woods, writing Indestructible. They ate very well as I often forgot dog/cat food. So, Gwen got a lot of pork chops and Digby dined on grilled chicken.
On the night of October 11, 1957, Paul Irvin “Pappy” Gunn was flying a Beech 18 in the Central Philippines. A sudden downforce slammed his low flying aircraft into the ground. Props damaged, fuselage and wings torn up, the Beech was probably doomed right then. But Pappy Gunn, with over 20,000 flight hours, somehow managed to firewall the throttles, gain a bit of altitude and start to turn for the nearest airfield. If he had only a few more feet of altitude, he might have made it. Instead, he struck a tree, and the Beech crashed with the loss of everyone on board.
I spent a lot of time on road tripping around the country from 2010 on; many of you have followed my shenanigans here on FB as I’ve passionately explored our beautiful country and its history from the left seat of the Goat. I’ve met a lot of people, had a lot of special moments from walking the Selma Bridge and sitting at Rosa Parks’ bus stop to chance encounters with destitute and desperate Americans, farmers and people my age grimly trying to build a second career after losing their first one in the 08 recession.
Why? Because we are an exceptional people. I don’t care your color, gender, sexual identity–we are a tapestry of unusual awesome. No other country has such a vast spectrum of human experience, talent, ability, values, and outlooks. Yes, it makes us fractious and nasty at times like now, but collectively it gives us the power to change the world. And we have been doing that for two hundred plus years. From the first imperfect, but radical ideas of freedom and liberty to the hundreds of thousands who perished in combat to extend freedom’s reach, to the social and technological revolutions we have started–computers, television, vehicles, industry, psychology and space travel. Historians and football players can say America was never great, but to say Americans are not exceptional is to insult every great one who has found the courage to stride into the wind and change the world for the better. Rosa. Martin. Ike. Lincoln, Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Blackburn. Pappy Gunn. The list could go on for thousands of pages.
My Friends,
The American Warrior 