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A review by komet2020
Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life by Paul Hendrickson
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.75
Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life represents Paul Hendickson's lifelong effort to try to understand the man who was his father: Joe Paul Hendrickson (1918-2003). It is also a book that sets out to show how the impact of Joe Paul Hendrickson's stint as a night fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during World War II in the Pacific affected Hendrickson himself, as well as his family.
I found the story of Joe Paul Hendrickson's life a remarkable one. He grew up a farmer's son in a small Kentucky town during the Depression in a large family that struggled to eke out a living. Hard work was the hallmark of his life. From the time he was a boy and had looked overhead one day to see a Ford Trimotor aircraft fly past, he had aspired to be a pilot. So, shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, Joe Paul Hendrickson embarked on a Greyhound for Chanute Field, at Rantoul, Illinois. He had managed to gain admittance into the U.S. Army Air Corps as a mechanic trainee. It was an exacting program, but he showed he had both drive and mettle. Steady promotions followed.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Joe Paul Hendrickson was made an officer and allowed to undertake flight training. He proved to be a very skilled pilot, trained initially to fly multi-engine bombers before volunteering to be trained as a night fighter pilot, flying the P-61 "Black Widow" twin-engined fighter from Iwo Jima on nocturnal missions against the Japanese during the spring and summer of 1945.
As the son of a U.S. Army combat veteran of World War II, I found much about this book relatable in some respects to my own experiences with a father I deeply respected, admired, and loved.
The passages in the book that dealt with Joe Paul Hendrickson's final days I found especially touching and poignant. The following admission by the author speaks volumes about the lifelong relationship he had with his father: "This terribly stern and often uncommunicative and occasionally violent man - which is to say the figure I had known through my childhood until I could escape home at fourteen for the seminary - is now showing me, by example more than word, how to die. He had been all those things through my childhood, true, but he had also been the other things, teaching by example more than word, about self-discipline, about completing a task, about self-respect, about the nature of sacrifice for a larger purpose, about honoring one's obligations."
For anyone wanting to understand how the lives of the World War II generation -- a generation that is now soon to leave us -- impacted upon their families, I invite you to read Fighting the Night. You'll be glad that you did.
I found the story of Joe Paul Hendrickson's life a remarkable one. He grew up a farmer's son in a small Kentucky town during the Depression in a large family that struggled to eke out a living. Hard work was the hallmark of his life. From the time he was a boy and had looked overhead one day to see a Ford Trimotor aircraft fly past, he had aspired to be a pilot. So, shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, Joe Paul Hendrickson embarked on a Greyhound for Chanute Field, at Rantoul, Illinois. He had managed to gain admittance into the U.S. Army Air Corps as a mechanic trainee. It was an exacting program, but he showed he had both drive and mettle. Steady promotions followed.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Joe Paul Hendrickson was made an officer and allowed to undertake flight training. He proved to be a very skilled pilot, trained initially to fly multi-engine bombers before volunteering to be trained as a night fighter pilot, flying the P-61 "Black Widow" twin-engined fighter from Iwo Jima on nocturnal missions against the Japanese during the spring and summer of 1945.
As the son of a U.S. Army combat veteran of World War II, I found much about this book relatable in some respects to my own experiences with a father I deeply respected, admired, and loved.
The passages in the book that dealt with Joe Paul Hendrickson's final days I found especially touching and poignant. The following admission by the author speaks volumes about the lifelong relationship he had with his father: "This terribly stern and often uncommunicative and occasionally violent man - which is to say the figure I had known through my childhood until I could escape home at fourteen for the seminary - is now showing me, by example more than word, how to die. He had been all those things through my childhood, true, but he had also been the other things, teaching by example more than word, about self-discipline, about completing a task, about self-respect, about the nature of sacrifice for a larger purpose, about honoring one's obligations."
For anyone wanting to understand how the lives of the World War II generation -- a generation that is now soon to leave us -- impacted upon their families, I invite you to read Fighting the Night. You'll be glad that you did.