Rebecca Brown's Interview with
William C. McGuire II
Author of After The Liberators: A Father's Last Mission
A Son's Lifelong Journey
A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books
Rebecca :
What inspired you, drove you to discover all that you could about your father's last mission during World War II?
William :
Love, a healing process & the need to know. I have been blessed with a goodly amount of stability in my life, a loving wife & children, a rich family life. Some tangible achievements in business. But the absence of my father & any real knowledge of him was a substantial hole in my emotional wellbeing.
There were unanswered questions that wouldn't go away: What happened to him? Who was he? Was he at peace? Have I honored his memory? To face the unknown about who you are & where you came from, you need to reach some maturity & stare down some of your own personal demons first.
As I reached the age of 50, I was more conscious of that ticking clock, my own vulnerability, & then somehow everything came together to make my search possible & successful. They say that God is in the details. In my case, each fact learned moved me to the next, & a little closer to my dad.
Rebecca :
When did you realize that you were gathering information to write a book?
William :
I had gathered boxes full of research material between the fall of 1993 & 1996. Interview notes, correspondence, wartime documents, manuscripts of unpublished veteran narratives, photos, maps, etc. I kept a sketchy journal of my travels across Europe in June '95, which I immediately expanded on my return home.
Except for a few loose ends, the story of my personal journey was, I felt, complete & significant. I knew I had more than enough for a book & I knew too that I had to write it. Most of all, I wanted to take people along with me & back to the way it was. I wanted them to identify with me & my father in what had been lost & in what had been regained. For I believe my story is representative of tens of thousands like me, & that the repercussions of wartime sacrifice go on and on.
Rebecca :
What do we not know about the feelings of the children who grew up fatherless from that war? Would anything have helped heal the loss?
William :
I have come to know dozens of war orphans primarily through the American WWII Orphans Network www.AWON.org.
The dictionary definition of orphans refers to the loss of one or both parents. The war orphaned grow up with a great deal of pain, confusion & insecurity, as well as guilt. They also suffer for, & with, their mothers, the widowed, & in many cases with their siblings & extended families.
I think it is fair to say that we war orphans feel a powerful bond of empathy with the victims of the World Trade Towers attack, & with those at the Pentagon. Especially for the families of the fire fighters & police who in choosing to do their duty forfeited their lives. Like the lost fathers from all our wars, these heroes became part of our national heritage.
As many people are, I am more than a little skeptical of the claims & sometimes exaggerated reputation of the institution of psychology & psychiatry. But all of us do have a much better understanding today than in 1945 of the importance of good counseling in trauma & bereavement situations, & too of the value of a support community. That was largely lacking after the war.
It was particularly hard for widows & also, despite Veterans Administration health benefits, for POWs (prisoners of war). Yes, the government could have done more, but it was a different time & the mood of the country was mostly to forget about the war & everything to do with death, as much as possible. Not to look back but to move on. So the survivors of the dead were pretty much on their own.
Rebecca :
Why was Friedrichshafen so important a target & so difficult to attack?
William :
In the winter of '43-44, the targets of American bombing in Europe were mainly related to Germany's armaments industry & petroleum capacity.
Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance in the extreme southwest, was a center for several Luftwaffe contractors manufacturing & development. Like most German cities it was heavily protected by anti-aircraft artillery & interceptor aircraft. Virtually the same forces involved in that fateful last mission had unsuccessfully attacked the target two days earlier. Weather prevented bombing. So there was no element of surprise this time.
My dad's bomb group, & one other were late on arrival at the target for reasons I explain in the book. But as a result, they lost the support of the American fighter escort planes they were supposed to rendezvous with, & unprotected, were shot down in great numbers by German flak & fighters.
Rebecca :
What was it like when you finally got to talk with the people who found your father's 'plane -- what were your feelings?
William :
My father was Navigator of a B24 Liberator which I was led to believe was nick-named “Delayed Action.”. I thought that very ironic given my late start in life in tracking down his story. However, I subsequently learned that this was a false lead, & that the true name of the ship was “Sinister Minister.” Certainly a darker vision of what was to come, or perhaps a left-handed blessing for us all? A puzzle & a challenge, like so many you encounter when you begin to look for truth or fix meaning in past events.
My hosts in Germany were very sympathetic & in every way solicitous. The bulk of the info about the plane's discovery, however, came from the written record. An Army investigative team went to the site in the spring of 1946 & interviewed all the citizenry in the village directly involved. I secured the transcripts of those interviews.
It was important for me to see the locations involved & to talk to locals, but mostly everything I learned confirmed the eyewitness record made 50 years earlier.
My father & his crewmates were given a highly unusual full funeral out of the local church & originally buried in the community cemetery there. I was very lucky to receive, while I was there in Ettenheimmunster, two snapshot photos of that burial ceremony for our dead fliers. They are in the book with 48 other photos & illustrations. Opening up that window on the past astounded me.
Rebecca :
How did you finally got in touch with the Veterans who knew of your father & what were the meetings like?
William :
I read about a certain library & museum in Tucson in a newspaper obituary for a WWII flyer. I wrote to the director there & he put me in touch with Veterans in my dad's outfit. Eventually I went to reunions of this group, the 392nd BG & of the 8th AF Historical Society.
I also was in touch by mail & phone with two Vets who knew & remembered my father from his group. This was very personal & real for me as they shared their memories.
History also came alive in that sense quite early on, when I was able to trace a survivor (one of three) from my dad's B24. He had bailed out before the crash. The two of us had some powerfully emotional phone conversations, & he gave me his version of my father's final hours with them. Then I visited with this Vet, Mike Cugini & his wife near Buffalo, NY. Mike died of a heart attack eleven days after my visit. All the Vets I met have been friendly, open & fully understanding of what I was trying to do.
Rebecca :
How did your profession prepare you for your search & are you a computer writer?
William :
I am a career corporate public relations professional, primarily as a writer. I was an English major at a classic liberal arts college. I have been trained in journalistic discipline & objectivity in a variety of editorial & reportorial jobs. I am a very analytical person, but also humanistic in my approach & viewpoint. I'm in no way post-modernist. My account carries the mark of each of these influences as well as a sharp personal viewpoint framed by the weight & drive of my experience as the only child of a wartime KIA (killed in action). My background gave me the confidence & the ability to tell my story my way.
I use the computer to record the text & to later manipulate it, edit & rework it. But, & this is a big but, I believe in the power of first draft writing, the real writing. It is the heart of my work, the best part that crackles & sings. I do it long hand on legal size ruled pads. I think getting it down right in the first draft, & the flow & focus that goes with that, is both underrated & undertaught. The rest, clean up, polishing, refitting, etc., is process, not writing.
Rebecca :
Tell us a little about the scrapbook & how it helped your search.
William :
Rebecca, I'm not sure what you mean by the scrapbook. If you mean my paternal grandmother's, it tended to lionize my father, to make him an untouchable icon in many ways, because it opened up a flood of questions that for one reason or another were too sensitive, taboo or complicated to generate the answers I was looking for.
Scrapbooks were mentioned several times, however, & on the whole I don't think any of them are significant in the story.
Rebecca :
Who are Cliff Peterson & Mike Cugini?
William :
Cliff Peterson was the pilot of another B24 from the 392nd BG shot down on the same mission as my father. Cliff, a retired Air Force officer from Florida, was President of the bomb group association of 392nd alumni & a wonderful information source for me. Soon after I first contacted him in 1993, Cliff, who had bailed out of his plane along with four others who survived, learned for the first time that his plane had crashed in the same Black Forest village as my dad's, less than a football field apart. This is just one of the many strange coincidences that occurred in this story.
Mike Cugini was one of three survivors from my dad's plane. We became friends in the short time I knew him before his death (June of 1994) & Mike told me about training with my dad & his crew, & the feeling they each had for my father, who was a little older than the rest. He also told me invaluable details of their final mission. I acquired a group photo of my dad's crew in my research. Until Cugini identified each of the men for me, I had no idea who they were, except for the familiar Bill McGuire. But my dad had his arm around the shoulders of the man standing next to him. Of course, it turned out to be Mike Cugini.
Rebecca :
I know when I finally got to see the registration of my birth certificate on which my birth mother had signed her name, it was as if the first piece in the puzzle of my life had been found. What particular piece of paper in your lifetime search made that connection for you?
William :
There were two things. One was a photo copy of a V Mail letter my dad had sent home from his base in England to his baby brother, about two months before dad's death. It was the first time I saw or read any of his writing. In it he reveals his dedication to the war effort & his high morale. That gave me peace & understanding because he knew exactly what he was doing & what was at stake.
The second was a copy of the navigators role or release form from the morning of his final mission. Each navigator had to sign this list in order to pick up his sealed mission folder or flight orders. It was faxed to me & I knew it represented the last time that he had ever signed his name, our name. This had a strange & cathartic effect on me which I do my best to describe & interpret in my book.
Rebecca :
Thank you for your enthusiasm & for After The Liberators -- it is an absorbing & redemptive testimony to your filial love for a father you never knew. It certainly brought back to life the family out of which you came & the America of so long ago. Your book is about your childhood & life intertwined with that of your fighting father's & it will surely find a niche among the children of the fathers & mothers now being called up for another kind of war. How do you explain or interpret all the continuing popularity in recent years of films and books about WWII history?
William :
It has been quite amazing, huge, as the kids say. From Saving Private Ryan to HBO's Band of Brothers, from best sellers like The Greatest Generation to Flags Of Our Fathers, Ghost Soldiers & The Wild Blue, to name but a few.
Many people see this groundswell of interest as a final salute to a passing generation, the Veterans of WWII who are now coming to the end of their lives in such great numbers. But what is most challenging about this revival is that the people buying the books & the show tickets are all under 50: Baby Boomers & the XGeneration members. It remains something of a mystery, why now, why them?
Maybe part of the answer, in a spiritual way, hit us on September 11. Maybe Americans of all ages had some sense that we & our values would once again be sorely tested & that we would all need the example of the World War II nation to help us pull together & get through this awful trial.
Rebecca, the courage, the unity, the selflessness, the resolve & the faith demonstrated in these stories from almost 60 years ago certainly continue to inspire & assure us all that Liberty will endure. Thank you so much for taking an interest in my book.
Rebecca :
What are you writing about these days?
William :
Am I working on another book? Good question. I write every day but not alas on another book. I do love to write & putting a book together is an inexpressible thrill, so it is only a question of time & will. I may take the plunge & turn to the novel form this time, pure fiction, but a highly realistic setting. I am much interested in 1950s New York City, & I lived that background of course. So much of what happened in the final years of the 20th century was quietly bubbling just beneath the surface back then.
I am particularly focused on the Golden Age of Live Television, & the last truly creative flowering of Broadway. We tend to think of the Eisenhower years as a time of stasis & passive calm. But it was also a time of disquieting contrasts & clashing cultural symbols, of low art, celebrity low lifes, rampant, insistent ambition & greed, along with inklings of a general psychological unraveling. Living cheek to jowl in our great cities after the war we came to know one another quite well for perhaps the first time. Only we didn't always like what we found out about the other, & ourselves. An end of innocence? Hang onto your seats folks, it looks like a bumpy ride!
Rebecca :
Do check out my review of this author's dramatic & informative memoir After The Liberators: A Father's Last Mission, A Son's Lifelong Journey -- you will see WWII & an American life from a very different perspective. & buy yourself a copy from: Amazon's price is: $16.95
For a personalized “Signed 1st Edition”...
“If anyone wants a signed copy and wants to take the trouble of mailing it to me, I will autograph it and mail it back. Awkward I know, but my publisher is handling orders now and those books are unsigned. If anyone wants to be in touch with me via mail or on the internet here are the addresses. I welcome comments and questions. This is the least I can do to share our honored heritage and in a way pay back some of the great men I have come to know who served in World War II.”
Bill McGuire
#2 Washington Square
Larchmont, NY 10538
He may also be reached by e-mail: A43fool@aol.com
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