The Navigator's Letter: In The Clubmobile with Jan Cress Dondi

If you know us, you know that we will never turn down the opportunity to read a good book; bonus points if the book checks all our wartime boxes. Jan Cress Dondi's book, The Navigator's Letter, does just that! It turns out, a small town where everyone knows each other is not so small when wartime reaches America's doorstep in December 1941, especially for John B. White and Robert Cress. Two young men living in Illinois answer their country's call to serve, finding themselves living an almost parallel life as Navigators on B-24 Liberators. Jan expertly tells her family's story of John B. and Bob, and the woman who holds them both in a special place in her heart- Polley. The coffee is hot and the sinkers are fresh, so join us in The Clubmobile as we talk wartime and family history! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hey guys, they come to the dollars. They got fresh sinkers, hot coffee, and the sweetest smile. Welcome back to the Club Mobile, everybody. We're so happy to have you joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hi, everyone. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And joining us today is Jan Crest Donzi, author of The Navigator's Letter. I've been so excited to talk to you since I picked up the book.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I loved it. I am just thrilled to be on the show, and I'm so glad you guys share these stories of World War II because they really are important. And I'm I'm I'm honored that I'm on this show with you guys. Oh, we're honored to have you.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

We feel the same. We do. We feel the same. Um, Dan, for those that don't know much about you or your book, could you give us a quick synopsis of the book? And could you also tell us a little about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Um, okay, I'll start with myself. I was born in in the small town of uh Hillsborough, Illinois, where the book took root. Um, it's about three youths coming to age from the same town that I was born in. I um I grew up in Atlanta, uh, graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science, and then I actually went to Alaska on a one-way ticket and ended up going, getting uh staying there for six years, and I got a teaching certificate so I could teach out in the bush, but I decided I didn't want to do that. Um and then I reconnected with a high a college sweetheart uh who was in Texas. I I was sent to Texas on a discovery job. I was a litigation paralegal up there, and they sent me on a job and I thought I'll look him up. And so uh we ended up getting together and moved to Florida, which is so I've kind of made a whole round circle to full circle though, yeah.

unknown 1:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

We have we have two daughters and four grandchildren. Um, my one daughter has four children, six age six and under. And um, my lifetime profession was a litigation paralegal. I quit when I was about um 60, I think. Oops, probably shouldn't say what my age is. But I retired at a certain point in life, and that's when I um sort of started this uh story. Amazing. So this is your first book. This is my absolute first book, and it's definitely been a labor of love because it's a story about family. Um, the story was, I'll tell you a little bit about the story, and then I can tell you the process in getting it. Um on the surface, it's about the US campaign to destroy Hitler's oil fields. Um as you guys probably know, um, with that when it was a time when victory in World War II depended on one critical element, and that was oil. And tanks don't roll, ships don't sail, and planes don't fly without it. So America decided to go after Hitler's oil source at Ploesti, and they paid a terrible price. The narrative is really about the U.S. campaign to destroy Ploesti oil fields, which is Hitler's fuel source. Um, they started out with tidal wave, which was a very detailed organized operation. Um, that morning of the 1700 airmen that took off, 532 did not return. Um, it was a very dangerous mission, a crazy mission. And uh it was considered Black Sunday because they lost so many men that day. Um, months later, the Air Force regrouped in southern Italy and uh with the 15th Air Force, and um they flew missions through the summer of 1944, and they lost over 2,300 men over Ploesti. So it was a serious target. The book sort of culminates with a humanitarian mission, Operation Reunion, which is the largest evacuation by air in history, repatriating some 1,200 men back to American air bases in Italy. But I will tell you, at its core, the Navigator's letter is much more than a military history. It's a deeply human story told through the voices of two B-24 navigators, John B. and Bob, who happen to be my uncle and father. And um, it's through through the chaos, seeing it through their experiences, the war unfolds not only amid missions and survival, but through the connections that endured amid wartime chaos. So that's sort of the gist of the book. It's it's um it's history with a human heartbeat. It's not a straight history book, although it's to the book, it's to the um, it's uh it's been corroborated with the National Archives. I have a serious number of sources in the back of the book um that corroborate everything that I've found or discovered.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

So because the story itself is about your uncle and your father, was this something that was spoken about when you were growing up, or was this a story that you found later on in life and that you felt compelled to write about eventually?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

So it's a little bit about both, to be honest. What kickstarted the pro the the whole project was I found five or six hundred letters in a footlocker in my mother's basement. And these letters, um, I found them, I I always knew about the letters, but I didn't actually pick up the letters until my mother passed away. And I started reading them and I realized I had a piece of history in my hands, and it was really important to think, what am I going to do with this now? So originally I created um a chronology and then I decided to make a book. I thought about making a book for my cousins because I wanted them to see how awesome their uncles were. But I will tell you, my whole life prepared me to write this story. Um, long, long ago, when I was very young, I had insomnia, and my father would tell me bedtime stories. And instead of fairy tales like most kids get, I would get dive bombing stukas and enemy daring escapes from enemy prisoner of war camp or interrogations by Aryan officers. My father was fluent in German, so um he he could really play a good story or tell a good story. Um, through high school, I wore a POW bracelet during Vietnam, and that prompted a lot of discussion with Bob, um, my father. And um, we always took walks in the park. He would always point out Cassiopeia, um, Orion's Belt, the North Star. It was always a big deal. I I wish I could remember all those, all the stars he pointed out because it was a time when they didn't have GPS. So of course he knew everything about the stars. And um he always answered questions, he wouldn't boast about whatever happened, but he would tell stories. If I asked him a question, he would tell stories. And I knew that there was a lifelong connection between he and John B. And so, of course, I was always asking questions about John B. And and um I guess when he in the 80s, they were sworn to secrecy for 50 years, not to tell anybody what horrors they saw. Um, and so I think in the 80s, he started going to reunions with his POW friends and they started talking to each other and they said, Why are we, why are, why do we have to keep this a secret? It's driving us crazy. So um they he's he they came back, each of them came back and they started writing memoirs in a way. Um Bob wrote some of the anecdotes of growing up on the farm and some different stories. Um, then when he got lung cancer, I decided to videotape him um for about eight hours just to find out, tell us about what all happened. So we were able, and this was back in the nine early 90s, so I was able to get that, but I still hadn't discovered the letters at that point. So, so all this stuff led, um, plus being a litigation paralegal didn't hurt, nor did love of travel, because I had to travel a lot to find out all the all the research for this book. But um, when he died, I didn't, I still hadn't found the letters. It was not until we cleared out the house that I was able to find these letters, and that's what really kickstarted the program, the project. Um, I would read them, and you know, of course they were sentimental. It was a wonderful journey through, it was cathartic to read these letters. Um, and I really thought, what am I going to do with them? And the best thing was to think about doing it for my cousins. But to make them authentic and to write the kind of book that John B. and Bob deserved, I felt like I needed to authenticate everything that was in their letters. So I went to the National Archives, I got bomb group reports, bomb group diaries, Air Force diaries, missing air crew reports, official documents, um, operations reports, just everything that I get my hands on. I probably went through a hundred thousand documents. In the early days, 15 years ago, you had to order a disc and pay $10 per disc. Like I would hello SD. I'd get the disc, I'd load it in my computer, and it would, I would get maybe two documents out of it that were interesting. And I'd say, I want to find out more. So I'd go back and I'd come up with another term. Eventually, some of those documents were put on reels online. So you could look so about 10 years ago, they were much easier to gather. Now they're much, much easier to gather. But um, so of the American documents, I probably went through a hundred thousand, but I still I went to Romania. I met with an aviation archaeologist, we went to the crash site, uh, the crash sites, and um, I went to the POW camp. I went to um uh we actually went to the U.S. Embassy and I spoke about um my father's visit there. Um, and the arch the aviation expert gave me the name of the pilot that claimed the plane, claimed my father's plane. So I wanted to meet this guy if he was still alive. So I did everything I could to try to find this guy. Um, we went to the German archives. I couldn't get it online because they wanted his date of birth, his residence, and all that stuff. I tried to go on Facebook and look for him, thinking maybe somebody was named after him. And you know, maybe that didn't go anywhere. So we finally we were on a my husband is Swiss and we were and speaks full of German, which is helpful. We were in Switzerland and I said, Hey, do you mind if we drive up to the the German archives and just see if we can get in? And so we drive up to the it's about two hours away. There's barbed wire around the whole place. So we're you know, it's pretty imposing. So we go to the guard gate and the guard, and I say, Um, I'd like to get in and look at the archives. And he goes, Do you have an appointment in German? And I said, No. And he goes, Well, you can't get in. I said, Please, I'm from Florida, you know. And he said, Nine, nine. So I said, I've got to tell you the story. Um, but for the humanity of a German pilot, I wouldn't be here. And so my husband is behind me uh translating for me. And I said, I'm I'm um my father's plane was shot to hell. Um uh an enemy 109 had taken out some hydraulic lines and and oxygen lines, and it started a strong fire. So um they had to bail. And uh my father was a second to the last to bail as he's hanging from the uh parachute. He sees a dot in the sky coming back, and he had heard rumors that the Germans, the German pilots would use target practice for the parachutes so that the airmen would fall to their death. So he's going. I'm sure he said a flu, a few expletives, and he said, you know, all I can do is turn and face this guy. I'm just gonna face him and come what may. And he said it's no better than being in a burning airplane. So he's standing, you know, he's flying there. He's the enemy comes, he sees that it's an ME-109. And if you know, an ME-109 has a clear canopy, so the pilot can look all around. So as the pot as my father's hanging there, Bob's hanging there, the enemy plane goes under him, the pilot looks up and salutes Bob, and Bob's looking down, dumbfounded, you know, going amazing. The guy said, you know, at least he made it through that. So the the the guy at the guard, the guard at the guard gate let me through. He said, just go ahead. And and what was great was finding those records, uh, not only did he claim Bob's plane, but he also was flying in the Bay of Biscay, which is south of um UK and east of Portugal and Spain and France, around their big body of water. He was flying uh combat missions at the same time John B was there. I couldn't corroborate that they were in the same location, but it's so they were there at the same time, the same month they were in the same waters. And I I can't help but believe the universe puts people together in in interesting ways. And um, so that was I I just I had many discoveries like that. And I don't even know how I got to this this answer um from your question, but it was a great question. I forgot what the question was.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

I also I have too, because that was such a great answer that I forgot where we even began.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

I will say one of the things that interested me the most was that we, I mean, it's no secret to people that listen to Winnie and I. We're avid researchers of the air war and we're passionate will say about the B-17. This was my first real foray, right? And I think I said this to you. I said, Winnie, I don't know that we know this much about a B-24 yet.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

No, we don't. We were we were quite worried that we would get things wrong and that we wouldn't um we wouldn't have good questions or good answers. But you know, getting into that, I feel like we learned that.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

So the first that I remember calling you when I read at the beginning about tidal wave, and anybody that's done research on Operation Tidal Wave knows they flew at zero altitude. Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

And I said, Holy shit. Exactly. Right now I said, holy crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

I said they flew 100 feet off the ground. Yes, yeah. They they had stacked formation, so three planes would fly at a at together, kind of as a a wing, right? One guy would be at 50 feet, one at 100, and one at 150. So so they're wingtip to wingtip, you know, really close. Yeah, and when you're flying low, I don't know if you know, um, but when you're flying low, there are thermals on the ground that make it harder. Most pilots want to, when they're taking off, they want to get up high fast because thermals, if you're flying low, the thermals make you you know dip and you know go up. Right, right. Plus, they were loaded with full bombs. Full bomb load, yeah, full payload. I don't know, 9,000 pounds of bomb. Plus, I had I don't know how much the fuel weighed, but it was like 20,000 pounds or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

The libs, the libs are a little bit bigger than the fortresses. So I'm like, not yeah, not by much. I mean, they're both tremendous planes, but I'm thinking, I'm trying to picture it in my head. This had me, I'm telling you, this had me gripped that I was like, I even called my dad. I was like, Did you know about this? He's like, no. He's like, I've heard of of Ploesti and Tidal Wave. He's like, but I never knew they flew so low. I'm like, listen, let me tell you something.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Let me tell you what I just read.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Let me tell you about what I just read. That and John B was on the cover of life. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

He was he was on that. He was also when he was in training, he was in another picture inside inside the um as the face of dead reckoning. Um, they were doing a whole story on navigation. I do not know how they did it the way they had to calculate where they were. Right. The stars or the pilotage was knowing what was on the ground, you know. If they if they saw a church steeple, they knew they could go there. If they um and then dead reckoning had to do with a few calculations, and you know, they had a slide rule that was called an E6B that would help them figure out where they were together with the stars, and it was just to me unbelievable that they could cross the Atlantic Ocean. John B crossed the North Atlantic, and he had problems doing that as he took off from Manchester um around Maine somewhere, and then they would go over Iceland and oh also Scotland. Well, when he got near, not near the North Pole, his compass would go berserk because as you get to the poles, it affects the magnetic on your compass. And so they realized they were heading to the North Pole rather than um England. So they had, you know, he had to make an abrupt right turn. So, you know, you you think, and not many guys have to experience that because they don't go, they don't go across the Atlantic when they're flying, especially um, you know, they're flying to a target, they're not flying that close. Bob on the southern route went across hurricane force winds, and so there were clouds above them. So he couldn't even take a star sight. He's over the dark Atlantic Ocean and has to wait for an opening in the sky so that he can take some star sites. And he said that it was off of his desk, the stars, and and he had to sort of guesstimate, but he still hit the dot in Africa. I I yeah how they did that, I I'll never know. I was very mind.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah, and these are pictures Winnie and I have seen a thousand times, and now I'm like, wait a second, now we know somebody in that picture. And you start to put these pieces together. Very interesting, especially that they both had different, like they were both excellent navigators, but they both had a specific foray in navigation that they were great at. So John B was dead reckoning, Bob was excellent with celestial navigation, and it really shows that they were really we use this all the time, two sides of the same coin, right? That they were so fine-tuned in it.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

They were very um, I will say their paths followed the exact same path. It's it's um they both grew up in Hillsborough, this little bitty town of 4,000. It's a beautiful little little town. Um, they uh went to school there, they both graduated from the University of Illinois, and Polly, John B's little sister, who Bob also grew up with, um, she also was born and raised in Hillsborough. And she she was kind of a devil may care attitude. Uh, she was fun-loving, uh, had a great time, very social. Um, but she always had a list of boyfriends. And interesting, Bob never got to on that list. He he knew the family very well. He was Polly's twin brother's best friend to make it more complicated. John B. was an older. So John B was an older brother, but Bob was in the white's home often hanging out with um Bill, the twin brother, and also looked up to John B as big brother. And Bob was otherwise, he grew up on a dairy farm outside of town, uh, hardworking guy, but a really smart guy, good in basketball. He was a 1940 trombone national trombone champion. Um wow, very hard to get that. Um, I have four years of all of his uh gradings or or evaluations through the national uh champion. So he attended it four years and he lost it by one point in his junior year, and he was so mad at himself. And then so he wasn't gonna lose the next time. He he was one of those that you know, if I put my mind to it, I can I can win it. But he got a little overconfident and you know, was a little full of himself then, and yeah, not normally like that, but he thought he was a pretty good trombone player. So junior were so well rounded back then.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

They were we say this all the time, Gav, don't we? We say that they always had a niche and they always had something they were good at, and we feel like that's sort of a lost art these days. Like it's hard to find someone who's good at something with their hands, like an instrument or something like that. I feel like it's sort of become like a lost art.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah. I I think you're absolutely right. Everybody needs to have it builds confidence and leadership to be good at something. John B is really good at debating. And um, to get his transcripts from um his uh speeches, debates that he made, he um I didn't know about them, but I was reading my grandmother's journal from 1938. And she I have journals that go back, and that's why I could sort of also see see the feel of the family throughout all of this wartime. But she wrote down on her one Sunday night, she said, we listened to John B. These radio debates on WLS. And WLS is a big uh Chicago radio station. I grew up with it because my Bob listened to it. And so I thought, oh, well, I'm going to call up WLS. I'm sure they've got the transcripts or the radio audio from 80 years ago. Of course they'd keep that. You know, and I go calling them or writing them in email and they're going, Are you kidding me? You think we keep stuff for eight. I'm going, darn.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

So then a lot of people do keep things for 80 years. I mean, exactly. Well, you're supposed to if you don't ask, the answer is always no, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Absolutely. You're absolutely right. You have to ask. That's the best answer because if you don't ask, you have to be persistent in any of these projects. Whether it be research, a book, or whatever you're going to, you have to be persistent. Keep asking. But so I kept asking. I went to his law school because I thought, oh, maybe they'll have an audio. You know, maybe they'll have it. Well, for months, I I was um emailing this guy. We were exchanging emails, and he'd say, I still haven't found anything, Jan. Sorry. So I finally wrote him for the last time. It was, you know, a year into it. And I said, I'm not going to bug you anymore, but I just want one last ditch effort, you know, to try to ask, do you have anything? And he wrote me back and he said, I was just about to write you that no, we're we don't have anything. But a retiring professor donated his materials to wherever the library. And as they went through them, there were two years of transcribed radio debates that John B. had done, and they were using them as practice tools to present day um lawyers. Amazing. And and the one that I used in the book was so poignant because everybody was at um think it was the theory was isolationism. No, we don't need to join anyone. And John B's uh debate was so poignant that I had to put it in there because it was just great.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

But it but it was those little things um that made it really fun searching for this stuff. And and I do think the litigation paralegal uh profession between writing memorandums, um researching, interviewing witnesses, preparing them for depositions, all that fed into it, except writing a legal brief is very different than writing a book, a book that you're sharing information. You're not just telling it, you're showing how it happened. So I had to learn a little bit about writing.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

That feeds into it. The next question we wanted to ask was tell us about your writing process and how long did it take? And what was it that kept you going, even though things were getting hard and it was something you had never done before? What was it about this story, your family story in particular, that made you want to keep going and share it with the world?

SPEAKER_00 25:02

So I've I've always known this story, like I said, up all from day one, I feel like I've been bred, I was supposed to be named John B, which gave me um sort of a responsibility to also take this story. And also because they did such awesome things. That's the really thing that kept me going. But I kept finding nuggets. This you know, I kept finding every letter sent me on a clue to find something else. I fell in love with this friend of Bob's. His name was Park Chetwood. It's a great name, Park Chetwood. He was a world-class skier, he was on the front page of the Seattle Post, uh, carving a turn in in the uh this is like 1937. And um, everything that Bob had written about him just made me fall in love with him. He was a fraternity guy, good looking, an aeronautical engineering uh major. Um, so they they were in navigation school, both regular navigation and advanced navigation. And so I wanted to find Park Chetwood. I wanted to find him. And um, so I you know looked everywhere. I I finally, after months, discovered it was Gage P. Chetwood. His first name was Gage. So I guess he dropped it and liked Park. So it took the P. Park. And I knew that they were picking up that Park had a yellow convertible because they talked about this low yellow convertible. And I was on a mountaineering site, and and I had also learned that Park's father died when he was 10. And a director had befriended him and taught him how to ski. And so that's how he learned to ski. Well, as it turns out, the director was doing a Coca-Cola commercial, and he filmed Park's convertible back in 1938 with a Coca-Cola girl cutout hanging out hanging out the back, and they drove it up to the top of the mountain and the car, and then he skied, Park skied down. I don't know who brought the car back down, but but it was just amazing. I saw the car that my father and Park used to pick up girls at the University of Texas or Rice University. I mean, you know, that it was just amazing to find that. That to me was a real gem. And I wish I could have put the video in the book, but the actual video, because it's really pretty cool.

unknown 27:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

But um, but what kept me going is the fact that I wanted their story out. I really um wanted to let everybody know what these airmen did. It's not just John B and Bob, what they did, but all the airmen that went up in in an airplane, whether it be a B-17, B-24, or the um not these were heavy bombers, um B-26s, B-25s, any of those, even the fighter planes. I mean, those guys were doing something pretty new. World War II had biplanes, and and in Europe they did bomb uh London and they did do a little bit of that, but flying was a whole new thing, and I think it was exciting for these guys, and that's probably why they joined the air corps. Um I think you have another question, I forgot what it was.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

I wanted to I wanted to ask how long did the whole process take from beginning writing to finding a publisher and then it being released?

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Right. That's a really good question because I started this project. I started reading the letters in 2011. That's 15 years ago. So the research probably took me the most time. Um, so what I did originally when I got the the letters, I decided to write a chronology. I'd put the date of the letter, um, you know, maybe even the postmark, and then I'd actually write the letter. And then I did the whole chronology. Then if I knew something was happening, like a certain battle was going on, I fed it into the chronology just to remind me that, oh, this is what happened. Um, I also did a chronology of the National Archives when I got into them because I had to, I knew if I was gonna source this the right way, I had to have all, I had to locate exactly where I found it in the National Archives, real number 2023 on page 22 and the title of the document. So I knew I had to do that. So I did a very detailed thing of that. Um, I also got a book and I'll call it my Bible of Ploesti. Um Bob had given, when I asked Bob some questions about it, he said, I want you to read this book. And it was the book written 10 years after the war, and it was uh these two guys were part of my uncle, John B's bomb group, and they were before the war, there were news correspondents. So they interviewed everybody that flew PLOEST and they would quote them. And it was it was very detailed on PLOEST as well as um what the 15th Air Force did afterwards. Tidal Wave was the Eighth Air Force and the Ninth Air Force. Uh, the Eighth Air Force had loaned three groups to the Ninth Air Force, and then but this book cataloged everything. So I actually did by page numbers the things that meant something to me. I wrote a chronology of that. So I have all these different timelines and chronologies going on, and then I melded them together. Um, what I would do is I would write on a sticky. If there was a story, I'd write it on a sticky and I had a big piece of glass, um, big piece of glass that was off of a table that we didn't use anymore. And I would put the sticky up on the glass, and then I'd write another sticky and put, and I'd I'd change the the things around so that I would make a chapter, come up with a chapter. Um, the chapters, uh then, you know, then I would start, I didn't actually start writing the book until 2018. And it probably took me two years to write it, to actually physically type it down and write it. And I'd write it and reread it and write it, and then in the night something would come to me and I'd have to go back and change it. And so it took probably two years of and my husband will say I was obsessed. He'd leave in the morning to work and I'd be at the computer, and he'd come back and I'd be at the computer until I went to bed because it was uh it was it was an obsession. I wanted to get John B's story right. So John B and Bob's story correct. And uh so then once I once I got the that together, I decided to um, it was too long and it was too much information. And so I got a Pulitzer Prize um winning journalist. I found him, I said, would you read this and just tell me if it's worth it to go further with this? And because a cousin had read the draft and they said, you know, you have a good story here. You might want to take it further. So I said, okay, so um I asked this Pulitzer Prize winning guy, what would you take out of the story? Because I need to take out, in order to be commercial, I've got to take out a lot. And he said, I wouldn't take out anything. And I went, you know, that's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted you to tell me, you know, take this out, take that, whatever. And he said, Why don't you go ahead and print it for your cousins and then take out the stuff? So I printed that because only my cousins would care about who Bob and everybody dated, you know, all that stuff, John B. Bay and all that stuff. So I took that, I so I printed it, gave it to him, and then I started whittling away stuff that really didn't matter. Um, and I got it down to a certain um size that was okay. Usually a commercial book, they want 95 to 105, well, really 80 to 105,000 words. And I had 130,000 words, and so I knew I had to whittle it down a little bit more. So then I got it down to where I liked it. My cousin helped me edit it in the sense that she was good at grammar and she's really smart. So she read it. Um, and then I knew I had to get an agent. So it was to the point where I had to get an agent, and I'm a nobody, you never, never having written anything. And all my cousins said, Are you crazy? You think this is gonna get to a real publisher? And I said, I hope so. You know, that's what my goal is. I I didn't want to self-publish it only because I knew it wouldn't get out to many, it would get out to 400 people and then probably stop, unless, you know, I got lucky. But I knew if I had a publisher behind me, at least you have a lot more oomph. So my goal was always to get a good publisher. So the first thing is you have to get an agent. So I befriended Donald Miller, Don Miller, who wrote Masters of the Year, and I said, and and he told me a lot of the things I couldn't do in a nonfiction book. We we got together and and um you know, I said, I can't say that. I took it straight from a newspaper article. He goes, Well, you can't you can't make up words for dialogue, you can't have dialogue in it. And I went, oh, okay. Because I did make up dialogue based on stuff, but because it wasn't the true words, I couldn't use it. So anyway, so he he sort of guided me on that. Um he uh so so I so I had to whittle that away. So in order to get an agent, you have to come up with a proposal. Um, it's about a 50-page document. You have to come up with um the sub the subject, you have to do the elevator pitch, you have to do comparable books, you have to do um how you're gonna make money on this book, meaning what target audience are you gonna go to? Um, you have to do the characterization, you have to do a whole bunch of stuff, and you have to do a summary of each chapter. So it gets to be quite a long document. You can hook it up online and you know, see that it's pretty extensive if you're a beginner. If you're somebody famous already, you just have to, you know, say what the story's about and they decide whether they want it or not. But anyway, so Don told me, I said, Don, could you just tell me your agent and let me pitch him? And he goes, No, you're gonna have to just pitch a hundred and maybe one will stick. I said, Please, Don, please give me yours because they make it easy for me. Exactly. Exactly. And he said, Nope, nope, you're just gonna have to, because I think what happens is the agent has to be looking for your type book. Of course, his agent just did a book, you know, his agent did his book, so they don't want another World War II book. They move on to something else. So the first day, so I thought, well, this is my plan. The first week, I'm gonna do two a day, two Monday, two Tuesday. So I start out with Oprah's agent, and I start out with Reese Witherspoon's agent. And because of course they're gonna love my book. Of course, yeah, of course. So I didn't hear back, you know. By day four, the only one that did write me back was Oprah's. She wrote me a very nice thank you, but no thank you. And I thought, well, that's great because really you it it was nice. You don't most I've heard they don't write you back, and then you're kind of hanging, like, well, did they want it or am I just waiting? Or so anyway, by day four, I thought, well, I'm gonna change it up. I'm gonna go to military agents. So I found one, I found a couple that I liked and I pitched them, and um, then we got to Friday and heard nothing. I'm going, great. Okay, so I gotta find some more. Well, come Monday, I got a call from one of the guys that one of them that I sent on Friday, and he said, This is who Peter McGeegan. Don't aren't you interested? And I said, What? You know what? He goes, I sent you an email, and so I'm looking for so I didn't have an email, it went to my spam for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

With ultra literary, and I guess it for some reason didn't like the word, and it put me immediately into the spam, and he had written me 45 minutes after I sent the email, which is incredible. Oh my god, my gosh. And you know, he told me later because when we had a pre-release party here in Fort Lauderdale, he came down from New York for it before we did the Intrepid, and he came down from New York, and I told that story to all my friends because it was my it was a friend thing. We had about 200 people there, and I told him, I said, this is what happened. And Peter pulled me aside later. He goes, you know, you this was all by luck. I never call people back. I if they don't answer my email, I don't bother calling them back. But you know, so it was just the stars aligned for me and just super, super lucky. But um, but then um, so then he found a publisher and um the editor that I was working with um had probably had some other things going on. So the editing actually took longer than it probably should have. She had things going on, so I might not hear from her for months. Then we'd do three or four chapters, and then and she didn't really change much, except she she wanted to hear first hand words from John B and Bob more than I had written it originally in third person, except I had left in some of the things that I couldn't really recreate. Their words were perfect, and so she said, No, I want you to put it in first person. So I had to go back to the video, do it all again. The timelines, the chronologies, and change it. And that's why we put all of their voices in italics. Um, we still have quotations from all the official documents, but I think it I think it's more compelling to hear their voice. And I hope the readers will hear Midwestern voices, because these guys had strong Midwestern voices and um very clear, very sharp. Um and but but then so then so that so the editing process shouldn't have taken as long as it did. Um, but then we got to they were going to release it in August, but by June, they had forgotten that it was going to be released in August, so they pushed it off to February because they weren't ready for the pub publicity stuff. So then we went to February of this year, and um, so it seems like it's been 15 years in the making, but there's delays on you know that nobody could really count on. And um, but but it was an inter interesting process the whole way.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Oh, for sure. Do you think you would ever do it again? Do you think you would ever um say write a fictional novel? Would you ever write a novel again in regards to anything else you love? Or would you like to avoid going through that whole process a second time? Is this your one and done?

SPEAKER_00 40:15

No, I you know, I interesting. Romania is an interesting country, and I've discovered a lot of of wealth. Before the war, they educated women big time. That was a big deal. Bucharest was like the little Paris of the East. Um, they had oil money, they had breweries and distilleries, they made alcohol a lot, so there was a lot of wealth. They had a lot of big, big homes. And um I've often just in my brain, I have this story in my brain of somebody from World War II going back to maybe search for something, you know, to and but it would be total fiction because to write a nonfiction, I think you have to really know your story and you have to know where to get the documentation to support it. Um, my editor did a book for George Bush, so she was very much a stickler. If you can't back this jam, you it's out. So I needed to make sure that I could um back all of the sources, and a lot of it is first hand sources from the characters themselves, and um, but a lot of it is the National Archives, but yeah, I I there's there's something in here brewing, but I need to get through the marketing of this book and enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yeah, because oh, absolutely. Enjoy this one.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

This yeah, this one for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Yeah, this is definitely a labor of love that um that I've absolutely loved um putting together, and I'm so happy it became a bestseller. That was the other thing. That was sort of my goal, my high-in-the-sky goal. I really wanted it to be there because I felt with that title that it can also get out to more people, a wider audience, which is in my heart. I really want everybody to read about John B and Bob, but also them as their servicemen, the people, their grandfathers, their fathers, their great uncles, their, you know, people that they knew. Um, these guys did amazing thing things. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Um to wrap up, this has been such a great conversation. Uh, we would love to know uh what you would say to entice people in to read it if they haven't read it yet. If they see it on the shelf, um, what would you say to them to bring them in?

SPEAKER_00 42:43

I think the bottom line is it's history with a heartbeat, a human heartbeat. It's you're reading when I started this, I didn't know much about World War II. I don't think they taught it in school. People in UK knew a lot more. I mean, when I go over to UK, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Well, it's a kind of iffy. We get the blitz, we get Churchill's second uh prime ministerial power, we get rationing, we get minimal home front stuff. It's never anything beyond that. Um, I was very lucky enough to grow up on the site of the friendly invasion. I grew up in East Anglia, so I knew a little about that, um, but it wasn't ever taught to me. It was something that that I had to seek myself. And I only really sought it out after I'd moved away and I'd moved here to the US. So it's taught a tiny bit, but not as much as it should be.

unknown 43:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Yeah, and we get the bare bones of it here in the States in school. Right. I mean, at least when I was in school, you'd get, you know, Hitler is bad.

unknown 43:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

And you'd get more about Ant Ant Frank and you know, concentration camps than you would the the the blood and guts of World War II.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Right, yeah, right. And I think that's true. And I I I think, and maybe it's my the visits that I've been, it's been to military people or Older people that actually experienced it as kids and they're appreciative of what the Americans did. I mean, at that time, we were the good guys. We we helped them. Um it's um, but I I will say if you grew up in East Anglia, you were right in the middle of everything, which is so awesome. The the Norwich Library has a great Eighth Air Force library in it. And on one one of the end caps is a picture of John B.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

And really, yes, I never knew that. But let me tell you that's why have you been to Duxford? The air yes, I went, I went when I was very young, and uh recently my parents came to visit, and my brother was regaling me of this tale of going to Duxford, and he had an excellent time. It was his first time. Um, so yeah, I've been when I was very young and I didn't know about all this, and I am very excited to go back very soon.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Well, I want you to go back, I want you to look at the B-24, and the picture that's in front of the B-24 that's facing the front windows is a picture of John B's crew, six feet tall, six feet wide. I'll have to I'll send you girls the the picture because it's in a it's a phenomenal picture. And the first time I went to um the it's in the American Air Museum, which is right next to the Imperial War Museum.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

And the first time I was so enamored with the actual B-24, I didn't even see the picture. I mean, and I know this picture, I'm familiar with this picture big time. So the second time I went, I went with the 93rd bomb group, and they um one of the guys said, Hey Jan, isn't that your uncle? And I was dumbfounded that, you know, I mean, I was just dumbfounded because the time before I was so I do want to tell you one more thing about the book. Um, and it's about the B-24. Uh let me go back to the picture. So, so the third time I went, I went with Don Miller and I said, Don, I got to show you a picture of my uncle. And so we walked over there, and Don said, Hey, we've got to get the docent over here. We've got to tell him, you know, we've got somebody that knows who this is. So the docent came over and I didn't want to tell him who I was right away. Don was sort of ready to tell him, but I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, just a minute. You know, I'm pushing him away. And so I said to the docent, can you tell me about this crew? And he said, they were one of the most experienced crews in the entire eighth Air Force, and that's why they're here six feet tall. They're it's huge. I stood next to it and I said, I looked, I turned to Don and I said, see, this is a great story. And he started laughing. And then I told the docent uh, of course, who I was, and I then I got a picture of Don with me next to my uncle. But I will tell you, it that to me is amazing. The fact that the hundreds and the hundreds, the thousands of guys that were over there, and I've got my uncle in the Imperial War Museum, American Air Museum there, yeah, just phenomenal. But getting back to the B-24, I took a ride in a B-24 about years ago. Yeah, it was the there were only two on the planet that were flying, only two. And I flew in witchcraft, which was one of them. And I wanted to, we got up to about 2,000 feet. They didn't go any higher, they flew at a low altitude. The guys in World War II flew at 24,000.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

John B. flew at 50 to 100 feet, 100 feet. But we flew at 2,000 feet, and I I wanted to get kind of a feel for what a 20-year-old would go through with this battle wagon, this old plane. Um, the waist windows are open so that the machine guns can shoot out. There's you know, cricks and cracks through everywhere, so the air breezes through. So when you get up to 24,000 feet, it's 60 below zero. It's freezing cold. So you're you're free cold. If you take your glove off to fix your your gun if something jams, you can stick to that or you can get frostbite or you know, deadly. You're also you have a heat suit and you're tethered to the plane itself with a line that heats your suit. You've also got a face mask for oxygen when you're up, so you're tethered to an air canister. You're also you've got communications, so you're tethered to the plane, so you can't move very much. So it's tough to be up there. But when you start to go over the target, you see these big puffs of shrapnel exploding, um, exploding flak, and you have to fly right through them. They're almost as if they're close enough to where you could walk on them almost. And but you're flying through them because you're wingtipped to wingtip to your brother planes and you can't avoid them. So you're muscling through the concussions, a direct hit from um, and the and the Germans are really smart, they timed these 88 cannons to um to altitude. So if it blew a direct hit, it could send a plane, a bomber down.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Then there's so then if you make if you make it, if you're lucky enough to make it through the target and you turn back to base, it's the enemy fighters that come at you and they're coming with 20 millimeter machine guns and they're shooting to kill. If they shoot through that thin aluminum skin of the plane, they might rupture um a hydraulic line and cause a fire. So these men are fighting fires on board, plus they're fighting the enemy, you know, that's trying to they're shooting to kill. If they're lucky enough to land their plane at the air base, they give them a shot of whiskey. Uh, they drink, you know, some of them ask for two because they just saw their buddies get shot down. They didn't know what happened. So they pad their way, they walk to their tent. They might pass the empty tent of the guys that they ate breakfast with upstairs at first this morning, and then you know, they were shot down. So it's gotta be a surreal feeling looking into that empty tent. So they go back to their tents, all they want to do is decompress. Um, they want to write a letter home, they want to know gossip from home, who's dating who, who's getting married, who's what'd you eat tonight? And they always ended it with everything's okay here, but I better go to bed now because I've got to go back upstairs tomorrow. That was their symbolism that they were going back upstairs. It was fearsome to be in these planes. And these letters were lifelines home so that they could make it back up there again and do the same thing where they come back if they made it through the flak and the cold weather and the enemy fighters and the fires on board, they get that shot of whiskey again, it would be another lucky day.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

But just amazing, amazing things they did.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Absolutely. And it is such an amazing story that you have written. Gabby and I thoroughly have enjoyed reading it. And this conversation has been such a pleasure. And if this doesn't entice people to read it, I don't know what will like right.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Short, short of us saying it was so good, go out and get it. So good, really was good, guys, go out and get it.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

So I hope you have a bit a better appreciation for the B-24 that does not give credit that the B-17. The B-17 was the pretty boy that was close to London, so all of the um newspaper people would go to the B-17s. But I will say there were more B-24s built than any other plane, at least in America. I think there was a Russian plane that they built more, it was Russian fighter, but they made more B-24s. But B-24s were also the ones that they sent on longer missions, more dangerous missions, uh, not more dangerous. B-17 went on dangerous missions too, but the B-17s could get out of there, not faster, because the B-24 was actually faster, and that's why they sent so many of them in. But they didn't expect the B-24 to last more than 25 missions. They when they built it, and you're thinking, oh my gosh, uh back in 1945, there were articles written um uh that said the 15th Air Force out of Italy um had 100% casualties in 1944 of airmen. That means they lost, they usually kept an a group of 20,000 airmen, and they would lose 20,000 every time they lost somebody, they refilled it. So they had to refill it 100% for that 1944 because there were so many planes shot down. Wow, it's a dangerous air war and absolutely super dangerous, very, very dangerous. Well, war is hell. War is really it is, yeah. It's made up, they it's the um generals and the commanders and and the politicians that come up with it, but it really boils down to it really affects the individuals rather than um yeah, politicians back home. And um, yep. It does absolutely you guys are great with this World War II. I'm so happy you're promoting it. It makes makes me really happy to see a podcast focus on World War II.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah, we're we're we're trying our best. Yeah, we think we're doing we're doing the best that we can with the knowledge that we have, and we're so lucky to have such a great group of people surrounding us and assisting us with with records and people falling down rabbit holes with us, and yeah, get to all read these amazing books like yours together, and it truly is such a pleasure. And then we get to have conversations like this with great people like you, and we're really, really pleased to be to be doing it. So thank you for saying that.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

Well, thank you, thank you. Um, thank you for all you do, and um just remind everybody, yeah, this this is a great story, and it's a story of all about all servicemen. If we don't remember these stories, they become abstract and we lose the real cost of war. Um, so it's important to share these stories.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Absolutely it is, and thank you so much for joining us today. Um everyone for listening. Go out and buy the book, The Navigator's Letter. Go out and get it, go read it, and we can all share our views together. Drop us a line, it'll be great.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

Thanks so much, guys.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

I really appreciate it. Of course. Jan, thank you so much for joining us, and everybody, thank you for listening as always. We will see everybody real soon.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

See you next time. Bye, guys.