After the Liberators: A Father's Last Mission, a Son's Lifelong Journey

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Summary: One War, One Man, One Child
Review: Although it would seem that this book is best enjoyed by readers whose primary interest is World War II history, I'm here to tell you that McGuire's great account takes you far beyond what happened to his father in 1944, and to the author in the years thereafter. This book is a story about determination, about honor, and above all about the love a father - or a mother - should expect from a child. Set aside McGuire's engrossing narrative related to the war and you still get fabulous storytelling by a gifted, natural writer. And as with all wonderful stories that stick to your ribs, this one is about real people. It ought to be studied by anyone who hopes one day to put words on a page that will not fade.

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Summary: Valor and Sacrifice Remembered
Review: As a fellow war orphan, William McGuire has condensed something into words that has spun around for years in my head without definition or form. Very few, outside of those dedicated to military service today, seem to understand what we feel about the deaths of our fathers, the values the represented and our refusal to abandon both. I think this is why we, as the selected children to carry the loss, all instantly connect. Perhaps only on Memorial Day, a small percentage of the public, sometimes through guilt, may have some slight inclination towards the pain of sacrifice and the values that gave rise to the same. I think it must bother them, in some form of self-shame, that these values have been lost but they quickly move on. We have the honor, some would say the burden, to carry it everyday. At times we find ourselves with one foot in the past and one in today, carefully balancing both as we would our own sanity.

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Summary: Eloquent, Tragic, and Triumphant: A Son's Search for His Dad
Review: Bill McGuire, Jr. never knew his dad, Lt. William McGuire, an Army Air Corps B-24 navigator shot down during World War II. Raised in the New York area by his mother and a stepfather who seemed to prefer that the young boy not remember his real father, the young McGuire becomes one of the collateral casualties of war--a fatherless boy.

After a successful career, McGuire by chance comes upon a website that rekindles his interest in searching for the father he never knew. He not only wants to know more about the handsome young man, ironically young enough now to be McGuire's own son, but about the circumstances surrounding his death. Thus begins the journey that resulted in part in this fine book.

"After the Liberators" is more than just a book tracing the search for the truth about the demise of McGuire's father and the rest of his crew. It is at the same time a deeply personal memoir of the author himself. The book covers virtually all stages of the author's life, showing brilliantly how the absence of a father shaped the psyche of the son. McGuire tells the story by jumping from 1944 to the fifties, sixties, seventies--all the way to the present, weaving the different stages of his life together masterfully to give a clear and poignant picture of one man's loss and his search for what that loss ultimately meant to him.

His descriptions of the crew and the final mission are masterful and exciting, and will surely interest any reader who enjoys reading about aerial combat and its effects on the young men who waged it. But it is McGuire's reflections on his own journey that make this book different from most books about the air war. We learn, as does McGuire, that his mother, a loving woman who was never the less unstable, is in the end another victim of the air war. Her own dreams of family and future go down with her husband and his Liberator. All she has to hold to is her young son, and she holds too tightly at times.

The detective work McGuire engages in to uncover the truth about his father's last mission and last moments makes for absorbing reading as well. Incredibly, McGuire wins a raffle and is awarded airline tickets to Europe. With this fortuitous occurance, he is able to go to Europe to find his father's grave, and to visit the site where the plane went down. He also learns of the kindness of the local German populace who gave the young airmen who fell that day a decent Christian burial in the church cemetary.

I found this book to be on par with several other excellent books written by sons of warriors. It compares favorably with Jim Merrett's "Goodbye Liberty Belle", Thomas Childers' "On the Wings of Morning" and Jim Bradley's "Flags of Our Fathers".
No one who reads "After the Liberators" will come away from the experience unmoved. McGuire speaks for an entire generation of children left fatherless by World War II, and he does so powerfully, eloquently and without self-pity. I consider this book a must-read by anyone interested in the air war, in the efforts of family members to search for their lost sons and fathers, or in the effects of war on children. I recommend it very highly, and am certain that somewhere, William McGuire, Sr., forever young, is proud of his son's efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent, Tragic, and Triumphant: A Son's Search for His Dad
Review: Bill McGuire, Jr. never knew his dad, Lt. William McGuire, an Army Air Corps B-24 navigator shot down during World War II. Raised in the New York area by his mother and a stepfather who seemed to prefer that the young boy not remember his real father, the young McGuire becomes one of the collateral casualties of war--a fatherless boy.

After a successful career, McGuire by chance comes upon a website that rekindles his interest in searching for the father he never knew. He not only wants to know more about the handsome young man, ironically young enough now to be McGuire's own son, but about the circumstances surrounding his death. Thus begins the journey that resulted in part in this fine book.

"After the Liberators" is more than just a book tracing the search for the truth about the demise of McGuire's father and the rest of his crew. It is at the same time a deeply personal memoir of the author himself. The book covers virtually all stages of the author's life, showing brilliantly how the absence of a father shaped the psyche of the son. McGuire tells the story by jumping from 1944 to the fifties, sixties, seventies--all the way to the present, weaving the different stages of his life together masterfully to give a clear and poignant picture of one man's loss and his search for what that loss ultimately meant to him.

His descriptions of the crew and the final mission are masterful and exciting, and will surely interest any reader who enjoys reading about aerial combat and its effects on the young men who waged it. But it is McGuire's reflections on his own journey that make this book different from most books about the air war. We learn, as does McGuire, that his mother, a loving woman who was never the less unstable, is in the end another victim of the air war. Her own dreams of family and future go down with her husband and his Liberator. All she has to hold to is her young son, and she holds too tightly at times.

The detective work McGuire engages in to uncover the truth about his father's last mission and last moments makes for absorbing reading as well. Incredibly, McGuire wins a raffle and is awarded airline tickets to Europe. With this fortuitous occurance, he is able to go to Europe to find his father's grave, and to visit the site where the plane went down. He also learns of the kindness of the local German populace who gave the young airmen who fell that day a decent Christian burial in the church cemetary.

I found this book to be on par with several other excellent books written by sons of warriors. It compares favorably with Jim Merrett's "Goodbye Liberty Belle", Thomas Childers' "On the Wings of Morning" and Jim Bradley's "Flags of Our Fathers".
No one who reads "After the Liberators" will come away from the experience unmoved. McGuire speaks for an entire generation of children left fatherless by World War II, and he does so powerfully, eloquently and without self-pity. I consider this book a must-read by anyone interested in the air war, in the efforts of family members to search for their lost sons and fathers, or in the effects of war on children. I recommend it very highly, and am certain that somewhere, William McGuire, Sr., forever young, is proud of his son's efforts.

Rating:
Summary: After The Liberators
Review: The author's father was KIA during WWII, leaving Bill McGuire an American orphan of war.This book chronicles his father's last bombing raid and has been researched in great detail. More importantly for me, it gives voice to the more than 183,000 American children whose father's did not return from WWII and explains the condition of orphanhood that we all share. A "must read" for anyone who has lost a loved one to war.

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Summary: War Orphan Finds Closure
Review: The book is a son's search for closure over his dad who was an aviator killed in action during World War II. The cover is very appropriate with a picture of the author's dad and author as a child...the book is well laid out with the chapters alternating between dad's story and son's search...and, the ending brings closure. The print is large for easy reading. The BEST part is the author puts into words what many war orphans have always felt, but in many cases could never articulate. A job well done!

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Summary: War Orphan Traces Father's Life
Review: There are books about World War II and the Army Air Corps that detail particular missions, times or arenas. Some are fiction, others fact. This book is a blend. Its focus is the author's relationship with his father, 'the navigator' of a B-24 in the 8th AF, who was killed in action in March 1944. He writes of the result of the loss of his father during childhood and on into adulthood, and his resolution of the loss as he visits the site of the crash, the military cemetery where his father is buried, and traces his father's path through several European locations. Photographs added a personal and present-day touch to the story. The description of the final mission and subsequent crash were thoroughly researched and well-presented. His interweaving of then and now was an interesting way of telling the tale, bringing home the realization that the people experiencing this 'journey of the heart' were ordinary people, grounded in the everyday details of life. While at times the story seems to diverge from its primary focus, it provides a background never very far from the next step along his father's path. The book includes a bibliography which will assist anyone seeking information on a family member missing or killed in WWII.

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Summary: WWII War Orphan's Lifelong Journey to "Know" his Father
Review: This book will appeal to a wide variety of readers because, although each of us has been affected differently, WWII has had an effect on every person living on our planet today. The author, who was just an infant when his father was killed in WWII, skillfully brings together the story of his life growing up without his father, and the story of his father's last mission in WWII. The book is a wonderful account of McGuire's lifelong quest to get to "know" his father. Especially amazing is the detail with which McGuire has researched a described his's father's last mission. I understand, and share, the author's deeply rooted longing to "know " his dad. I am also a WWII War Orphan. This book has helped inspire me to put to action, my own quest for knowing more about my own father, and his "last mission". I also recommend the reading of SHOBUN: A Forgotten War Crime in the Pacific by Michael Goodwin ISBN 0-8117-1518-3 It is a riveting account,written by the son of an American POW captured by the Japenese in WWII. What he discovered, is tragic and amazing.

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Summary: a fatherless son who could not forget.
Review: This is a story of one son's search for his father's memory. Of his father's last bombing mission in the Liberators that flew out of English aerodromes during WWII.

With the serendipitousness of the Cosmos in action, Bill McGuire, husband & father of a full-grown family, is given a lifelong wish to fly in a Liberator. He also wins tickets for a trip to Europe.

Unlike other war memoirs & biographies, After The Liberators is an emotion-charged recreations of his father's last days Stateside when the author was born; of his father's time in England as part of the US Army Air Force, fleshed out with descriptions by survivors of that fateful raid & of the German villagers who found his father's crashed plane & gave his father's crew a decent burial.

This is a story about war orphans & growing up after the war; about bombardiers & navigators; electrically heated flying suits & the search for documentation; about aircraft assembly plants & Zeppelin factories; about a mission doomed from the start & a sky filled with enemy aircraft.

It is also a healing memoir, rekindling a time few now remember, from a fatherless son who could not forget.

Bill McGuire offers more than a story, he includes charts & documents of the 392nd Bomb Group along with a host of family & military photographs together with a good Index & Bibliography as well as a list of Information Sources for those interested in gathering the last fragments of their relatives' memories.

An unusual addition to your war book shelf.