The Watch That Went to War: and other stories - Paperback

by Aaron Elson (Author), Joe Dzenowagis (Contribution by), Vivian Rogers-Price (Contribution by)

1st Lieutenant Ira Weinstein, a navigator/bombardier, was not supposed to fly on Sept. 27, 1944. But he wanted to get in his last mission so could be home by Christmas, and he was home by Christmas - a year later. The 445th Bomb Group, flying B-24 Liberators out of Tibenham, England, suffered the highest one-day loss of any group in 8th Air Force History that day. Thirty-five bombers flew off course and 25 were shot down when the group was ambushed by more than 100 German fighter planes. Ira was one of only three survivors on his crew, and became a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft I. A retired advertising executive, he has dedicated his time and effort to preserving the memory of the Kassel Mission, and is a member of the board of directors of the Kassel Mission Historical Society. For decades, people have been urging him to write down the many stories, some colorful, others poignant, he has told about his experiences over the years. These are his stories.

Author Biography

Aaron Elson attended a reunion of his father's tank battalion in 1987, seven years after his dad passed away. He was so moved by the stories he heard in the hospitality room, the hotel parking lot, that he returned two reunions later with a tape recorder. He has been preserving the stories of the men and women of the "Greatest Generation" ever since, accumulating a personal archive of more than 600 hours of audiotaped interviews. He launched one of the first web sites with significant World War II content, www.tankbooks.com, in 1997. His work has been used as source material in more than two dozen books and a dozen documentaries, including "The Color of War" and "Patton 360," which were shown on the History Channel. He has written several books about World War II and produced a unique series of Oral History Audiobooks in which the veterans tell Aaron their stories in their own voices. He also blogs about World War II at http: //oralhistoryaudiobooks.blogspot.com. He is currently working on a book about Marine Sgt. Mathew Caruso, a chaplain's assistant who was a hero in the Chosin Reservoir campaign of the Korean War.