Stories and Poems

For some reason, warriors must leave a bit of their experience behind. It may take the form of letters, diaries, songs, or poems.

Some were prolific in their letters. Some were sparse (e.g., in training, Lou Ives’ mother wrote a letter to his skipper asking why her son couldn’t write letters home). Most letters treated the operational matters only superficially. A few dealt with details or personal feelings.

A few of the troops kept diaries. Fewer yet wrote articles or books.

And then the songs—most could not be sung in public–were basically simple and easily forgotten. The songs that buoyed men’s souls were usually about things close to heart—and were sung acapella with loud voice and poor melody—to familiar and popular tunes.

Most heartfelt themes, however, were rendered to poetry—by those few with Ode to a Naval Flier–the talent for poetry—and most of these poems could be read in public.

Some poems were written by the chaplain or possibly someone of the skipper’s staff to be sent by blinker or TBS1 to other ships in the force, but most were written by the hand-on-the-throttle guys.

Some were totally original, others based on popular poems or songs.

A few of the poems are included here, along with some short prose that seemed appropriate .

  1. TBS: “Talk Between Ships” – short-range radio for use within a task force. ↩︎

Poetry

Prose

  • KENNETH W. “TEX” ATKINSON – “From the Cockpit” © 2002, 2004
  • FRANK C. BONANSINGA – “Hummingbird Species” © 2011
  • JOHN “BRAD” BRADFORD, Jr. – “Flight of the Fokker” © 1990
  • EMERY L. CAMPBELL – Selections from his poems © 1998 +
  • GERALD C. “GERRY” CANAAN – “Recollections of North Korea”
  • OWEN W. DYKEMA – “Letters from the Bird Barge” © 1994
  • DONALD D. ENGEN – “Wings and Warriors” © 1997
  • FRANK “BUD” FARRELL – “No Sweat” © by publication
  • ROBERT A. “BOB” GREENKORN – “Road to Korea” © 2009
  • ARTHUR L. HAARMEYER – “Into the Land of Darkness” © 2013
  • JAMES R. “JIM” MULLIGAN – “The Hanoi Commitment” © 1981
  • JOHN R. “JACK” NICHOLAS – “Our Flying Trip to Alaska’ © 2021
  • WALTER ‘R’ “WALT” THOMAS – “The Compleat Pentagon Capers © 1978

Sketches

Books

Several of our individuals have published books on their life and experiences.

To show the diversity of experience, selections from their publications are included in this section of The Brown Shoes.

Three from Emery Campbell, a member of several poetry associations and later editor of POETRY, and several of Frank Bonansina’s notes on ‘Hummingbirds.”—Frank’s article on flying a modified B-26 for the CIA over Viet Nam is included in the personal stories section.

Some selections from USAF B-29 gunner Frank ‘Bud’ Farrell’s book, NO SWEAT (the nose name of his B-29), Arthur Haarmeyer, (INTO THE LAND OF DARKNESS), Bombardier-Navigator on a Douglas B-26 night attack aircraft over North Korea.

Walt ‘R’ Thomas’ contributions from THE COMPLEAT PENTAGON CAPERS as a Captain, USN, in the Pentagon, plus a couple of his talks as master-of-ceremonies at FMA reunions are included in the folders on personal stories.

Several articles from books by ‘Lightning’ Ben Basye—I FLEW WITH EAGLES–who became a university professor contributed thoughts on current student behaviors, and and a selection from Oel Futrell’s novel, A Matter of Chance. Oel was co-pilot on UAL’s last commercial DC-3 flight will be included later Oel’s DC-3 now hangs in the Smithsonian.

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