Carrying Fire: August 2015

My Life-Long Quest for my World War II Airman Father

The title "Carrying Fire" is taken from Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, in which Sheriff Ed Tom Bell talks about his own father. “I had two dreams about him after he died. I don’t remember the first one all that well. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothing. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen that he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.”

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Some grainy 8 mm film narrated by the man who shot it during 1944-45. Good views of an 8th AF base. planes in flight, and the English countryside. 52 minutes long and worth it for those who are interested in these matters.

Harley R. Stroven Film, 486th Bomb Group, U.S. Eighth Air Force

Harley Russel Stroven 1st LT, Armaments Officer, USAAF, 8th Air Force, 486th Bomb Group, 835th Bomb Squadron, Sudbury, England, Station 174. Harley R. Strove...

YOUTUBE.COM

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

P-51 Mustangs. .What a great plane! My favorite model as a kid.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/whotube-2/p-51-mustangs-in-the-air.html

My Mission

I am a World War II researcher and my mission has been mainly to find out about my father. His name was Lt. Donald R. Christensen and he was a B-17 pilot with the 8th Air Force in England during World War II. He was stationed with the 398th Bomb Group at Nuthampstead. England, and was a member of the 603rd Squadron. He and all but one of his crew men were killed on March 2, 1945, when the tail was shot off of his aircraft by enemy fighters the plane crashed near Slany, Czechoslovkia

I have been been on this quest most of my life, but more seriously in the last 25 years or so. Now I'm ready to write about it.

Thank you for visiting my page and taking the time to read this material. I welcome all comments.

To see a slideshow that I made honoring the 70th anniversary of my father's fatal plane crash, see here.