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.”

Sunday, March 1, 2020

75 years ago, on March 2, 1945, my father and his crew gave their lives when their B-17 was shot down and crashed near Slany, Czechoslovakia. They were members of the 398th Bomb Group, 603rd Squadron. Ironically, that day was also my mother's 26th birthday and she was pregnant with my brother Steve. Mom passed away in 2005.
Don Christensen
On March 2, we honor 398th Bomb Group pilot Lt. Donald R. Christensen and 7 of his B-17 crew members who gave their lives on this date in 1945. We also once again thank our Czech friends Jaromir Kohout, Jan Zdiarsky, and others for the fine memorial at Slany, Czech republic.
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. USNAWife&MomApril 13, 2020 at 9:32 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. USNAWife&MomApril 13, 2020 at 9:34 PM

    Thank you for your Fathers Faithful Service and Ultimate Sacrifice to our Great Country! 🇺🇸

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)