Wish my grandfather at Happy 85th Birthday!

Today is my grandfather's 85th birthday! Isn't that awesome? I'm going to see him tonight and hear him speak at West Point tomorrow.

Do YOU want to wish him a Happy Birthday? Well, if you do, you can email me (rachelkb at gmail.com) your birthday wishes and I'll pass them on.

But you know what would be really awesome? If you pre-ordered his memoir My Private War: Liberated Body, Captive Mind: A WWII POW's Story. (out next month) or sent it as a gift to someone. It's really extraordinary and I'm so proud of him. Much more on that in the coming months, and I will of course let you know when he's reading in NYC.



You can read an excerpt at Memoirville. Here's the start of the excerpt:

On April 29, 1944, my B-17 Bomber crew flew a fatal mission from Rattlesden, England to Berlin. Four members of our crew were killed that day. Six of us survived and became prisoners of war for a year.

I promised myself that if I were lucky enough to return home, I would write a detailed account of this calamitous event so that the families of those who were killed would know exactly what happened to their loved ones on that fateful day.

More than 60 years have now passed, but I have been unable to set forth a single word about that mission, although the minutiae are still as vivid in my mind as ever.

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