The death of Conrad J. Netting III, whose P-51 clipped a tree as he attacked an enemy truck convoy on June 10, also prompted his pregnant wife, Katherine, to write to him beyond the grave: It will be my cross, my curse, and my joy forever, that in my mind you shall always be vibrantly alive.… I hope God will let me be happy, not wildly, consumingly happy as I was with you.… I will miss you so much—your hands, your kiss, your body. Another pilot, Bert Stiles, who at age twenty-three had but three months of his own life left, wrote, “It is summer and there is war all over the world.… There is
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