The nose art on the bombers was one of the first things that had caught his attention on arriving at Bassingbourn. Neither the Nazis nor the British had anything like it, and Marine Corps and Navy regulations forbade it. It seemed so expressive of the exuberant spirit of the boy crews. “It was a way of holding on to our individuality, or sense of humor, in a war that was overwhelmingly vast, mechanized, and brutal,” Robert Morgan would observe later. There were cartoon icons like Mickey Mouse and ferocious fire-breathing dragons but the favorite subjects of the amateur nose cone artists were
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