"Let The Kicking Mule Kick" is a unique, two-perspective, historical memoir. The words of First Lieutenant Ladd L. Horn will draw you into his world and his experiences as a WWII, B-26 bomber pilot. Through his fascinating stories, letters and more than three hundred of his original pictures your mind will be directed to the people, animals, places and machines of war in North Africa, Sardinia, Corsica and France. This is no "boring" history book filled with facts about generals, divisions and politics. Instead, it is real, funny and sad. In "Part 1 The War As I Heard It" the verbatim oral stories he told our family when he was in his nineties, incorporate the seasoned perspective that comes from remembering events after seventy-plus years. Then the hundreds of stories excerpted from his letters in "Part II The War Through The Lens of Love," explode with the raw emotions and insights of a twenty-one to twenty-three-year-old caught up in training and war. You will hear funny stories of crew members, dogs and kids, and even of pilots who forgot to buckle their seatbelts during training, "flew backwards," landed in farmer's fields or went off the runway and hit a horse. But you will also learn something of what it was like to buckle up in a 38,000 pound machine filled with bombs and six to eight crew members with the roar of two 2,000 hp engines outside the uninsulated cockpit and fly for hours at 10,000 to 18,000 feet in temperatures below zero with flak and 88 mm shells bursting around you while accompanied by the twin, very-real fears of being shot down or running out of fuel. And, you will hear first-person stories of what it was like to lose planes and friends. But what is so fascinating in this memoir is that the stories are all illustrated with pictures that 1st Lieutenant Ladd Horn took and developed, sometimes under a blanket, in a mess kit and helmet in his tent. The pictures are often combined with military documents that complete the picture of the reality of life during war. Sometimes as you read, you will likely forget that these stories are real. I wrote this book for his great-grandchildren and to my surprise, I have had them "fighting" over who gets to read next!
This book title, Let the Kicking Mule Kick (Personal Stories from a WWII B-26 Bomber Pilot to His Family), ISBN: 9781667889078, by Keith A. Horn, Ladd L. Horn, published by BookBaby (May 15, 2023) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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