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My Conversations with a WW-II Corsair Fighter Pilot: His Story Through the Decades

by Kelle Metz

330 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); black and white photography and diagrams; catalogue #06-0856; ISBN 1-4120-9100-4; US$23.52, C$27.05, EUR19.32, £13.52

Memoir of WW-II fighter pilot Tom McBride, USS Bennington. Includes pre-and postwar life and war experiences. Also, Tom's thoughts on politics, religion and sex. This is not your average war story.

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About the Book

About the Author

Excerpts

About the Book

While doing historical research on her own father's wartime experience, author Kelle Metz met retired fighter pilot Tom McBride, who served on the USS Bennington as a Corsair fighter pilot. She thought they'd have some fascinating conversations, but she got more than she bargained for! With her passion for history, genealogical research, and storytelling, she crafted a compelling "conversation" with Tom. Kelle's conversations with Tom will be of great interest to Americans who remember the war and those who are too young to have experienced it. She says it's wonderful to see how one person's life, ideas, and philosophies change over a lifetime. WW-II was the only war, since the Revolution, which involved the entire nation and every citizen working toward one goal-victory.

Tom gave Kelle amazing insights into his colorful fighter pilot experiences and life story, and shares his memories of pre-war life in Carnegie and Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, remembrances of wartime adventures, post-war flying experiences, and much, much more, including the origins of the universe, first life on earth, and where we are headed as a civilization. Kelle quickly learned the old warrior may no longer be involved in gunfire wars, but he is hell bent in verbally attacking those who he calls the "enemies within" who are attacking his beloved 1776 founder's goals and dreams for America as well as their attacks on the judicial branch of our government. He is now as dedicated to the goals of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State as he once was as a warrior in fighting the enemies overseas. Poignant, exuberant, strident, sometimes angry, then rational and even pedantic, Tom's memoir covers the gamut of emotions. You'll enjoy getting to know Tom as much as Kelle did. Be prepared: this is not your average war story.

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About the Author

Kelle Metz was born in 1944, in Kansas. She has moved most of her life, first as the daughter of a Shell Oil employee and later as the wife of a career army officer. She has lived all over the United States and in Europe and Asia. For the past 26 years, Kelle has lived in a log house she and her family built on a self-sufficiency farm a few miles from Oakville, Washington. Among the variety of animals on her 25 acres are pigs, goats, chickens, bees, and several cats. Kelle describes herself as a "Jacqueline of all trades, master of none." She has tried many of the skills homesteaders of the past had to learn; quilting, soap making, gardening, butchering, and food preservation.

During her lifetime, Kelle has worked at a variety of jobs: long distance and PBX operator, receptionist, medical records secretary, medical insurance billing clerk, teacher's aide, school bus driver, office manager for an historical seaport, bookkeeper, and library circulation assistant. She retired from working for others in 2004 and has been running her own business since that time, selling honey.

Kelle's current hobby is doing historical and genealogical research. She is a member of the Olympia Storytelling Guild and loves writing and telling the historical stories she uncovers. Kelle wrote a history of her community from 1850 to 1900 and has compiled and merged with photos the 115 letters her father wrote her mother during World War II. In 2000, she began researching the history of the aircraft carrier that her father served on from August 1944 to November 1945, and to date his gathered information about the ship's history, from its commissioning until the end of the war. Kelle's plans for the future include writing a book covering her mother and father's lives from the end of WW-II until their deaths, an autobiography of herself, and a compilation of first person stories of WW-II.

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Excerpts

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