Learning the Art of War – 4. Advanced Flight

Learning the Art of War Part 4

A Box of Old Letters

1943

On January 1st, Cadet Parks awoke with a sense of excitement about the new year. He was beginning his third week of advanced flight training and the goal was in sight. In forty-five days, he would graduate as a Second Lieutenant and an Army Air Force pilot.

Just fifteen days before, my father had finished basic flight training and departed Bainbridge, Georgia bound for his present assignment at the Army Advanced Flight School at Columbus, Mississippi. Five days after reporting for duty, he celebrated his twenty-first birthday.

A milestone birthday, then Christmas, then New Year’s, and now a bunch of cross country flying in twin engine trainers… As far as my father was concerned, life just didn’t get much better.

July 2004 – My father reflects on Columbus

In spite of the horror raging across Europe and in the Pacific, for Cadet Parks, war was still an elusively abstract…

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