A Mission Of Honor PDF Download

Two families see their sons off to war. One family from the upper middle class in Los Angeles. The other from a poor family from a small town in Ohio. One lively young man was engaged to a beautiful young lady and the other a rambunctious single youth who was unattached yet loved life. One married his sweetheart before shipping overseas as a skilled fighter pilot. Both men would unknowingly cross paths on the fateful final mission for one of them. The pilot become just another statistic that day in March of 1944 when he joined the ranks of thousands of missing in action and left a grieving young widow behind. The other flew over two dozen bombing missions before being shot down and listed as killed in action. The missing pilot was recovered two years later from a small village cemetery in France and the other from a distant corner in a German country cemetery. Each of their families knew so very little of what had happened to them that we could only accumulate a paragraph of information between the two. Nearly sixty years after the war with each family's permission I set out to discover the truth of their service and missions, including their final mission and ultimate sacrifice. Through modern technology and detective work I located those that served with them and discovered the truth of what happened to each. The local witnesses of these tragic events came forward to not only tell their story but to honor two strangers from a far off land from decades ago. I realized I could not just tell the facts but I was also compelled to remember them for the uncles, brothers, sons and heroes that they were. Especially for a an 88 year old widow who never remarried and still waits to be reunited with the love of her youth. This journey, this story to bring Bradford Wikholm and Lawrence Hambel out from the stack of WWII statistics, tell their stories and remember them. My quest for truth ultimately became a mission of honor.