Review: The Wild Blue

For most of my life, I have considered George McGovern a historical footnote — the liberal senator who lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. But as I learned in The Wild Blue, a 2001 work by Stephen Ambrose, he was much more than that.

Among other things, I learned that McGovern, the peace candidate in 1972, was something of a bad ass in World War II. The South Dakotan flew 35 missions over Europe as the pilot of a B-24 Liberator, an aircraft that turned the tide in the campaign against Nazi Germany.

Though Ambrose does not focus exclusively on McGovern, he gives the captain and his crew ample play. He tells the stories of several men who battled everything from enemy fighters to deadly flak in winning the war in Europe. In exacting detail, Ambrose paints the kind of picture that made him one of our most celebrated historians.

In The Wild Blue, we see McGovern not as a war hero or a man destined for greatness but rather as a shy pastor's son who joined the U.S. Army Air Forces to do his part in the fight against tyranny.

As he did in Band of Brothers and other works, Ambrose gives us the soldier as the everyman. He presents McGovern as a common man who rose to the challenge of uncommon times. In doing so, he makes the airmen and their experiences more compelling and real.

Though I am no stranger to Ambrose's works — I have read several and was a minor contributor to his son Hugh Ambrose's companion piece, The Pacific — I did not peruse The Wild Blue until recently. I picked up the book to learn more about the experiences of B-24 crews and begin a journey of discovery for my next novel, due later this year.

As a research tool, The Wild Blue had limited utility. In covering McGovern's crew, which flew missions from Italy, Ambrose did not tell me a lot about the crews that operated out of England, the primary setting of my book. Even so, he provided much. He gave me a clear idea of what it was like to serve as an airman in World War II.

The author also told me a lot about McGovern, who later served as a history professor, congressman, and senator and developed a reputation as a thoughtful statesman. (I had the privilege of meeting the then former senator after a lecture at my college, the University of Oregon, in December 1983 and found him friendly and engaging.)

I would recommend The Wild Blue to anyone interested in McGovern, B-24's, and the air campaigns of World War II. Rating: 4/5.

Confessions of a collector

Sometime in 1973, when I was 11, my grandfather, Andy Hoeme, gave me an 1883 Liberty Head nickel. Enamored by the "ancient" coin, minted when Chester Arthur was president, I tucked it away and vowed to get more like it. I loved the idea of owning a piece of the past.

I no longer have the nickel. I lost it somehow in the shuffle of youth, but I did not lose my passion for gathering tokens of times, places, and events. For more than fifty years, I have collected coins, stamps, buttons, passes, stickers, postcards, business cards, photographs, family records, coasters, receipts, menus, theater programs, and other memorabilia. If it can be put in a scrapbook, it is fair game.

Many of my holdings, like sports cards, event tickets, and autographs, are common collectibles. They are the kinds of things many hobbyists acquire. Other items are more unusual. Among my more "exotic" treasures are stamps from the Soviet Union, a D.C. transit pass, a matchbook cover from a bistro in Maine, a Ken Griffey Jr. bobblehead doll, a Glacier National Park pin, and a UK penny from 1936, when three kings sat on the British throne.

Many items are souvenirs of experiences. They include a ticket to a 1981 Rolling Stones concert, a program to a "Mary Poppins" performance in Montana, a ticket to the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, lift tickets to several ski resorts, and a day pass to Disneyland. I took my family to the park in 2005, its fiftieth year.

Though I have collected memorabilia for decades, I did not seriously examine or inventory my collection until January, shortly after I published my last novel and began a much-needed break from writing. Only then did I grasp what I had amassed over the years.

I no longer had a few boxes and notebooks of keepsakes, but rather several. I spent the next seven weeks inspecting, sorting, and arranging the currency, coins, and ephemera in my closets. As I did, I realized something profound. When people collect like I have for as long as I have, they do more than fill albums and scrapbooks. They preserve a bit of history. They gather the odds and ends of their lives.

Though all of my souvenirs, mementos, and collectibles are valuable, at least to me, some are particular noteworthy. These include several items that remind me of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who have passed away. Foremost in this group are signed cards and a long thank-you letter from Harmon Killebrew, a baseball legend who knew my mother, Mary Heldt, when they were youths in the small town of Payette, Idaho. (I met the slugger himself at an exhibition game in Tacoma, Washington, in 1974.) Killebrew wrote to my parents after they wished him well following a surgery in 1990. I inherited his thoughtful correspondence after my mom died four years ago this week.

From my father-in-law, I acquired foreign bills, stamps, and coins, including some from nations that no longer exist. Bert Fellows, who passed away in 2024, was a world traveler who rarely passed up an opportunity to collect and preserve the interesting and new.

Another item, a paper coaster from the Gibson House in Seattle, reminds me of a night on the town in 1982. Like two of the four fraternity brothers who drove up from Oregon on break to help me celebrate my twenty-first birthday, the gritty, eclectic bar is no longer around.

Some keepsakes are too big for a scrapbook. Take the U.S. flag I ordered for my father, James Heldt, when I worked in Washington, D.C. for a congressman. Workers hoisted the flag over the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 1984, folded it, boxed it, and mailed it to my dad. He kept it, in pristine condition, until he died last year. It is now back in my hands, waiting for the day I can again pass it along.

I will set collecting aside in the coming months. I have people to see, places to visit, and another novel to write, but I will not give up gathering and preserving memorabilia. As I have learned in five decades of collecting memories, once you start, you cannot stop.

Images: A ticket to the Rolling Stones concert in Seattle's Kingdome on October 14, 1981. Pete Rose's 1982 Topps player card. An Elvis Presley stamp from the early 1990s. (Note the price.) A 1948 British Half Crown. A vintage postcard from Waikiki Beach, Hawaii.