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 discover 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.