Helene Woodhams

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Arizona Daily Star, 5 April 2020

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“What did you do in the war, dad?” It’s a question the author wishes he had pursued more earnestly with his father, who piloted P-38 Lightning twin-engine fighters during World War II. But Richard M. Butler was reticent about his wartime experiences, and it wasn’t until well after his death that his son, Dick Butler, armed with records he discovered while sifting through long-forgotten footlockers, began filling in the blanks in the family lore. The multidimensional picture that emerged of his father during these formative years, his combat service as a fighter pilot, and the resilience with which he faced hardships and indignities as a prisoner of war, was an epiphany.

A Utah farm boy when he enlisted in 1940, Richard M. Butler was flying his 50th mission when damage sustained in a dogfight forced him to bail out over the Bay of Naples; taken prisoner, he spent the next two years in POW camps. Using the log his father kept during his internment, his journals, flight records and letters, and supplementing them with his own extensive research, Butler presents a remarkable American story, beginning with his father’s enlistment and ending with his liberation at the close of the war. With a keen eye for pertinent details and an enviable ability for organizing the facts and then letting them speak for themselves, Butler has produced an invaluable historic chronicle in which the humanity of a young soldier speaks to readers from across time.
 

Helene Woodhams
Arizona Daily Star, 5 April 2020