 |
| Martin Litton (left) and unidentified solider in from of Litton's Waco-CG4A "Old Kern River II" |
MELISSA BLOCK: I mentioned that Martin Litton served as a glider pilot in World War II. Did he talk to you about that experience and what may have carried over into his later life?
KEVIN FEDARKO: He did talk about it and people sometimes ask, where did Martin get this fire and this rage from? And I think that part of the answer resides in his experiences in World War II. His job was to pilot a motorless glider with no defense system, often crammed with ammunition, or gasoline, or medical supplies or soldiers. The men who piloted those machines crash-landed their gliders behind enemy lines. Often they would be piloting their gliders through a hail of antiaircraft fire and these were extraordinary missions. They required an exceptional degree of courage and I think after having gone through that experience and endured that ordeal, standing toe-to-toe and battling with engineers of the Bureau of Reclamation or logging companies in Northern California paled in comparison. I don't think that there's anything that Martin confronted later in his life, including running class 5 rapids at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, that ever really seemed quite as bad as crash-landing a glider behind enemy lines in Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment