Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, p. 65.
2
Paine journal entry for January 26, 1943.
3
Paine journal entry for February 3, 1943.
4
Paine journal entry for January 31, 1943.
5
Paine journal entry for February 9, 1943.
6
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, pp. 59–60.
7
Ibid., p. 66.
8
Paine journal entry for February 13, 1943.
9
Paine journal entry for February 15, 1943.
10
Paine journal entry for February 16, 1943.
11
Paine journal entry for February 18, 1943.
12
George Piburn would put his combat experience to good use training crews in the United Kingdom, and he would meet and marry a British woman, Christina Marie Swales. Piburn survived the war and returned to Southern California with Christina, but he would die young. In 1976, Piburn was living in Rancho Palos Verdes in Orange County when a teenage driver rolled their car in an accident a quarter of a mile from Piburn’s house. A nineteen-year-old girl was killed in the accident. Police were still at the scene of the accident a short time later when Piburn suffered a fatal heart attack. He was fifty-four years old. See “Crash Victim Dies of Injuries,” Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California), January 13, 1976, p. 12.
13
My description of the fighting at Kasserine Pass is drawn from Rick Atkinson’s detailed account in Army at Dawn and other sources. See Atkinson, Army at Dawn, pp. 339–92, and “The Battle of Kasserine Pass,” an article published by the National WWII Museum on February 5, 2018, and accessed at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/battle-kasserine-pass.
CHAPTER 21: MISSING IN ACTION
1
Stewart, Ted’s Travelling Circus, pp. 67–68.
2
Edward Weir shared the same sentiment in a letter to his father later that week. “We expected to crash into the mountains at any minute,” Weir wrote. Edward Weir letter to his father, February 27, 1943, quoted in “Kilgore Flier Interned in Spanish Morocco; Has Narrow Escape as Big Plane Forced Down,” Kilgore (Texas) News Herald, March 28, 1943, pp. 1 and 8.
3
The Epting crew’s encounter with the hundred or so horsemen was described in Bill Kubota’s interviews with Ben Kuroki, Homer Moran, and Edward Weir for his Most Honorable Son documentary, unedited footage. Another source of information was Edward Weir’s letter to his father, cited above.
4
Ibid.
5
Edward Weir letter to father, February 27, 1943.
6
Ben Kuroki interview with Bill Kubota, August 26–27, 1998.
7
Edward Weir interview with Bill Kubota, August 29, 1998.
