After trying three times to lie his way in with fake signatures, he lied to his parents about already enlisting, and they signed to keep him from getting picked up for being AWOL. And since he wanted to join the Army Air Corps, a parental signature was needed after he turned 18, for without it, the enlistment age was 21. His mother did everything in her power to keep the boy out of the war, arguing that serving his country as a farmer was a perfectly acceptable alternative to getting killed on a battlefield. Raised in the Kickapoo Valley on a dairy farm, 17-year-old Gene Moran saw the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor as his ticket out of shoveling cow manure and farm chores. Only he didn’t.Ī farm in the Kickapoo River Valley of Wisconsin Gene Moran would spend his combat time in Europe as a tail gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress and experience one of the million ways to die. A Wisconsin farm boy, eager to enlist in the Army Air Corps the second he turned 18, finally got his chance to fly against the Axis enemies of his country. Occasionally someone, by the providence of God, survives what killed almost 100% of men caught in the same situation. It's a story of resilience and hope.N war there are a million ways to die. It's a story of two men's separate journeys confronting trauma and loss.

What will happen to his wife and his two young children? John must continue uncovering Gene's story of survival as he himself confronts the greatest trial of his life. As the interviews go on, John faces an ordeal of his own. But both men persevere, bonded by their close and growing friendship.

But John has no idea what wounds he's reopening. Gene, nearing his ninetieth birthday, recounts incredible tales. So begins a series of 'Thursdays with Gene' interviews. But when John, a young history teacher, learns of Gene's amazing fall, he's desperate to learn more. His nine children knew little of their dad's war story. When Gene returned home, he kept those memories locked up for nearly seventy years.

Captured by the Germans, he survived a harrowing eighteen months as a prisoner of war, including a six-hundred-mile death march in 1945 across Central Europe. World War II tail gunner Gene Moran fell four miles through the sky without a parachute and lived.

Tailspin by John Armbruster