Silver Star

My brother Ed was both a physician and a pilot. He was a flight surgeon in WWII. Ed was many things, mostly trouble for Dad and women. He was good looking in the Earl Flynn fashion and a gymnast. Ed never road in the passenger seat of anything especially trains. He had a way of bamboozling the Engineer; he road in the cab. I was maybe five years old when I first observed this phenomena at the Chicago Worlds Fair. He was flying airplanes before Pearl Harbor and after the attack, he enlisted in the Army Air Corp as a flight surgeon.

As the Fifth Air Corps went in through North Africa, Ed rode in the Cab once more. I'm not entirely clear on the details, but his train ran alongside an ammunition train that was attacked by Stuka dive bombers. One or both trains were hit and the Engineer killed. Ed apparently went over to the ammunition train and drove it away from his troop train. He was blown out of the cab with an explosion and received a concussion. He lived to go in through Salerno and later receive the Silver Star for his actions. Ed was fifteen years older than me. I remember he gave me the star and I think I later gave it to his widow or my niece after his unfortunate death in an airplane accident.