George Edwin Farrar

I started this blog when I started researching my dad’s WWII history, including his training, but mainly focused on his service with the 384th Bomb Group and his mid-air collision on September 28, 1944. By delving into the actions of the 384th Bomb Group, I have found many interesting stories and fascinating people. As much as I enjoy researching them, I find I have wandered very much off the subject which I originally intended to explore.

I am going to attempt – and I say attempt because I am easily distracted – to get back on topic this year and follow through my dad’s story to the end. George Edwin Farrar’s story includes the stories of many others – the other men on his crew, the other men he associated with at Grafton Underwood, the men of the crew of the other B-17 involved in the mid-air collision, his fellow POW’s, his family, and the families of his military “brothers.”

I will also study what the world was like during WWII and the years leading up to the war and what life was like during that time period for the people who lived through it. I don’t think I can fully understand the people I’m researching until I understand their time period, which was so different from ours.

The actions of the men who experienced that war still echo through the thoughts of those of us who descended from them or their brothers and sisters. But it is difficult to comprehend for many of us living in today’s very different world what it truly meant to fight in that war.

Today we can take a ride as a passenger in a B-17, as quite a few of them tour the country. But that is a fun ride in the clear skies at low altitude over a piece of beautiful American countryside. We cannot know, no matter how good our imaginations are, what that ride would have been like in the cold of 25,000 feet with no oxygen, with German fighters bearing down, or flak exploding into the belly of the plane. We cannot fully imagine the excitement or the terror or the sadness that those men felt mission after mission after mission.

I need to know. I need to piece the picture together bit by bit until I can see it more clearly. My dad is no longer around to tell me his war stories and even if he were, I don’t think I could ever completely know what it was like without living through it. By talking with men who served in the 384th, and reading books and watching documentaries and movies about the war, I have developed a picture in my mind. But that picture is not, and never will be, complete. The edges are fuzzy and holes remain in the middle of my picture.

I’ll just keep piecing it together, looking for new information and gaining a better understanding. It’s been an interesting journey so far.

© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018