Many of you may have already seen this but i just stumbled across it yesterday and exhausted the whole site in one sitting. It’s George “Dad” Rarey’s illustrated journal of his time serving in the 379th Fighter Squadron. He was an artist who ended up flying p-47s. His drawings are clever and beautiful as are the custom cowlings he painted for his mates. Have a look. You wont be disappointed.
Very good site mer. I can see why someone would be able to spend the day on it.
I forgot about this site until recently, and visited with the intention of contacting the webmaster for some help. I was quite saddened to discover that this fellow passed away in December, only a couple weeks after I first learned about the site.
Going through that site is alotta fun until you come to the telegram, and then you just get a deflated feeling. And the statement made by Flavin after Rarey’s death, “Whatever fun there was in this war is gone now.” is thought provoking.
This fella’s work reminds me of that done by Bob Stevens, and also, to a lesser degree, another fella named Lynn Trank, a Sgt. with the 510th FS, 405th FG.
Good stuff, indeed.
Fade to Black…
i thought it touching that one of the other flyers commented that wars were meant to be fought by people like himself, not like fellows like Rarey who had a kind of value that shouldnt be wrecked by war…i also was interested to “hear” how modern Rarey’s voice was…the tone and wording in excerpts from his letters were much less typically 40s than most of the others i’ve read…clearly he was a gifted man in more than 1 way
cool site Merideth thanks for the link, i’ll be going back to that one later…Greg