Earning Their Wings

Established by the Army Air Force in 1943, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program opened to civilian women with a pilot's license who could afford to pay for their own transportation, training, and uniforms. Despite their highly developed skill set, rigorous training, and often dangerous work, the women of WASP were not granted military status until 1977, denied over three decades of Army Air Force benefits as well as the honor and respect given to male and female World War II veterans of other branches. Sarah Parry Myers not only offers a history of this short-lived program but considers its long-term consequences for the women who participated and subsequent generations of servicewomen and activists. Myers shows us how those in the WASP program bonded through their training, living together in barracks, sharing the dangers of risky flights, and struggling to be recognized as military personnel, and the friendships they forged lasted well after the Army Air Force dissolved the program. Despite the WASP program's short duration, its fliers formed activist networks and spent the next thirty years lobbying for recognition as veterans. Their efforts were finally recognized when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law granting WASP participants retroactive veteran status, entitling them to military benefits and burials.

“Womer reveals his own inside account of fighting as a spearhead of the Screaming Eagles in Normandy, Holland, and the Battle of the Bulge” (Tucson Citizen). In 2004, the world was first introduced to The Filthy Thirteen, a book describing the most notorious squad of fighting men in the 101st Airborne Division—and the inspiration for the movie The Dirty Dozen. Now, Jack Womer—one of the squad’s integral members and probably its best soldier—delivers his long-awaited memoir. Originally a member of the 29th Rangers, which was suddenly dissolved, Womer asked for transfer to another elite unit, the Screaming Eagles, where room was found for him among the division’s most miscreant squad of brawlers, drunkards, and goof-offs. Beginning on June 6, 1944, however, the Filthy Thirteen began proving themselves more a menace to the German Army than they had been to their own officers and the good people of England, embarking on a year of ferocious combat at the very tip of the Allied advance in Europe. In this work, with the help of Stephen DeVito, Jack provides an amazingly frank look at close-quarters combat in Europe, as well as the almost surreal experience of Dust-Bowl–era GI’s entering country after country in their grapple with the Wehrmacht, finally ending up in Hitler’s mountaintop lair in Germany itself. “Jack Womer’s story is entertaining, honest and forthright, just like the man. He does not shrink from describing what actually happened although occasionally one suspects just a hint of artistic license. However, there is nothing which is unbelievable given the chaotic and random nature of war.” —Army Rumour Service

When Life Shows Up is a book about how, when you least expect it events happen in your life that are out of your control. How do you deal with these unforeseen tragedies or occurrences? Do you just pimp God and say a foxhole prayer, please God get me out of this? Or do you prepare yourself for the inevitable and when life does show up you are ready mentally, physically, and spiritually? This book continues where his book Behind the Glass left off, the saga of Dr. Maysons false arrest, unfair trial, and conviction. It also outlines seven spiritual disciplines that will prepare you for anything that life can throw at you. It is essential for Christians, professionals, moms, dads, and anyone else who wants to be prepared for life, when it shows up, because it will!

Captain Harry Butler, AFC, was a national hero in the early 1920s. Hailed as a top aviator, his legacy continues to this day, yet he has been largely forgotten. Harry Butler returned from war with two aircraft and dreams of starting an industry. With his little crimson monoplane, Red Devil, Captain Butler inspired many thousands as he performed aerial shows in support of Peace Loan efforts. He made the first airmail crossing over a significant body of water in the Southern Hemisphere; established, with the famous engineer Harry Kauper, the first passenger flight business in South Australia; took the first aerial photographs; and set up what became the first Commonwealth Government airport in Adelaide. From Butler's childhood in the tiny farming community of Minlaton, where he was inspired by stories of early flight experimentation, to his role as a senior flight instructor in the Royal Flying Corps in England and his postwar experiences, The Red Devil tells the story of a pivotal figure in early aviation in Australia and, through his pilot training role, throughout the world.