A unique glimpse of the deadliest profession of the Second World War. In June 1941, Flight Sergeant Leslie Mann, a tail gunner in a British bomber, was shot down over Düsseldorf and taken into captivity. After the war, wanting to record the experiences of the RAF's 'Bomber Boys', he gave voice to his private thoughts and feelings in a short novella, uncovered only after his death. Visceral, shocking and unglamorous, this compelling story transmits as rarely before the horrors of aerial warfare, the corrosive effects of fear, and the psychological torment of the young men involved. The sights, sounds, smells, and above all the emotional strain are intensely evoked with a novelist's skill. And Some Fell on Stony Ground is introduced by historian Richard Overy, author of the acclaimed book, The Bombing War (2013).
This vivid, sometimes tragic, and often humorous literary biography brings to life as never before the extraordinary talent and complex person who was Thomas Mann. Engrossing vignettes enable us to enter Mann's life and work from unique angles. We meet the difficult, even unsavory private man: hypochondriac and nervous, narcissistic and vainglorious, isolated and greedy for love, shy and often ungenerous. But we are also introduced to a man who lived an eventful life, was capable of great kindness, loved dogs, doted on his daughters, and listened to Jack Benny. We experience Mann's tragedy as the quintessential German forced by the rise of National Socialism first into inner exile and then into real exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and California. His letters from this time reveal the torment that exile represented for a writer whose work, indeed whose very self, was inextricably bound up with the German language. The book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and other works, but were woven into the fabric of his existence and preoccupied him unrelentingly. It also teases out what is known about what Mann considered his celibate homoeroticism and what others have labeled closeted homosexuality. In particular, we learn about his affection for the young man who inspired the character of Tadzio in Death in Venice. And, against the unfocused accusations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at Mann, the book examines in human detail his relationships with Jewish writers, friends, and family members. This is the richest available portrait of Thomas Mann as man and writer--the place to start for anyone wanting to know anything about his life, work, or times.
Leslie's story begins in Montreal in the 1920's and 30's, and continues through the pre-war years in the U.K., and into a first-hand account of Canada's invasion of Sicily, up through Italy, and into Holland. There are other stories here, of working for Canada's airline industry in the early days, and of his participation in the rescue of orphans from Viet Nam.
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