The Story in My Father's Footlockers: A WWII Story of Escape, Evasion and unexpected Friendships, (Paperback)

The story begins one evening in 2016 at a celebration of family and friends in France, people who know each other only because of their connection to an American WWII pilot, Captain Edward Appel. The main event is the presentation of Edward's parachute to Juliann, his daughter. This recovered parachute had saved the pilot's life as he jumped from a failing B-24 bomber in the year 1944 near Surbourg, France. Edward enlisted in the army in 1940 and made his way up through the ranks to pilot status in 1943. He was sent to England as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot. On his last required mission, he was shot down over France. After bailing out of the plane, he managed to evade German soldiers in a series of quick thinking moves. During three months of hiding with the help of farmers, local citizens and the French resistance, he avoided capture by the German military and returned to the Allies after the front lines moved through his position. Upon returning to England, he could have gone home since he had completed all his missions, but he didn't feel quite right about the way his bomber missions had ended. He had lost crew members and some were in POW camps. Instead, he decided to do a tour as a fighter pilot, specifically in the P-47 Thunderbolt. On what he again believed was his last mission, he was shot down once more behind enemy lines in Germany. He was the last P-47 pilot to be shot down during WWII. He was considered, at first, "Killed in Action." However, he survived the crash landing (which included him and his plane cartwheeling across an open field), escaped initial encounters with German soldiers, and overcame several intense events during the course of his 10-day evasion. With the help of local Germans, he survived and returned to the Allies once again as the front lines moved over his position during the night. The group of American soldiers that picked him up in Germany was the same group that had picked him up in France, and therefore thought he may be a spy. Edward Appel became one of the few WWII pilots who flew both heavy bombers and fighter planes with the 8th Air Force, and was a two-time evader. Throughout the book, time goes back and forth 70 years to the same month, and at times the same date, intertwining Edward's amazing story with Juliann's discoveries as she researches her father's war experiences. These include reunions with families that helped her father evade the Germans, eyewitness accounts, items from the crash sites, walks retracing her father's paths (one of which was recorded in a documentary), and a commemorative ceremony in France.At the end of the book, we return once more to the celebration in 2016 and revealed is an unexpected detail which connects Edward's lifesaving parachute to his daughter, Juliann.