Brothers, Buddies - All

Winner of The Quill Award 2020 for Best History, Military, or War

Brothers, Buddies - All

Brothers, they signed on: December 8th, 1941.
Their father, a veteran of WWI, brought them to the train,
with tears in his eyes and a heart full of pride.

Different trains propelled them:
one west to California and then the south Pacific:
my father south and then west to a small airfield.
There were no fighter planes for them to learn to fly.

Five squads across the country for five Stearman Biplanes;
each a different color: red, yellow, green, blue, silver.
They all wished for any squadron except the yellow.
They were not.

Five men became the pilots of the Yellow Squadron.
Nicknames replaced family names.
String, Georgie-Porgy, Toast, Beans, Micky Mouse.
Only two of the buddies would return home.

Brothers, now -- they learned to fly.
To dip and dive, to roll and crest.
One kissed all the girls, another drew cartoons,
one could make a meal from garbage scraps,
one could hide in plain sight (their pun; not mine),
the last was oft in trouble hence the nickname: Toast.

Brothers they learned to fly, to have each other's back.
Missions flown out of London out over the North Atlantic.
One shot down, one flew out of gas
leading the enemy away from base.

The third flew all his missions only to die
in a bomb burst the day he was flying home.
The two went on; Georgie and Toast,
doing ever more than asked: far more important
than any medals they received.

Both original brothers made it home,
yet the one had changed,
was no longer the same.
The southern Pacific exacted its toll;
the price too high. No awards for seeing
far beyond the pale.



Robert Berndt (as in toast) was my father.
We never made the Georgie-Porgy connection
until the (then) president of our country sent
his personal condolences to the family of his old flying buddy.
Dad had always wondered about that old yellow plane
and yet, never talked about his flying brothers.

Years passed and my husband and I were at Pearl Harbor.
At the Air Museum, I saw an old yellow biplane. Heart
racing, I ran to it. Old logbooks told the tale of
President George Herbert Walker Bush learning to fly.
True, it was there only because a future president had flown it;
but it was my dad's plane too.




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1st Place in the October 2020

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Brothers, Buddies - All  (E) They learned to fly together and each of them flew high! #2235211 by Fyn-elf