All night I vividly dreamed of war.
Yesterday, I dove headfirst into another Secondhand Mystery one that thrust me into 1945 Italy on an Army Air Corp Base. Continue reading to be sucked into the same journey I was sucked into.
It began with a book.
We walked across the street to a bookstore. It was an old bookstore and a sign was plastered across the front saying, "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" and "$1 table", I was immediately drawn to the bookstore and we made our way in, the book store smelled just like a bookstore should. Most people would describe it as dusty, maybe a little on the mildew side. But to me, all the best books smell that way. That's how you know there is history inside.
I began at the $1 table and I rummaged through stacks of books. Dieting books, cookbooks, foreign language books. I was beginning to think that the $1 table was just a bunch of books that were "unsellable", almost like the books that no true book lover would want.
I was almost to the point of being extremely distraught and "over it" when I saw a book at the bottom of the stack. An older book titled, "Meditteranean Sweep".
It was a collection of Air Corps Stories from WW2, for those of you who don't know, Air Force was not created until after WW2, during and before the war it was called the Army Air Corps. I looked for the copyright page, which I do in every book to see what kind of history I am holding and the copyright said 1944, it's a first edition copy. It's not in the best condition so not worth much as all. But that wasn't what actually caught my eye. What caught my eye was under the title page. A letter to parents.
It read;
"To Mom & Dad -
When I return I can add a few to these myself.
Love from Italy -
Billy
February 18, 1945 "
My heart skipped a beat as I stared at his handwriting. He handwrote this. This was a real letter, to real parents, from a real airman and this was real. My attention drifted away for a moment as I remembered there was a whole bookstore still to look at.
I placed it down and continued walking through the store slowly and carefully caressing the spines of the oldest and most beautiful books as if the books would tell me their stories as I touched them. I grabbed a few others that caught my eye, but my eyes kept wandering back to the $1 table where Billy's book lay. Other people came into the store and my eyesight continued to check and see if they got the book. But it still laid there on the top of the stacks of books.
I finally walked back over to Billy's book and I picked it up again. My husband looked at me knowing what I was doing. He said, "You obviously have some kind of attachment to this particular book. Just get it." I looked at the book so unsure. I have a theory that if you're ever not 100% sure about a purchase you shouldn't get it, but something was different about this book. Kevin looked me in the eye, "It's $1. I'll get that for you. Consider it your anniversary gift." I stared at the book, then I stared at the store clerk who was very focused on me and the book. I looked back at Kevin, "Okay, but I don't need it."
We walked to the counter and I placed the book down. Normally I will make conversation with store clerks but this time I just sat staring at the book still unsure about the whole thing but something else drew me closer in.
She stared at the book, "You got this off the $1 table?" I replied with a simple yet shy, "Yes." and she looked back at it, "Well, I guess it's a dollar then!" I gave her the $1 and we walked out, I looked at Kevin and said, "I'm not 100% sure this was supposed to be on the dollar table." We placed it in the back seat and headed home.
The next day, I remembered the book and began to flip through it carefully and examine the pages and photos. But I began to notice something even more intriguing. Billy had not only wrote a letter to his parents but also he wrote short notes throughout the entire book that told more about him than he probably ever realized. One that I really loved was where he drew an arrow to an airplane and wrote, "My Baby (p51)", at first I thought maybe he meant page 51? But I googled it and that beauty he spoke of was a P-51 Mustang.
The more I studied the pages in the book, the more I learned about him. He had traveled to or over Bologna, Italy, and Vienna, Austria at some point and he felt that both of them were pretty rough.
He had helped develop airfields and talked about how the ride was rough when landing on the landing mats that were made of steel and mud.
He was thankful for the fighter groups and thought the B-24 planes were sometimes the most beautiful sight in the world.
He had a couple of things in the book that I didn't 100% understand.
Some words, I think were maybe German?
There was another spot which was a map of Italy, around Foggia. Where he had drawn an x and an arrow to it with the words "The Spot". In the magnified part of the map, you could see more details and a faint arrow and faint pen mark made out the words, "This is it."
Billy gave me so much to go on in this book, I've spent the past few days searching through records, military museum websites, and trying to find out who Billy was. I thought I found him a few times but they all turned out to be dead ends.
I guess the mystery continues on this one...
UPDATE: Today I posted in a group on Facebook of Internet Sleuths who try to get family treasures back to their families. I posted Billy's Book and immediately I was flooded with people wanting to help. We found a very good contender in the search for Billy! Now to just figure out if he is our Billy.
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