In the summer of 1940, Italy had entered the war as part of the Axis, and German armies had invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Bombing of England had begun for an anticipated German invasion. The leaders of the world could no longer deny that a major world conflict was underway, and that they would likely be drawn into it. The United States War Department and Navy Department began gearing up for conflict long before the Japanese Empire’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, swiftly brought America into the war. With this backdrop of troubled times in the world, this story begins with an American family in the Midwest. The only surviving son, Kenneth Mauritz Johnson, born in 1917, a recent college graduate who had grown up in Moline, Illinois, feels the call of duty and, after a year of teaching high school in Marseilles, Illinois, enlists in the Army Air Corps, where he becomes a bomber pilot. He has the full support of his family. Kenneth’s father, C. Mauritz Johnson, is president of the Moline Furniture Works and head of the city’s parks board. In September of 1940 Ken Johnson had taken his first teaching job at Marseilles, Illinois high school, where he met fellow teacher Phyllis Armstrong, joining 348 thousand men and women in the U.S.A. registered for the military draft, up from 49 thousand the previous year. This is the story of their tumultous lives over the next few years.