Before he was Bowpea, Jim was a dough boy whose mother wrote his given name on the back of the photo (below) in case he didn’t return from the war in Europe.

Jim only had one brother and that brother had divorced his Protestant wife to marry a Catholic woman. He had fallen from grace with a mighty thud. So it seems unlikely that Jim’s mother would forget the angelic face of her youngest and still in good graces son. Perhaps she did it to protect him; like a silent prayer whispered to the war gods. Bring my boy home.

According to Wikipedia, dough boy was a nickname for a member of infantry until WWII when GI became the preferred term. There are several theories as to how the term dough boy came about, ranging from the color of their dust covered uniforms to what they ate. None of them are very heroic sounding. I’m glad they no longer use that term.

Fortunately for me, Jim did return home and had a long and reasonably happy life. Until he got saddled with the silly moniker of Bowpea by his eldest granddaughter, that is.

Bruce longed to fly but his mother wanted her only son firmly on the ground. In the end, she was not able to keep him grounded but, with the help of her powerful step-father (known only as The Judge), she was able to keep him stateside until the end of the war. Bruce was not happy with his mother or The Judge. For the rest of his life, he surrounded himself with flying aces, men who had flown combat missions.

Below is Bruce with one of his buddies, Captain W.U. Gray, affectionately known as Wug.

Captain Wug was renowned for his eclectic vocabulary which I tried to capture in my first book, Flipka.

“You must forgive my meritorious comrades their resistance to melioration,” Captain Wug interjected. “Referring to Cavalry (Peak) as a monadnock is hardly a grievous malapropism. However, my curiosity remains unabated. Why is a charming young lady such as yourself interested in that area of mystifying moraines? ”

Yes, that’s really the way Captain Wug (his obit here) spoke.

Another of Bruce’s buddies was this guy who was born and raised in the same town in Montana:

Hub was not modest about his heroics, like Captain Wug. He wrote several books highlighting his exploits: Zemke’s Stalag, Zembe’s Wolf Pack, The Hub: Fighter/Leader. Although he dragged Bruce and Wug into several unsuccessful business ventures, I’ll forever associate him with the bags of oranges he always brought with him from his ranch in California. From bombs to oranges – what a life.

Of course, they were the lucky ones.

Never Forget.