I’ve always had in the back of my mind that I would like to find the families of the crew members who flew with my uncle. With all the information that I had , finding the families seemed to be at the top of my “things to do” list. I felt sure that other family members would want to know what happened to their father, brother, or son. How to proceed was the big question. No one had been in contact with any of them for over 50 years except my Grandmother.

Again, she was the key to the puzzle. The mothers had written constantly to each other after the boys were shot down. They passed photographs back and forth and letters, lots of letters with names of brothers and sisters and their addresses. They were all there in that box that Grandma had saved so long ago.

The months passed, and my phone bills increased. I was getting nowhere fast. The families had moved since the 40’s. Back then they had no zip codes and no area codes. I needed some way to find a lot of people fast. The newspaper seemed the only way to go. The search for the families began in September of 1993. And who better to begin with than the family of Lt. Dallas O. Books, the pilot.

I called the local newspaper in the town where Lt. Books lived. In this case The Leader-Telegram in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I talked with Tom Pfankuch, a staff reporter, explained about my research, and asked if the paper would be interested in doing a story on Lt. Books. The Telegram jumped on the story, and my research material on Lt. Books was on the way to Wisconsin. Pfankuch kept in touch for a few weeks and told me that Lt. Book’s father was the chief of the fire department. When his son was shot down, it was a major story. Pfankuch had also made contact with the brother and the son of Lt. Books. Things were sounding good, and on September 12, 1993, on the front page of the Sunday news, the headline read, “Reviving the Tale of Old Glory." It was a great article with a photograph of Lt. Books and a photograph of his grave. I was proud of the article, and as I read it over and over again, I wondered what my next step should be. Two days after the article ran in the paper, the son of Lt. Books called me on the phone, “Hello Jim, this

is Bob Books; my father was Dallas Books from Eau Claire, Wisconsin." It was the first time I had spoken to one of the family members of the crew. Seven years have passed since that conversation. I can only remember bits and pieces, but that's not important now. What is important is that Bob and I share something in common, the loss of family and the desire to keep their memory alive. And we share something else; as our friendship has developed over the years, we talk about Bob’s father, my uncle, and the other crew members -- what they were and what they might have become. This web site is our memorial to them. Our hope is it will make future searches by 3rd and 4th generation Crusaders easier by seeing our research. For us, the second generation, Memorial Day is every day.

Bob invited me to Wisconsin to go over some of the information I had compiled and to visit the boyhood home of his father and the cemetery where he was laid to rest. In the winter of 1994, I took Bob up on his offer and flew to Milwaukee for several days to visit with Bob and share information about his father and the crew.

After a few days of getting to know each other, we headed to Eau Claire, the boyhood home of Bob’s father Dallas O. Books. This was a special trip for me because of being with Bob, the son of Lt. Dallas Books, the leader and the glue that held the crew together when the going got tough as in the Gotha mission, Berlin, and Friedrichshafen.

The town of Eau Claire, where Dallas grew up, was not much different than Fawn Grove, where Uncle Jim grew up. The house is still there and the school where Dallas attended, as are Uncle Jim's in Fawn Grove. The local VFW in town still has members that remember Dallas, same as with the Fawn Grove VFW. Dallas’s brother still lives in town, as do Jim’s brothers. And in the local cemetery, an American flag flys over a military gravestone with the inscription at the bottom: March 18, 1944, same as in the cemetery in Fawn Grove. We may have been in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, but it could have been Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania or Osborne, Kansas or Hartford, Connecticut or Salem, Oregon or Youngstown, Ohio or Woburn, Massachusetts or Chattanooga, Tennessee or Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. The Books Crew could have been from any one of these towns.

While driving around town, Bob showed us the places his father spent time growing up. Most of the buildings are still there as they were 50 years before. This made the trip all the more interesting. A visit with Bob's Uncle Duane was also planned. It was interesting to hear him reminiscing of days gone by growing up with his brother Dallas. The last stop was at Lakeview Cemetery to visit Dallas’s grave. A special moment at the end of a long day.

Bob's Uncle Duane and Bob	Gravesites of Dallas, his brother Robert, and his parents.

Heading east on the return trip, we stopped at the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, where we spent a few hours looking at the WWII aircraft. Also of interest to us was an electronic mission board of the March 6, 1944 raid on Berlin. As the Books Crew was on this mission, the display was of particular interest to us.

Bob and his family are the only family members of the crew that I have spent time with; however, I have had contact with and made lasting friendships with most of the other family members of the crew. In most instances the best and fastest way to find family members was to go through the local newpapers. This worked most of the time; however, some newspapers weren’t interested in doing a front page story as The Leader-Telegram had done. I had to be satisfied with a small article in the “local” section with maybe a small photograph of the crew member that came from that town. Nevertheless, it’s the best way to proceed, and 100% of the time I received a response from someone.