Frank is flying more and more—obviously required preparation for his future on a B-17 Bomber. Even though he’ll be navigator, all men need to know how to fly. Frank's mother had received the below letter from the Hondo Navigation School (note: it's dated April 10th, so it took a long time to get to her!).
The brutal snow and coal shoveling of the 1944 winter has a taken its toll on my grandfather's knees. After decades of climbing all those stairs to bring down trash and shovel snow, he's torn probably the ligament in his right knee.
Frank may be the “little brother,” but he’s wiser about life and love than Will, older by eleven years. I’ve written before about Will’s “serious” nature, and difficulty “letting himself go.” Here Frank takes Will’s reluctance to get involved with a girl head on—filling his older brother in on what life’s all about.
Frank is losing weight. Who wouldn’t with the intense workout the young cadets are put through? Stephen Ambrose, in his book about B-24 cadets, "The Wild Blue," describes one such workout, probably similar to what Frank experienced.
Frank's oldest brother, Will, had always the most serious of the three Gartz boys. As the eldest in the family, he was motivated to be "good," especially because he had to compete, with an upstart younger brother, my dad, born when Will was just twelve months old. As you might expect, my dad had to carve out his own persona, radically different from his older brother's.