In this book, Thomas recounts growing up on a ranch in Idaho during the Great Depression, playing baseball with Jackie and Mack Robinson, joining the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and serving as a TBM Torpedo Bomber pilot on aircraft carriers in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Thomas, in the only combat account of World War II Torpedo Bomber pilot ever published, relates his 25 months of service with Torpedo Squadron 4 (VT-4) on the USS RANGER, USS BUNKER HILL, and USS ESSEX. Thomas served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters, and in some of the most important World War II battles.
While on the RANGER, he participated in OPERATION LEADER, the most significant attack on Northern Europe by a US carrier during the war. During LEADER, while attacking a freight barge carrying 40 tons of ammunition, Thomas' plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Surprisingly, in...

In a remarkable feat, Gerald W. Thomas completes his study of Bertie County and the impact upon its people of successive wars with this volume on the northeastern North Carolina county during World War I. Its publication timed to coincide with the war's centennial, this localized study depicts a mostly rural county confronted with a challenge not of its making but one to which citizens responded with resourcefulness and patriotic fervor.