I served in the Marine infantry and deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011. My experiences made me want to better understand my grandfather’s service. Before I opened his journal I expected drawings with short entries like the ones I had seen with his art. I did not anticipate finding vivid accounts of his crew’s missions or his humbling examination of the effects of war.

On July 12, 1944, the 485th Bombardment Group took off from their airfield near Venosa, Italy. Its target was a railway station in Nîmes, France. The group hit the same railway six weeks before to stop the flow of supplies before the Allied invasion of Normandy. They were told the station was again being used by the German Army to transport troops and supplies back into France. In this mission, as in many of the missions described in his journal, they encountered heavy resistance.

We sighted 4 ME 109s [German fighters] then and since we had the purple heart corner we kept sure watch. They started in for us on our tail and 6 of our guns opened up on him. He turned, not daring to come in any further at our 50s. Again another 109 came in for our tail. Again we saw our tracers going all around him and into him. He turned out after firing rockets at us. Again another 109 came in for our tail. We filled the flak-filled sky with 50s. It was sure good to hear all our guns firing.

It took a crew of 10 to operate the B-24 Liberator. The groups would fly in close staggered formations, allowing for tight bombing patterns on the ground and overlapping defenses against air threats like the German ME-109 fighter, a fast and nimble staple of the Luftwaffe. On this day, my grandfather’s plane was last in the corner of the formation, making it the most vulnerable to attack. M2 .50-caliber machine guns were mounted in turrets and side (“waist”) positions to fight off the German fighters. In addition to the threats in the air, the German forces used antiaircraft guns, known as flak, which often fired 88-millimeter explosive shells, filling the sky with dangerous shrapnel that tore into the bombers as the planes flew straight and level on their bombing runs.

The target was reached. “Bombs away!” The bombs from our group hit and from the other groups as well. We left a mass of destruction.

According to official records, the 485th Bomb Group dropped 10,550 tons of ordnance on enemy installations over the course of 187 combat missions between 1944 and 1945.