The poem Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell made an impact on me, as it has for many readers. In my case, it was a little more personal.
Here's a photo of my father (on the left) with one of his high school buddies, Nathan Sanderson (on the right). My father, Nathan and another buddy, Daniel, all enlisted together when the US got involved in World War II. Norman and Nathan joined the Army Air Force (before the Air Force was a separate branch of the military). Daniel joined the Navy.
My Dad's job was filming the B-17 bombing runs (I may have a reel of his footage). It's not clear to me if he was in the plane (although his gear makes it look like he would have been) or just set up the cameras for some kind of automatic recording.
Nathan was a ball-turret gunner. During the early part of the war, B-17's had to fly without fighter escort. Since this made them sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe, the bombers were armed to to the teeth as a defensive measure. (Formation flying also helped a great deal). The ball-turret gunner sat in a bubble underneath the plane's fuselage, in a kind of baby-seat contraption, and handled two .50 caliber machine guns.
During one of the bombing missions, Nathan's B-17 was hit (either by flak or a German fighter plane). The rest of the crew apparently was able to bail out, but Nathan was stuck in his turret and died when the plane hit the ground.
My Dad's other friend, Daniel, served on the USS Indianapolis. He was one of the hundreds killed when the destroyer was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine.
Only some veterans fight, and only some of those are injured or killed. But they all take on the job knowing that this could be their fate. We owe them a lot, starting with "thanks".
