I'VE HAD IT
The Survival of a Bomb Group Commander
COL. BEIRNE LAY, JR.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
1945
First Edition.
Col. Beirne Lay was the leader of a wing of seventy-two Liberator Bombers on an important mission a month before D-Day, when his plane was shot clown over enemy-held territory. As a commander he was last man out of the plane. He fell dizzily through space with a torn parachute, passed his crew members on the way down, and seemed headed for the ruins of his bomber which lay burning oil the ground directly below him. A gust of wind saved him at the last moment.
Safe on the ground and joined by his co-pilot, Lt. Walter Duer, Col. Beirne Lay immediately looked for cover. It was broad daylight and they knew the region was thick with Germans. To add to their difficulties the burning plane was sending up columns of smoke, visible for miles, and in a few minutes the bombs and the flares aboard the plane caught fire and rocketed into the air.
Beirne and Walt had just pushed their chutes into a hedge when a middle-aged peasant and a sixteen-year-old boy rushed up to them and helped them to a tem-. porary hiding place in the peasant's barn.
I've Had It is Beirne Lay's personal, breathtaking story of his escape through enemy-held France—and of the aid the French gave him—the peasants and farmers, the cures and the Maquis, all the brave, wonderful French people who risked their homes and their lives to save their allies. It is a thrilling escape story—but more than that, it is the story of the French themselves, warm, humorous and quietly heroic—and its picture of our fliers and our French Allies is unforgettable.
Lay later became best know as author and scriptwriter of Twelve O' Clock High.
19 x 12 cm. 141 pp.
Very good + condition, dust jacket has some loss along the top and bottom edges and tape marks to the flaps (tape now removed and jacket in protective cover). Previous owners small address label on the front pastedown and the stamp of the Douglass Whetton Collection on the ffep, half-title and title page, otherwise very clean and tidy.
Rare.