"The Bombing of Bly" in the new Military Heritage Magazine

The October 2007 edition of Military Heritage Magazine features my new piece, "The Bombing of Bly." It's a heartbreaking tale of how war can affect innocents in even the most remote of locations. On Saturday, May 5, 1945 — three days before the end of World War II in Europe and just three months before the Japanese surrendered — the small Oregon town of Bly lost its minister, his wife, and five children to an enemy weapon that took them by surprise:

The U.S. government immediately shrouded the event in secrecy, labeling the six deaths as occurring from an “unannounced cause.” But in the close-knit atmosphere of Bly, many of the locals had already learned the truth: Elsie Mitchell and the five children were victims of an enemy “balloon bomb,” held aloft by a gigantic hydrogen-filled sphere and whisked from Japan to the western seaboard of the United States. The contraption had alighted on Gearhart Mountain, where it lay in wait until the fateful day when it found its victims — the only deaths from enemy attack within the United States during World War II.

The article was edited by Roy Morris, Jr., and is my second piece in Military Heritage. Click here to view the clip of the article. I have another article — about another frightening military experiment of WWII — that will appear in the magazine next year.