Hope and Glory
Photo by Robert Clark
He was on his way to England via Africa, a young man born in 1920 to Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City. As a newly minted Air Force navigator, his mission was to deliver a B-24 bomber and its 10-man crew to an airbase in Britain. It was nighttime in the Sahara. As he looked at the moon, he remembered how “terribly romantic and freezing cold” the night was.
Soon, Eugene Polinsky would begin a series of clandestine flights aboard B-24 Liberators that might well appear romantic to an outside observer but were, in fact, exceedingly dangerous and, yes, quite often frigid. Polinsky ED’41 spoke about the danger to