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Hello, this is Matt and McKinley from History Dispatches.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another history of the Second World War interview.

This time I'm joined by Hans Smith, the author of Boms Away, a B-17B pilot's small part in a big war. This is a biography of his great uncle Herbert Small, who was a member of the 384th bomb group during the war. Hans,

thank you for joining us here today. Thank you, Wesley, for having me, and it's a great opportunity

to talk about the book. I always like to ask when somebody

decides to write a book about a family member, sort of what prompted you to want to do the

research and the writing and the work to kind of put this book together? Yeah, the inspiration

really came from, and I talk about this in the introduction of the book, a trip my wife and I took to part of the vacation we took was to the Normandy region of France a couple of years ago.

And I'd always been interested in World War II history.

So part of that trip was meant to see some of the battlefields and museums

and some of the amazing bits of history from over there. And my family immediately started

talking to me about, well, you've got to go see your Uncle Herb's grave. Uncle Herb was someone I'd

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