And on this day, I cannot help but think about a young pilot whose burst eardrums saved my father's life.

My dad was 18 when he went straight from his high school graduation to the Air Force recruiting office. He was eager for adventure and desperate to join the fight against true evil.

It was June 1942.

With an engineer's mind, he was tagged a navigator and teamed up with the nine other men who would form his crew.

By design, the Air Force had the crew stick together through training in Washington state, and then on to Rapid City Army Air Base, training ground for the B-17, or "flying fortress." In August 1943, they shipped out for Snetterton Heath, airfield for the 96th Bomb Group on the east coast of England.

Unlike so many other crews, this one was incredibly lucky.

The members survived those first long flights into Poland and Czechoslovakia, flying back in fog like pea soup, skidding in on gas fumes and prayers.

After the missions, they'd sleepwalk back to their barracks.

In the morning, they'd awaken to vacant bunks all around.

When they'd signed up, Uncle Sam had told my dad and his crewmates that they'd be needed for 25 missions.

About mission 15, the number jumped to 30. My father still laughs at how the copilot said he'd signed up for 25 and that was all he was flying.

But it was right about that time that God, or fate, intervened in a strange way on my dad's behalf.

His pilot, Bob Simon, had suffered a burst eardrum, a common ailment in the unpressurized cabins of the B-17. During his recovery, the crew was enjoying a brief hiatus -- until the commander tapped my dad to fill in on another crew. Their navigator was in sick bay, too.

My dad flew with the other crew on that single mission without incident and rejoined his pals shortly after.

But thanks to that mission, my dad was one ahead of the rest of his crew.

So on May 11, 1944, when my father clocked his 30th mission, the rest of the crew still had one left.

The very next day, with a borrowed navigator, they flew off on that final mission. They never made it back.

It was another brutal one, into Czechoslovakia.

One man, the tailgunner, bailed out and survived. He spent the remainder of the war being tortured in a POW camp.

The other nine died -- including the pilot, the copilot, the engineer and, yes, the borrowed navigator.

I think about this story every Memorial Day weekend. But it carries special meaning today, as we dedicate a long-overdue monument to those of the great generation and the war they fought.

I hope to visit the monument with my dad, still spry at 80 and opinionated about our current war. I'd like to be there when he looks up the names of the men in his crew -- Duncan and Simon. And that borrowed navigator, too.

I'm so thankful for their service.

And I'm so grateful my dad lived to tell the tale.

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