LASTING VALOR

Spotlight

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'You want to take our picture, you better hurry up," warned Gerald Brown, 85 (front row, second from left). "We're dropping like flies!" Brown and his brethren are, indeed, the last of a dwindling breed: World War II pilots who achieved the distinction of "ace" for registering at least five confirmed "kills." Among those who gathered for a recent reunion of the American Fighter Aces Association was Robert Galer, 90 (in beige, at right-hand corner of the flag's star field), who was shot down three times over Guadalcanal—and again, years later, in Korea— but kept coming back for more, notching 14 dead-on strikes, including 11 enemy bombers and fighters over one 29-day period. Also swapping stories was James E. Swett, 83 (right-hand page, maroon-and-white two-tone shirt), who took out seven Japanese dive-bombers before he was shot down—on his very first combat mission as a green Marine, at 22. A highly decorated career colonel with 16-plus kills, he can't forget one particularly close encounter with the enemy. "He looked up, and we locked eyes," says Swett. "I could see his eyes as I killed him forThat does not leave you." Before computer-fixed targeting, heatseeking missiles, and supersonic jets (U.S. forces had prop planes prior to the Korean War), these boys lit up the skies over Europe and the Pacific, flying Hellcats and Thunderbolts with nicknames like "Lil Margaret" and "Pretty Patty"—aircraft that, in this crew's youthful grips, were as nimble as hummingbirds and lethal as raptors. Taking nothing away from today's top guns, who have the luxury of video-game-like detachment, many of these aces survived epic, harrowing dogfights. "I lost more than half of my squadron at Guadalcanal," recalls Galer, the sting still ringing in his voice some 60 years later. With the swift, surgical war still festering in Iraq, it seems apt to take time—something they surely cherish—to honor the valor of these once young men.

SCOTT GUMMER