Devotion (Young Readers Edition): An Epic Story of Heroism and Friendship - Softcover

Makos, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593481488 ISBN 13: 9780593481486

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A young adult adaptation of the national bestseller that details the true story of two Navy pilots from divergent racial and economic backgrounds who forge a deep friendship during the Korean War as they face extraordinary circumstances.

Soon to be major motion picture starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell, with a supporting cast including Joe Jonas!

Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, both Navy pilots during the Korean War in 1950, come from different backgrounds: Hudner is a white New Englander, a son of privilege; Brown is an African American son of a sharecropper from Mississippi. When the two men join forces in Fighter Squadron 32, they forge a deep friendship at a time when racial inequality was prevalent in America.

An unwavering commitment binds Tom and Jesse to each other as well as to their comrades. The two fly to save a division of US Marines cornered during the battle at Chosin Reservoir, but catastrophe strikes when one of them is shot down behind enemy lines and trapped in the wreckage of his plane. The other will face an unthinkable choice: watch their friend die, or attempt one of history’s most audacious one-man rescue missions.

What transpires is harrowing and heartbreaking, an inspirational story for all time.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hailed as "a masterful storyteller" by the Associated Press, Adam Makos is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Higher Call and Spearhead and the critically acclaimed Devotion. In the course of his research, Makos has flown a World War II bomber, accompanied a Special Forces raid in Iraq, and journeyed into North Korea in search of an MIA American airman.

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CHAPTER 1

GHOSTS AND SHADOWS

December 4, 1950

North Korea, during the first year of the Korean War

In a flash, a Corsair fighter plane burst around the edge of a snow-covered valley, turning sharply. The plane’s engine snarled. A bomb hung from its belly, and rockets dangled from its wings.

Another roar shook the valley. A second Corsair blasted around the edge. Then came a third, a fourth, a fifth, and more until ten planes had fallen in line.

The Corsairs dropped low over a snow-packed road. They glided between ice-capped hills and dead trees. It was official: they were now flying far behind enemy lines.

From the cockpit of the fourth Corsair, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Tom Hudner reached to the switches above the plane’s instrument panel. With a flick, he armed his eight rockets.

Tom was twenty-six and a navy carrier pilot. His white helmet and raised goggles framed the face of a movie star--ice-blue eyes, a chiseled nose, and a cleft chin. He dressed the part, too, in a dark brown leather jacket with a reddish fur collar. But Tom could never cut it as a star of the silver screen--his eyes were too humble.

At 250 miles per hour, Tom chased the plane ahead of him. It was nearly 3 p.m. Dark clouds draped the sky. Tom glanced from side to side and checked his wing tips as the treetops whipped by. Beyond the hills lay a frozen lake called the Chosin Reservoir. The flight was following the road up the reservoir’s western side.

The radio crackled in Tom’s earphones. The flight leader was calling the base. His report? “All quiet, so far.”

“Copy that,” replied a tired voice. Seven miles away, at the foot of the reservoir, a Marine air controller was shivering in his tent at the American base. His maps revealed a dire situation. The enemy had the Marines surrounded. To top it off, it was one of the coldest winters on record.

 

The engine droned. Tom edged forward in his seat, his eyes settling on the Corsair in front of him.

In the plane ahead, a pilot peered through the rings of his gunsight. The man’s face was slender beneath his helmet, his eyebrows angled over honest dark eyes. Just twenty-four, Ensign Jesse Brown was the first African American carrier pilot in the U.S. Navy. The military had only recently desegregated, and the treatment of military men of color was still often exclusionary, sometimes even downright hostile. Somehow, Jesse had been able to overcome that.

Jesse had more flight time than Tom, so in this squadron, that meant he took the lead. Jesse dipped his right wing for a better view of the neighboring trees. Tom’s gut tensed.

“See something, Jesse?” Tom radioed.

Jesse snapped his plane level again. “Not a thing.”

The enemy was undoubtedly there, tucked behind trees, grasping rifles, holding their fire so the planes would pass. The enemy weren’t just anyone; they were the White Jackets, troops from the People’s Volunteer Army--Chinese Communist soldiers. By now their methods were well known. They hid by day and attacked by night. The week before, they had first attacked the American base. Nearly a hundred thousand White Jackets were now laying siege to it, with more arriving.

The base’s ten thousand men had fought back--some U.S. Army soldiers, some British Royal Marine Commandos, but mostly U.S. Marines. Their survival in the war now hinged on airpower--the Corsair pilots knew it. Every White Jacket they could attack from the sky now would be one fewer trying to shoot an American Marine that night.

But the pilots couldn’t just bomb a grove of trees on a hunch. They needed to spot the enemy first. “Heads up, disturbances ahead!” the flight leader radioed.

Finally, something, Tom thought.

Small boulders dotted the snow beside the road.

“Watch the rocks!” Jesse said as he zipped over them.

“Roger,” Tom replied. He wrapped his index finger over the trigger of the control stick. Then he squinted down at the boulders to see if anyone was there. It was well known that the White Jackets would sometimes drop to the ground when American planes flew overhead. That way, they would blend into their surroundings; their stained uniforms looked like gray stone, and the side flaps of their caps hid their faces.

The rock pile passed behind Tom’s wings. He glanced into his rearview mirror. Behind his tail flew a string of six more Corsairs. Now, if any of the White Jackets took a shot at them, Tom’s buddies would deal with it.

Tom trusted the men behind him, just as Jesse entrusted his life to Tom.

After two months of flying combat together, the two of them were as close as brothers, although they hailed from different worlds. A sharecropper’s son, Jesse had grown up dirt-poor, toiling in the fields of Mississippi, whereas Tom had spent his summers boating at a country club in Massachusetts as an heir to a chain of grocery stores. In 1950 their friendship was genuine, but ahead of the times.

 

Tom caught the green blur of a vehicle beneath his left wing. Then another on the right.

He leaned from side to side for a better view.

Abandoned American trucks and jeeps lined the road. Cannons jutted here and there, their barrels frosty with ice. Splashes of pink colored the snow below. It was a terrible sight. The day before, the Marines had been attacked right here. In subzero conditions, their spilled blood turned pink.

“Bodies, nine o’clock!” the flight leader announced as he flew past a hill on the left. “God, they’re everywhere!”

Sun warmed the hillside, revealing bodies stacked like sandbags across the slope. Mounds of dead men poked from the snow, their frozen blue arms reaching defiantly. Tom’s eyes tracked the carnage as he flew past.

Are they ours or theirs? he wondered.

Just the day before, he had flown over and seen young Marines down there, waving up at him. He had heard rumors of the horrors they faced after nightfall. Nighttime was when the enemy charged in seemingly endless human waves. It was also when the temperature dropped to twenty below--meaning the boys’ weapons froze and they were reduced to fighting with bayonets and fists. It was something the pilots, who slept safely each night on a carrier, didn’t have to deal with at all.

Aboard their aircraft carrier, Tom and the other pilots had become accustomed to starting each morning with the same question: “Did our boys survive the night?”

As the flight raced ahead, the pilots scanned for signs of life. Four Corsairs had changed direction to search for the enemy elsewhere.

The remaining planes followed the same road farther into hostile territory. The clouds ahead were growing stormier. Trees swayed ominously in the wind.

“Possible footprints!” Jesse announced. Tom glanced eagerly forward.

“Nope, just shadows,” Jesse muttered as he flew overhead.

Tom could tell that Jesse was frustrated, too. They both should have been far from this winter wasteland. Tom should have been sipping a scotch in a warm country club back home and Jesse should have been holding his baby daughter on his lap under a Mississippi sun. Instead, they’d both come here as volunteers.

It wasn’t the risk that bothered them--they were frustrated because they wanted to do something, anything, to defend the Marines at the base. The night before, Jesse had written a letter to his wife, Daisy, saying: “Knowing that he’s helping those poor guys on the ground, I think every pilot on here would fly until he dropped in his tracks.”

From a field below, a voice barked a command. Just...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593481488
• ISBN 13: 9780593481486
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland