Then We Kissed Her Goodbye

Then We Kissed Her Goodbye(A Wartime Journal) by George T. SkinnerIn 1943, twenty-year-old RAF trainee George T. Skinner crossed the Atlantic aboard a zigzagging convoy ship, navigating storms and submarine threats toward an unknown future in America.After eight days of grey water and years of blacked out towns, he saw it:Green grass.Coney Island.The Statue of Liberty rising through the mist.And Manhattan… lit from river to sky.For young men who had grown up in bomb-darkened Britain, the lights of New York were overwhelming. "e;YES BROTHER,"e; he wrote, "e;THIS IS AMERICA."e;Young Royal Air Force trainees stood at the rail with lumps in their throats, watching Manhattan ablaze with light — a sight none of them had seen since they were boys of fifteen. For four years their cities had been darkened by war. Now an entire skyline shimmered in defiance.