Finish Forty and Home

Phil Scearceis a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and a 2009 graduate of the Middle Tennessee State University Writer's Loft Program. He is a member of the Tennessee Writer's Alliance. Colonel Jesse E. Staycommanded the 42nd Squadron in the Pacific.

"Phil Scearce's Finish Forty and Home is a triumph of intimate history, following the author's seventeen-year-old airman father as he goes to war in a forgotten but fiercely contested corner of World War II. Through meticulous research and lyrical prose, Scearce captures the grim grind of the Pacific war, life and death in a battered bomb squadron, and the tumultuous experiences of a B-24 radioman and his crew. Finish Forty and Home is a treasure: poignant, thrilling, and illuminating."--Laura Hillenbrand, best-selling author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit "This book will help those who wish to gain a real insight to the personal and human aspects of the air war over the Pacific. Sgt. Scearce's story will surprise no one who was there, and everyone who was not."--Dr. James A. Mowbray, Professor of Strategy, Doctrine, and Airpower, Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base "Scearce does a very good job of depicting the helter skelter of air combat or the sometimes prolonged fight to keep an aircraft in flight. The thing that comes across most clearly--a point essential to understanding the experience of fighting in World War II--is that the war was not a series of battles (they were highpoints) but an endless process of violence that extracted physical and psychological damage like a kind of water torture. There were so many different ways to die. Consequently, life was cheap."--Eric M. Bergerud, author of Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific and Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific "This history brings back memories of the dear friends who gave their lives in this war and is a tribute to them and to all those, like Sergeant Herman Scearce, who laid their lives on the line and were blessed to survive. It is a comfort to know that this record has been written in remembrance of these patriots and of this part of our war in the Pacific."--Colonel Jesse E. Stay, U.S. Air Force (ret)