Names & Faces

The first American boys looked at the Nazi earth, into the Nazi guns, into Nazi faces. The war drew on toward the ultimate focal point: millions of Americans facing millions of the enemy.

But the novelty of "firsts" was still fresh. Captain Frank K. Hill Jr. won the first U.S. dogfight victory over Europe by shooting down a Focke-Wulf 190 in the skies over Dieppe. (Modestly he claimed only a "probable" victory, because he did not have time to watch the plane crash.) Captain Hill was 23, from Hillsdale, NJ. He had been a high-school athlete, had worked as a plumber's helper. Now his picture showed him at a British airport after the battle (see cut), grinning toothily from his cockpit like a youngster tickled about his first solo.

Americans read the names of the boys who made the first big U.S. air raid on Europe, the bombing of Rouen. One of them, Lieut. Thomas Borders, 25, of Birmingham, had played tackle on Alabama's 1938 Rose Bowl team. The list sounded like the roster of an Ail-American eleven.

There were Edward Czeklauski of Brooklyn, George Pucilowski of Detroit, Theodore Hakenstad of Bremerton, Wash. There were Frank Rebbillo of Providence, Zane Gemmill of St. Clair, Pa., Frank Christensen of Racine, Wis., Abraham Dreiscus of Kansas City. There were the older, but not better, American names like Ray and Thacker, Walsh and Eaton and Tyler. The war was closer. And it was getting Americanized.

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