Adam Makos - Devotion (Adapted for Young Adults): An Epic Story of Heroism and Friendship

Introduction

From across the hotel lobby, I saw him sitting alone, newspaper in hand.

He was a distinguished-looking older gentleman. His gray hair was swept back, his face sharp and handsome. He wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, and his luggage sat by his side.

The lobby was buzzing, but no one paid him any special attention. It was fall 2007, another busy morning in Washington, D.C. I was twenty-six at the time and trying to make it as a writer for a history magazine.

The day before, I had heard the distinguished gentleman speak at a veterans history conference. I had caught part of his story. He was a former navy fighter pilot who had done something incredible in a war long ago. It was a feat so superhuman that the captain of his aircraft carrier stated: There has been no finer act of unselfish heroism in military history.

President Harry Truman had agreed and invited this pilot to the White House. His deeds appeared in magazines and even a Hollywood movie. And now here he wassitting across the lobby from me.

I wanted to ask him for an interview but hesitated. A journalist should know their subject matter, and I was unprepared.

He had flown a fighter plane known as a Corsair, that I knew. Apparently, he had fought alongside World War II veterans. He was a member of the Greatest Generation, toothe popular name for those born between 1901 and 1927.

But he hadnt fought in World War II.

He had fought in the Korean War.

To me, the Korean War was a mystery. It is to most Americans; our history books label it the Forgotten War.

Only later would I discover that the Korean War was practically an extension of World War II, fought just five years later between nations that had once called themselves allies. Only later did I discover a surprising reality: The Greatest Generation actually fought two wars.

The gentleman was folding his newspaper to leave. It was now or never.

I mustered the nerve to introduce myself. We shook hands. We made small talk about the conference, and finally I asked the gentleman if I could interview him sometime for a magazine story. I held my breath. Maybe he was tired of interviews? Maybe I was too young to be taken seriously?

Why, sure, he said robustly. He fished a business card from his pocket and handed it to me. Only later would I realize what an opportunity hed given me. His name was Captain Tom Hudner. And thats how Devotion began.

True to his word, Tom Hudner granted me that interview. Then another, and another, until what began as a magazine story blossomed into this book. I discovered that Tom and his squadron werent your typical navy fighter pilots. They were specialists in ground attack, meaning they were trained to carry out airstrikes against the enemyand to give backup to Marines who fought battles on the ground. So what began as the story of fighter pilots became a bigger story: an interwoven tale of flyboys in the air, Marines on the ground, and the heroes behind the scenesthe wives and families on the home front.

Over the next seven years, from 2007 to 2014, my staff and I interviewed Tom and the other real-life characters of his story more times than we could count. All told, we interviewed more than sixty former navy carrier pilots, Marines, their wives, their siblings.

Over those seven years we worked as a teamthe books subjects, a team of historians, my staff, and Ito piece together this story. Our goal was for you not just to read Devotion but to experience it. To construct a narrative of rich detail, we needed to zoom in close. Our questions for the subjects were countless. When a man encountered something good or bad, what did he think? What facial gestures corresponded with his feelingsdid his eyes lift with hope? Did his face sink with sorrow? What actions did he take next?

More than anything, we asked: What did you say? I love dialogue. Theres no more powerful means to tell a story, but an author of a nonfiction book cant just make up what he wants a character to say. This is a true story, after all, so I relied on the dialogue recorded in the past and the memories of our subjects, who were there.

I owe a debt of gratitude to these real-life characters of Devotion, people youll soon meet and never forgetTom, Fletcher, Lura, Daisy, Marty, Koenig, Red, Wilkie, and so many others. Devotion was crafted by their memories as much as it was written by me.

This book also required another level of research. I needed to see the books settings for myselfall of them. So I hit the road and followed the characters footsteps to the places where they grew up, flew, and foughtfrom Massachusetts to Mississippi, to the French Riviera and Monaco, and back to the battlefields of the Korean War. I had been to South Korea before, but never to that mysterious land above itNorth Korea.

But before the book was done, my staff and I went there, too. We traveled to China and then into that misty place known as the hermit kingdom, the land where some Americans enter and later fail to reemerge.

As the book neared completion, I struggled for a way to describe this interwoven story to you, the reader. Devotion is a war story, sure. But its also a