Biography
A firefighter before the war, Kingsley joined the Army Air Forces from Portland, Oregon in April 1942, and by June 23, 1944 was a second lieutenant serving as a bombardier in the 97th Bombardment Group, Fifteenth Air Force. On that day, during a raid over Ploieşti, Romania, his aircraft was badly damaged and several crewmen wounded by fire from enemy fighters. When the pilot gave the order to bail out of the crippled plane, Kingsley voluntarily gave up his parachute to SSgt. Michael Sullivan, whose chute had been lost. Kingsley was killed when the aircraft crashed a short time later. For these actions, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor ten months later, on April 9, 1945.
Kingsley, aged 25 at his death, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.
Read more about this topic: David R. Kingsley
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)