After The Dams Raid
After receiving his VC, Gibson wrote an account of his wartime career, Enemy Coast Ahead, and was sent on a lecture tour of the United States by the government, partly to keep the new hero safe. The tour was "at a time when the first American airmen were coming home 'tour expired' after 25 operations. During questions one young lady asked `Wing Commander Gibson, how many operations have you been on over Germany?' 'One hundred and seventy-four.' There was a stunned silence."
In December 1943 he was awarded the Legion of Merit (Commander) by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Read more about this topic: Guy Gibson
Famous quotes containing the word raid:
“John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their names where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper’s Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.”
—John Cournos (1881–1956)