World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history. There was scarcely a country that was not either directly involved in the war or impacted by the war. Estimates on total deaths, military and civilian, for all countries affected by the war exceed 54 million; some estimates go as high as 72 million. Deaths resulted not only from bullets and bombs but from imprisonment, disease, and famine as well. From December 1, 1941 to December 31, 1946, 16.1 million Americans served in World War II and 73% of them did so overseas. Of this number, 292,000 were killed in battle, 114,000 in other ways like vehicle crashes, and 671,000 were wounded (U.S. Bureau of Census).

Many American GIs thrown into battle were hardly more than boys. "Old men start wars," as the saying goes, "and young men fight them." The average age of a U.S. combat solder was 26. Some were much younger. Audie Murphy, the most decorated combat soldier of World War II, went to war at 18. At 5 ft 5 in and 110 pounds, he was rejected by the Marines and the paratroopers but was finally accepted by the Army. Before the age of 21, he had earned the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star, as well as the French and Belgian Croix de Guerre.

Bill Rounds, about 20 years of age when he completed his own Army training, wanted to be a fighter pilot. Instead he ended up in a B-24 bomber as co-pilot to 22-year old George McGovern, the man who went on to become the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate in the race against Richard Nixon. The B-24 Liberator was demanding to fly. While today old aircraft have their own mystique, in their own day their less charming aspects had to be dealt with: no windshield wipers, so the pilot had to poke his head out a side window to see in bad weather; no heat despite temperatures of 40 or 50 below zero at 20,000 feet and higher; no bathrooms, only "relief tubes" that clogged with frozen urine; no pressurization, so intestinal cramping was common; no aisle to walk down except an 8-inch catwalk between the bombs; absolutely no room to stretch and get comfortable; and flight times of about 6 to 10 hours (Ambrose 21-22).

Stephen Ambrose's book, The Wild Blue, is largely the story about McGovern and his crew. "Rounds was handsome and enthusiastic, especially for girls and airplanes," Ambrose writes. "He was a wise-cracking prankster, the image of a devil-may-care flyboy" (Ambrose 35). McGovern himself was amazed at how quickly Rounds "could move from the air base to the business of heavy romance with total strangers" (Ambrose 97). Once Rounds was driving a car off-base and jumped out of the driver's seat in pursuit of two young women he had spotted on the sidelines. Unfortunately the brake was not secured and the car continued to move. McGovern had to climb out of the back seat and into the driver's seat to grab the wheel and miss a parked truck. By the time McGovern brought the car to a stop, McGovern related, "Bill was back with a girl on each arm" (Ambrose 97).

During flight training, McGovern conscientiously wrote to the parents of his crew members. On September 1, 1944, he sent a letter to Rounds' parents:

Scarcely a day goes by that Bill doesn't quote his dad on some subject, or voice an opinion of his mother's....we were all very green when we first started out here....We are working with a great bunch of boys. Our crew spirit is growing every day....I couldn't have asked for a better man to fly with than Bill. He hasn't complained about being assigned to a B-24 and was good in flying formation. I feel I have had more than my share of the luck in getting a good co-pilot (Ambrose 98).

Later that same month, McGovern's crew was sent to Topeka, Kansas. McGovern's wife, Eleanor, joined them. Ralph Rounds came from Wichita to throw a party for his son and the crew. This was an early opportunity for McGovern to see politics close-up. Stephen Ambrose describes Ralph Rounds' vehemence against Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt:

Mr. Rounds took an immediate liking to Eleanor, but because of the intensity of his feelings toward the president and Eleanor Roosevelt, he would not call her "Eleanor." He explained to McGovern that "I can't say that woman's name!" All through the evening, he called her "Helen." (Ambrose 103)

On December 6, 1944, less than three months after this stateside party, McGovern and his crew prepared to fly their first of 35 combat missions together. While Rounds enjoyed playing tricks in camp and chasing girls anywhere he could find them, in the air he was all business—"no jokes, no naps, no pranks" (Ambrose 177). He also proved to have his own brand of irreverent religion:

On this first flight, McGovern did all the flying. Rounds, then and later, when he was free from concern, would read a Bible. McGovern thought that a bit much given Rounds's proclivities, but sometimes would be startled when Rounds would say, "Mac, listen to this" and read something from one of the Psalms. "Damn, that's good," he would exclaim. (Ambrose 178)

Clearly, Rounds and McGovern were polar opposites. Son of a Methodist minister, McGovern saw Rounds, the son of privilege, as somewhat irreverent and irresponsible. As pilot and crew leader, McGovern felt the burden of his own responsibility. On McGovern's second combat mission, the day after he had learned of his father's death by a heart attack, McGovern and Rounds found out what war was all about when a big, jagged piece of shrapnel came through the windshield of the B-24 and landed between them, almost taking off a head in the process. From that point on, McGovern reflected on mortality. "Their lives were in my hands," he said. "A mistake on my part and we're all dead" (Ambrose 180). Rounds apparently did not find the incident as sobering. Two weeks later, on New Year's Eve 1944, the irrepressible Rounds, who was out of the hospital after a bout of pneumonia, was ready for a party. He planned to pour out a 55-gallon drum of gasoline, strike a match, and create some New Year fireworks. When he couldn't enlist Tex Ashlock, a gunner on the McGovern crew, as co-conspirator, Rounds did it himself. Ambrose describes the explosion and Rounds, with blackened face and singed eye-brows, running to Ashlock's tent. "'You know, you were right," Rounds tells Ashlock."That thing blew me about thirty feet through the air" (Ambrose 200).

A soldier on the ground saw war close-up. On May 31, 1944, General George S. Patton spoke to part of his Third Army, rallying them for the fight that lay ahead. "We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks," Patton shouted. "When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do." Looking up from the firestorms on the ground, the infantrymen still held onto a mystque and romance about the airmen. In 1918 when the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, was finally shot down behind Allied lines, British and American soldiers and aviation officers held a funeral for their worthy enemy and laid wreaths of flowers at the grave of this most successful flying ace of World War I. Even high up in the clouds, though, McGovern and his crew could not escape the dirty, cruel, and twisted aspects of war: A month before their last mission, McGovern's crew had to jettison a bomb that unexpectedly stuck in the bomb bay. They had been heading back to base and it was the last of ten bombs originally onboard. McGovern couldn't land with a live bomb in the rack. Under that scenario, neither the plane nor the crew could survive. Two of McGovern's crew went to the bay door, prying at the catches that held the bomb in place. Finally there was a huge jolt to the plane. As the bomb fell silently through the air, it landed on a farmhouse in a lush, pastoral setting of Austria:

McGovern glanced at his watch. It was high noon. He came from South Dakota. He knew what time farmers eat. "I got a sickening feeling. Here was this peaceful area. They thought they were safely out of the war zone. Nothing there, no city, no railyard, nothing. Just a peaceful farmyard. Had nothing to do with the war, just family eating a noon meal. It made me sick to my stomach." (Ambrose 231)

April 25, 1945 was the date of the last combat mission that McGovern and Rounds would fly together. In a scene almost too implausible except for a Hollywood movie, McGovern saved his entire crew by crash landing his B-24, riddled with 110 holes in its fuselage and wings (Ambrose 245). The recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, McGovern recalled Rounds and his other crew in an article in Nation almost 60 years later and reflected on what is often a misplaced righteousness in war:

As a World War II bomber pilot, I was always troubled by the title of a then-popular book, God Is My Co-pilot. My co-pilot was Bill Rounds of Wichita, Kansas, who was anything but godly, but he was a skillful pilot, and he helped me bring our B-24 Liberator through thirty-five combat missions over the most heavily defended targets in Europe. I give thanks to God for our survival, but somehow I could never quite picture God sitting at the controls of a bomber or squinting through a bombsight deciding which of his creatures should survive and which should die. It did not simplify matters theologically when Sam Adams, my navigator--and easily the godliest man on my ten-member crew--was killed in action early in the war. He was planning to become a clergyman at war's end (McGovern)

The photo below shows, starting from the left, Bill Rounds (looking like a GQ ad for casual men's wear), George McGovern, and Sam Adams. The caption for the photo from McGovern’s autobiography, Grassroots, reads as follows: “Flanking me in front of the tent where we lived in an Italian olive grove for a year is my co-pilot, Bill Rounds of Wichita (left), and my navigator, Sam Adams, Milwaukee, who was killed on a bombing raid in 1945.” Adams never wanted to fly with anyone but McGovern. However, McGovern was five missions ahead of him. Adams, who wanted to get home and begin studying to become a Presbyterian minister, volunteered to fly on other missions. On his second volunteer mission, his plane was blown apart by German flak (Ambrose 200). McGovern and Rounds waited in hope that Adams had parachuted from the aircraft, but Adams, like many others, never returned.

On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally. In the next months, as airbases closed down, McGovern and other pilots helped airlift powdered eggs, powdered milk, peanut butter, cheese, Spam and other unused food supplies to the hungry people of Europe, including surrendered German troops. Bill Rounds did the same. However, as always, Rounds was looking for fun.

Bill Rounds had flown several of the supply missions to Trieste. In his diary on May 20, he wrote, "I flew cargo in a B-24. I buzzed Venice. It was beautiful." He did other things, such as collecting a hoard of German Luger pistols. Once he talked a friend, who was a fighter pilot, into taking him to Florence in his P-47. Somehow he squeezed into the cockpit, riding piggy-back. In Florence, the two men got drunk, went to the opera, got seats in a box, and found the music to be dull. So they began to blow up condoms, tie them at the end, and throw them down on the audience. They laughed uproariously at the sight of those "balloons" coming down. (Ambrose 258)

Meanwhile, the more serious McGovern turned his thoughts to the future. Ralph Rounds had offered McGovern "a very attractive job with his company" but McGovern, fortunately for history, declined, deciding that he was more interested in learning than in making money (Ambrose 256). Returning home, McGovern earned a divinity degree and for a while was a Methodist minister. Later he completed a PhD in history from Northwestern University and became a professor at Dakota Wesleyan University. In 1956 he won election to the U.S. Congress and in 1960 to the U.S. Senate where he served for 20 years.

When he returned home, Bill Rounds went to work in his father's lumber business. Several years after the war, Bill contracted polio. The height of the polio epidemic in the United States was 1952, when approximately 60,000 cases were reported. While the polio left Rounds' body "twisted", it apparently did not "impair" him much (Agrons email). Round continued to enjoy the fast life. Upon Ralph Rounds death in 1960, Bill became the owner of the Rockport lands. While at first he was willing to go along with a long-term management plan for the Rockport forest, he made some bad investmentts and eventually sold the Rockport property in 1968 to Georgia-Pacific to cover his losses (Agrons email).

Introductory Quotations Chuck Yaeger was the first test pilot to break the sound barrier and the main subject of Tom Wolfe's book, The Right Stuff. Ken Higgins was the 19-year old radio operator on George McGovern's B-24 crew. Arthur Harris was Marshal of the Royal Air Force in the latter years of World War II. Robert A. Lewis was the co-pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Photo Credit

B-24. The Collings Foundation. This is the only restored flying B-24 in the world.

Senator George McGovern Collection, McGovern Library and DWU Archives, Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell, South Dakota.

Primary Source

Agrons, Bernie. Email to Doris M. Schoenhoff (MRC) on 19 June 2007.

Agrons, Bernie. Video interviews at Rockport Beach and Rockport Guest House, 6 May 2007, conducted by Doris M. Schoenhoff (MRC).

Secondary Sources

Ambrose, Stephen. The Wild Blue : The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

McGovern, George , "The Reason Why," Nation, 21 April 2003 (posted on www.thenation.com 3 April 2003).

U.S. Census Bureau, CB04-FFSE.07, 29 April 2004, Dedication of World War II Memorial, "Special Edition" of facts on World War II.