MOON OF ICE
- MOON OF ICE - An acrylic painting on a 16 x 20 size canvas board. It appears on the cover of "Amazing, March, 1982," and illustrates the story, "Moon of Ice," by Brad Linaweaver.
When I was working on the figure of "Hitler" in this painting, my mind went back to my youth, when I was 12 years old. World War 2 was going on and every day seemed filled with danger; in school we practiced huddling under our desks when an air-raid test signal went off. In my First-Aid class we practised making tourniquets to keep blood from flowing out of the body. While some girls knitted 9 inch squares of wool, other girls sewed the squares together to make blankets for our men in service. Boys like me carved "spotter" airplane models for servicemen so they could learn to differentiate between allied and enemy planes flying overhead. Women went to work in factories to build jeeps, planes, ships and tanks, and everyone was filled with patriotism.
The war continued, and when I became 14 years old I joined the Civil Air Patrol Cadets in high school expecting someday to join the Army Air Force and fly a P-40 fighter plane in combat against a German or a Japanese enemy pilot. But just one year later the war was over and I never got to do what I swore I would do when I was that 12 year old kid; I swore to avenge the death of Colin Kelly.
Colin Kelly is considered to be the first American hero of WW2. A few days after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec.7, 1941, he flew his B-17 bomber out to sea to attack the Japanese fleet. With just 3 bombs he managed to sink one of the ships before Japanese fighter planes got to him. He struggled with the controls, managing to hold the plane steady until the last of the 6 men in his crew bailed out. And then, while he was still at the controls, the Japanese fighter planes got to him again and his plane blew up. Colin Kelly was my hero back then, and I still think of him, every December 7.
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