Free Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand Page B

conservation. In ROTC, his captain had cal ed him “the most unfit, lousy-looking soldier” he’d ever seen. Ignoring the captain’s assessment, Phil ips had enlisted in the air corps, where he’d proven to be a born airman. At home, they cal ed him Al en; in the air corps, they cal ed him Phil ips.
    The first thing people tended to notice about Phil ips was that they hadn’t noticed him earlier. He was so recessive that he could be in a room for a long time before anyone realized that he was there. He was smal ish, short-legged. Some of the men cal ed him Sandblaster because, said one pilot, “his fanny was so close to the ground.” For unknown reasons, he wore one pant leg markedly shorter than the other. He had a tidy, pleasant, boyish face that tended to blend with the scenery. This probably contributed to his invisibility, but what real y did it was his silence. Phil ips was an amiable man and was, judging by his letters, highly articulate, but he preferred not to speak. You could park him in a crowd of chattering partygoers and he’d emerge at evening’s end having never said a word. People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn’t spoken.

    Russel Al en Phil ips. Courtesy of Karen Loomis
    If he had a boiling point, he never reached it. He rol ed along with every inexplicable order from his superiors, every foolish act of his inferiors, and every abrasive personality that military life could throw at an officer. He dealt with every manner of adversity with calm, adaptive acceptance. In a crisis, Louie would learn, Phil ips’s veins ran icewater.
    Phil ips had one consuming passion. When he had entered col ege, his father had taken a new pastorship in Terre Haute. There, Phil ips’s sister had introduced him to a girl from the church choir, a col ege student named Cecile Perry, known as Cecy. She had blond hair, a curvy figure, a buoyant disposition, a quick mind, and a family cat named Chopper. She was studying to be a teacher. At a prom in Terre Haute, Al en kissed Cecy. He was a goner, and so was she.
    On a Saturday night in November 1941, when he left for the air corps, Phil ips spent five last minutes with Cecy at the Indianapolis train station. When the fighting was over, he promised, he’d make her his bride. He kept her photo on his footlocker and wrote her love letters several times a week. When she turned twenty-one, he sent her his pay and asked her to find an engagement ring. Al en’s ring was soon on Cecy’s finger.
    In June 1942, just after her graduation, Cecy traveled to Phoenix to see Al en get his wings. Crazy in love, the two talked about running off to get hitched right then, but reconsidered, deciding to marry at his next training venue and live together there until he was deployed. That venue was Ephrata, and when Phil ips saw it, he kicked himself. “I’ve wished 100 times that we had gotten married when we were at Phoenix,” he wrote to her, “but I wouldn’t ask you now to come out here + live in a dump like Ephrata.” Again, they postponed their wedding. In the fal , Al en’s training would be finished. Then, they hoped, they’d have one more chance to see each other before he went to war.
    In Ephrata, Louie and Phil ips fel in together. Phil ips floated along contentedly in Louie’s chatty bonhomie; Louie liked Phil ips’s quiet steadiness, and thought him the kindest person he’d ever met. They never had a single argument and were almost never apart. Phil ips cal ed Louie “Zamp”; Louie cal ed Phil ips “Phil.”
    Phil’s crew. Left to right: Phil ips, temporary copilot Gross, Zamperini, Mitchel , Douglas, Pil sbury, and Glassman. Moznette, Lambert, and Brooks are not pictured. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini
    The rest of Phil’s bomber crew assembled. Serving as engineer and top turret gunner would be twenty-two-year-old Stanley Pil sbury, who’d been running his family’s Maine farm before joining up. The other engineer was Virginia