THE B-17’S FOUR ENGINES hummed in Sergeant Elmer Ruschman’s ears on the morning of June 6, 1944, as he wondered whether the ominous clouds concealing the English Channel below would lift in time for the 429th Bomb Squadron’s assault on German pillboxes lining the Normandy coast. The 23-year-old radio operator had grown accustomed to flying in volatile weather the previous summer as the Flying Fortress crew practiced bombing runs over the wheat and mustard fields of northern Montana.
My eyes are also fixed on the sky as U.S. Highway 2 winds east down from the Rocky Mountains, fewer than 50 miles south of the Canadian border, and drops me in the rolling plains of the 1.5-million-acre Blackfeet Indian Reservation. On a clear day, a driver approaching Cut Bank International Airport— where Ruschman’s squadron trained—can spot the 60-foot-tall octogenarian airplane hangar from at least five miles out. Today, mid-April flurries obscure the view, and I miss my turn to the airport.
I turn around at Cut Bank
