The Resilient Warrior

By Jerry Yellin

It has been said that the only warriors who do not suffer after combat are those who were killed. I cannot attest to that for all battle tested warriors but I certainly can for one---me. Some years ago a young, 13 year old eighth grade student from the Fairfield, Iowa Middle School once asked me, "Were you wounded in t

• Language: English
• Publisher: TotalRecall Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781590957134

Jerry Yellin

Captain Jerry Yellin was an Army Air Corps veteran who served in WWII between 1941 and 1945. Yellin enlisted two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on his 18th Birthday. After graduating from Luke Air Field as a fighter pilot in August of 1943, he spent the remainder of the war flying P-40, P- 47 and P-51 combat missions in the Pacific with the 78th Fighter Squadron. He participated in the first land based fighter mission over Japan on April 7, 1945, and also has the unique distinction of having flown the final combat mission of World War II on August 14, 1945 – the day the war ended. On that mission, his wing-man (Phillip Schlamberg) was the last man killed in a combat mission in WWII. After the war ended, Jerry struggled with severe undiagnosed PTSD. He always wondered why he survived, while so many of his comrades died during the war.

Book preview

Chapter 1:

My War

I was seventeen on December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It felt as if someone had invaded my home, and I had to do something about it. Two months later—on my eighteenth birthday, February 15, 1942—I enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet in waiting. In August 1942, after taking all of the examinations, physical and mental, I was inducted into the Army Air Corps. My training took me to Nashville, Santa Ana, Thunderbird Field in Phoenix, Marana Army Air Base in Tucson, and Luke Field in Phoenix, where I graduated as a fighter pilot in August 1943. I joined the 78th Fighter Squadron on Oahu in October 1943.

I quickly became familiar with death. In December, Bill Sutherland, the CO of the 78th, was killed in a midair collision with Howard Edmondson. Edmondson was killed a few months later when he flew his plane into the sea. Ed Green lost his life when he couldn’t pull his P-47 out of a flat spin, and both Bob Ferris and John Lindner died when their P-51’s exploded over Bellows Field. I attended services for all five of my friends and squadron mates. I mourned their losses but never thought it could happen to me.

On March 7, 1945, our squadron landed on Iwo Jima, on a dirt runway at the foot of Mount Suribachi. I looked out at the landscape as I taxied my P-51 Mustang to our parking area, and saw huge piles of dead Japanese soldiers being pushed into mass graves. The sight and smell is indelibly imprinted on my mind. It was a shocking sight for a young man to see as he entered his 21st