My Life in the Service

Before he was a celebrated politician, Senator George McGovern served as a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II. Based in Italy, he flew 35 combat missions over Europe between 1944 and 1945, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving the lives of his crew. My Life in the Service features a facsimile of the diary George McGovern kept from his first days of basic training until the end of the war. Hastily jotted down in his exacting hand whenever he had the impulse to put his thoughts on paper, the pages convey the immediacy of McGovern’s wartime experiences. The lined sheets are decorated with illustrations and aphorisms on battle and democracy that powerfully evoke the era while they foretell the man George McGovern would become. (For ease of reading, a typed transcription of the diary is included.) As Andrew Bacevich states in his introduction, “We also come to understand why McGovern, having experienced combat at first hand, was not in later life among those given to glorifying war or to sending their fellow citizens to fight when not absolutely necessary.”

George McGovern

Before he was a celebrated politician, or even a college graduate, Senator George McGovern served as a B-52 bomber pilot in World War II. Based out of Italy, McGovern flew thirty-five combat missions over German-occupied Europe from 1943-44, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for his ingenuity in the face of adversity. After the war, Sen. McGovern returned to his family and his studies, becoming a professor of history and political science in his native South Dakota. He left the academy to enter politics full-time in 1955, beginning a decades long career by successfully bolstering the state’s Democratic Party. Sen. McGovern was elected to Congress in 1956 and 1958, and then to the Senate in 1962, an office he would hold for eighteen years. He was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1972.