LOST OVER LUZON
John Wesley Evatt, Bombing Squadron Nineteen and the Wife Who Waited
By Danny R. Evatt
They had been married nineteen days when John Evatt boarded a train with Bombing Squadron Nineteen and left for the Pacific.
John was a Texas farm boy turned naval aviator, flying the difficult SB2C Helldiver from aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington. Jeanne remained in Long Beach, where their new marriage continued through letters delayed by distance, censorship, and war. John wrote about the empty hours, the danger he could only hint at, and the life they planned when he returned. Jeanne answered every silence, sometimes sending a dozen letters between mail calls.
Then, after an attack on an airfield near Manila, John was reported missing.
Drawn from their surviving letters, squadron diaries and memoirs, and official Navy records, Lost Over Luzon tells the true story of one young pilot, the wife who waited for him, and a marriage lived almost entirely by mail across an ocean.
A work of documentary narrative nonfiction. Publication details will be announced here.
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