In September and October, the StoryCorps traveling booth was in Rapid City collecting conversations between family and friends. Among those who stopped by was 93-year-old Chuck Childs.
He was born in 1920 near the Badlands of North Dakota. He spent his teenage years in the Great Depression hopping freight trains, hoboing around the Western United States and playing music in Big Bands. Before World War II he joined the Army Air Corps and ended up flying a B-17 in bombing missions over Germany. He later flew in the Berlin Airlift and then in the Korean War. Childs earned two distinguished flying crosses for bombing missions in World War II. Here he tells the story of those missions.
