"I Wonder at Times How We Keep Going Here": The 1941-42 Philippines Diary of Lt. John P. Burns, 21St Pursuit Squadron‪.‬

In my research in the 1980s for Doomed at the Start--the story of the 24th Pursuit Group in the ill-fated Philippines campaign of 1941-1942--one of my main sources of information were the entries in the diaries kept by a number of the pursuit pilots. The diaries were invaluable in affording me an insight into the day-by-day feelings and experiences of the young men caught up in the depressing events of the five-month campaign. However, for the experiences of the pilots assigned to two of the Pursuit squadrons--the 21st and 34th--who had arrived less than three weeks before the initial Japanese aerial attack on the Philippines of December 8, 1941, I was handicapped by the lack of any diaries and had to rely on memoirs and correspondence years after the events they experienced. In February 2006, while assisting John Lukacs, who is preparing the first biography of Ed Dyess, the commanding officer of the 21st Pursuit Squadron whose POW experiences and escape made him famous during World War II, I learned that John Burns--one of the 21st Pursuit pilots--did keep a diary and that it was in the possession of his younger brother, Reverend Richard Lee Burns. Reverend Burns kindly made a copy of it for Lukacs and allowed him to make a copy for me too.