Excerpt
Excerpt from pg. 77: In the first few months of training twenty-three men resigned--not only pilots but ground personnel as well. Some were fired for insubordination, drinking too much, or failing to fulfill their duties. Some pilots could not or did not want to fly the P-40s. Some could not adjust to the climate or the life in a strange land. Some were simply afraid of combat. Others missed their homeland and families. Chennault's feelings were summed up in a letter to the Navy requested by Lauchlin Currie. Apparently word had reached the President about resignations and he wanted documentation...
Toungoo, Burma
21 October 1941
The Chief of Naval Operations
The Navy Department
Washington, D.C., USA
Sir:
The enclosed forms cannot, unfortunately, tell the precise story behind the broken contracts of the men who have left the Group. Generally speaking, these fall into two classes. The first, and in my opinion the smaller class, is made up of men either too sanguine or too shortsighted to envisage the conditions of the service for which they were volunteering, although these were carefully explained to them.