Book Review: Coffin Corner Boys by Carol Engle Avriett

Coffin Corner Boys: One Bomber, Ten Men, and Their Harrowing Escape from Nazi-Occupied France by Carole Engle Avriett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While they had been substitutes on other missions, this was their first mission together after arriving in England and it would turn out to be their last. Coffin Corner Boys by Carol Engle Avriett features the stories of the 10-man crew of a downed B-17 bomb in occupied France and how they survived not only through her own research but through interviews and first-person accounts by the flyers themselves.

The newly arrived crew piloted by a 20-year-old George W. Starks left for their first mission, occupying the coffin corner—so named for being the most vulnerable to fighter attack—position in the flying formation due to being the least experienced in the squadron. They were shot down and those able to parachute to safety landed in occupied France three months before D-Day, their options were to get to Switzerland or Spain before being taken as prisoners of war. As it happened all three options happened to the crew as George Starks on his own and a few others as a group were able to get to Switzerland with help, a few were able to get to Spain with help, and the rest were eventually captured by the Germans and taken to POW camps in Germany. While Avriett is the main author, Starks is the primary contributor through interviews he had given and written accounts so much so that this could have been “The George Starks Story” but as one learns when reading this book that would not have been the George Starks way when it came to his crew. All the flyers’ stories are absorbing from two crewmembers’ harrowing last moments before making it to Spain to the crewmembers who survived in POW camps or later the death match to no where in the last months of the war.

Coffin Corner Boys tells the stories of survival by a crew of a downed B-17 bomber over occupied France that keeps the reader interested in a book that is less than 250 pages long. Carol Engle Avriett using research, interviews, and written recollections from all the crewmembers—especially by George W. Starks—brings page-turning read from those interested real-life military stories.

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