Chloe Melas Re-Releases The Book Luck Of The Draw

Published: March 1, 2023, 4 p.m.

Last year, Melas and her family visited the set of Masters of the Air, the Playtone (Tom Hanks)/Amblin Entertainment (Stephen Spielberg) Apple+ series coming in early 2023. Her grandfather is the basis of the character featured in the series and planed by Jonas Moore. Now, along with her mother and grandmother, she has shepherded the reissue of Murphy's 2001 memoir, LUCK OF THE DRAW: My Story of the Air War in Europe (St. Martin's Press Griffin; on sale February 28, 2023; $18.99 USD) to coincide with the premiere of the series. "My grandfather once told me he spent the rest of the life walking with ghosts but looking back with pride," Melas writes in the foreword she co-wrote with her mother, Elizabeth Murphy and with the support of her grandmother, Ann Murphy. "Our family's goal is to keep Frank's memory and that of his fellow men alive and pass on the greatness to the next generation." Murphy was a member of the 100th Bomb Group, one of five B-17 bomb groups sent to England in the spring of 1043 to form the new 4th Bomber Wing. He landed in England in June and by the time his plane was shot down in October, her served 126 hours in combat over Europe, experiencing some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. In 2001, Murphy wrote about his combat tour, "It lasted only four months - four months, however, in which were compressed many of the most exciting, and all of the most frightening and life-threatening, experiences I have known in my entire life." Given today's technology, stepping into a WWII vintage B-17 is akin to entering a tin can - one that flies and is manned by a crew of ten. Four of the crew members were officers in the front, the pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, and the navigator - the position held by Murphy. The navigator, Murphy wrote, "climbed aboard lugging a briefcase crammed with maps, Mercator charts, books, paper, pencils, drawing instruments, a hand-held calculator, and strange looking optical instruments. He was invariably hunched over his narrow shelf-like table in front of which was a repeater set of basic flight instruments and radio controls. He looked at his watch constantly, drew lines, and scrobbled notes to himself on the papers, maps, and charts in front of him, much like Scrooge's wretched drudge, Bob Cratchet, in Dicken's classic tale, A Christmas Carol." In typical self-deprecating style, Murphy neglected to mention that he also led them to their target and got them home safely.