Love and war

Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 1, 2016

Over the past 17 years, author and historian John Bruning — who lives in Independence — has authored or co-authored 20 nonfiction books with primarily military settings and stories. They recount battles and heroes from World War II to Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, and three of his titles have landed on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

Bruning’s lifelong interest in aviation and military history was sparked by his father when Bruning was a child.

“I grew up surrounded by thousands of his airplane models and hundreds of military history books,” Bruning recalled.

He went on to study history at the University of Oregon and then worked as the aviation historian for a video game company that developed flight simulator games, before taking a leap of faith and quitting that job in 1998 to write full time.

While never serving in the military himself, Bruning spent time as an embedded photojournalist with the Oregon Army National Guard in New Orleans in 2005 during relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and again in 2010 during combat operations in Afghanistan, where he survived a forced helicopter landing behind Taliban lines.

However Bruning said the focus of his writing changed significantly after losing someone very close to him in Iraq in 2009.

“I wasn’t sure if I would be able to write military history anymore,” he said. “The way I was able to do it was by writing love stories cloaked in military stories.”

Bruning’s latest book, “Indestructible: One Man’s Rescue Mission That Changed the Course of WWII,” certainly fits that mold.

It tells the true story of renegade American pilot Paul Irving “Pappy” Gunn, who revolutionized military aviation with the creation of aerial gunships and the technique of skip bombing, while fighting to get back to the Philippines and rescue his wife and four children who were imprisoned there by the Japanese.

While Gunn’s swashbuckling ways and homespun ingenuity may have been enough of a story in themselves, Bruning was equally interested in Gunn’s personal journey.

“The story I wanted to tell in ‘Indestructible’ was the experience of his family,” said Bruning. “My favorite parts of the book are when you see his wife, Polly, fighting for her children and the children coming of age in the internment camps.”

The emotional heart of the story is the love the Gunns maintain for each other under the most extreme circumstances, along with the paternal role Gunn takes on with the young men under his command while he is separated from his family.

During Bruning’s presentation Saturday at Sunriver Books & Music (see “If you go”), he will show some of the photos that didn’t make it into the photo insert in the book, giving more background and insight on the family.

His extensive research for “Indestructible” started back in the 1990s while he was working on one of his first books about another ace pilot from the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II, Colonel Gerald R. Johnson. Bruning kept encountering stories and information about Gunn that he filed away.

When his daughter Renee encouraged him to write Gunn’s story, Bruning spent another two years in 2014 and 2015 researching and writing “Indestructible.” He took a two-month road trip to meet Gunn’s son, visit his home town in Arkansas and gather records from the Macarthur Memorial, the National Archives and various other sources. He ended up with so much previously unpublished information he was forced to cut a lot of content, including a whole chapter about Gunn’s stint as a pilot for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Just released in October, “Indestructible” has already caught the eye of Hollywood with Sony Pictures optioning the film rights and Robert Rodat, the screenwriter for “Saving Private Ryan,” working on a script. But even if the movie doesn’t come to fruition, Bruning is happy to have brought attention to the Gunn family’s story.

“The Gunns were able to overcome so much,” said Bruning. “If they can inspire someone today, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”