As I Remember It
The memoir Jack Cline wrote with his daughter Cynthia, and how it squares with the paperwork.
In 1997 Jack Cline published As I Remember It, written with his daughter Cynthia S. Partington — his account of the years the orders only sketch, with the letters he sent home to Mickey set into it, and the thirty-minute briefing he gave the AAF Tactical Center board in Orlando when he came back from the Mediterranean.
Checked line by line against the file, it holds up unusually well. The dates match. The flight times match to the minute. His groomsmen’s home towns match the graduation order. And it answers two questions the paperwork leaves open: what put him on the ground for seven weeks in the autumn of 1943, and what happened after the last document runs out in November 1946.
The full text is not here yet. It needs a pass of tending before it goes up. In the meantime, the comparison between the memoir and the record — what is confirmed, what the memoir fills in, and the handful of places where the two disagree — is set out in section 07 of the service record.