THE FALCON OF MALTA

摘要

In a few short weeks he downed 27 Axis aircraft. A deeply religious, nonsmoking teetotaler who eschewed profanity and possessed little more than a grade school education, George Beurling was obsessed with flying and shooting and confessed to love to partner his passions. Canada's most visible war hero in 1943 ruined his fundraising war bond tour by telling a reporter, "One of my can shells caught him in the face and blew his head right off.... I must say it gives you a feeling of satisfaction when you actually blow their brains out." The public knew him as "Buzz" Beurling, but his fellow airmen called him "Screwball." He first took the controls of an airplane at 12, soloed at 14 and was licensed by 17. "Ever since I can remember," he later wrote, "airplanes and to get up in them into the free sky had been the beginning and end of my thoughts and ambitions."