The Day God Smiled

About the Book

Walter Frum had completed his 65 combat missions as lead bombadiernavigator and was headed back to the States when his buddy and mentor’s plane was shot down. He could go home but, angered, Frum joined Patton’s Third Army and was later credited with capturing 125 Nazi troops. A few weeks later, Captain Frum left Europe convinced that Gus’s death was caused by a letter from his wife. Earlier, Frum had written her, begging her to go easy on Gus until he had finished his last three missions. He’s mad about you and might do something rash.

Now, on the homeward journey, Frum was not drinking with the other vets. He was rubbing a black steel Belgian 25-caliber pistol, patting it in his side pocket along with its clip of bullets. His eyes were open but unseeing, lost in his mission as Gus’s avenger.

Assassinations are commonplace with men returning home, who have been taught to kill. JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers would perish from returned hero’s bullets.

Walter Frum was another soldier taught to kill, headed home.

About the Author

Documentary filmmaker and author: International award-winning films, Grand Prize Venice Bienalle for Artist at Work series, 5 British Sculptors Work & Talk, the cultural history They Were Ragtime, the novel, The Falling Man. In WWII, he was a highly decorated leading bombadier-navigator.

His docufiction, The Day God Smiled, chronicles three generations of an American family through leading historical events in the last half of the 20th century.

Forma, who was born and raised in New York City, still lives happily with his wife in his beloved Manhattan.