I read Boyington's account, and I've read others accounts of the same episodes, and Boyington comes across as a self-serving [bleep] who should have (and WAS) thrown out of the AVG, and they even made him pay his own way back to the US after getting the boot out of the AVG. Chennault even told US authorities to draft Boyington back into the service as an infantryman, Pappy's" exploits:" were really unappreciated by the people who mattered, his fellow pilots of the AVG. He was a drunk and a nasty drunk at that. Not the hero as told by Boyington and TV shows.
Maybe so but,
My uncle Horace was a Marine in the Pacific who served under Boyington. He was an enlisted man and was always proud of the fact that he had been with Boyington in the war.
Although he didn't think much of the T.V. program,he did believe Boyington was a good Marine and a good combat leader.
