Troy pilot’s WWII tale informs TV series
William Styles’ daughter shared his POW journal and other mementos with ‘Masters of the Air’ creators
Leading up to the series premiere of “Masters of the Air,” Linda Berkery kept getting the same question: “Will your dad be in it?”
It wasn’t because her father was an actor who could be among the featured extras in the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks-produced World War II show. It was because her father William Styles was a lieutenant in the 100th Bomb Group, a “Mighty Eighth” Air Force fortress and the focus of the show. His story, now carried by Berkery, helped inform the show’s writing.
On Jan. 25, the answer to that oftrepeated question laid in fragments scattered across her dining room table in Latham — fading snapshots of men in uniform, some carefully labeled in Styles’ handwriting; a silent map of German occupied zones printed on a silk scarf, now fraying slightly at its edges; letters and telegrams home; and a prisoner-of-war journal that, against all odds, found its way back to Styles, then to the historians and writers of “Masters of the Air.”