Donald Edward Garland was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
On 12 May1940, over the Albert Canal, Belgium, one bridge in particular was being used by the invading army, with protection from fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft and machine-guns. The RAF was ordered to demolish this vital bridge, and five Fairey Battle bombers were despatched with Flying Officer Garland leading the attack. They met an inferno of anti-aircraft fire, but the mission was accomplished, due to the expert leadership of Flying Officer Garland and the coolness and resource of his navigator (Thomas Gray). Only one bomber managed to get back to base, the leading aircraft and three others did not return.
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The particular bridge Garland attacked was the bridge at Vroenhoven. He died either crashing in the village of Lanaken, or in the hospital in Maastricht, Netherlands. The third man of the LAC crew did not receive a medal because he was not occupying a "decision making" position. There is a monument on the spot of the bridge.
Garland's work is characterized by Vernon Parrington as torn between a "stark realism" and an "ethical romanticism." What sets Garland apart from the other writers in the "local-color" genre is his heartfelt, passionate reaction to the environment.
Garland's own family had been broken by a failed attempt to establish themselves on the Dakota plains, and Joseph Kirkland encouraged Garland to make use of this painful experience in his fiction.
Garland, for his part, believed wholly in the single tax as a panacea for America's social ills; he was convinced that democratic progress relied heavily on such reform, which would weaken the Butlers of the world and extend a much-needed hand to the suffering agrarian Haskinses.
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