Author: Mark Stuart Ellison

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0595319165

"I enjoyed Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel so much I could hardly put it down. It ought to be widely read as an excellent way of recalling World War II." -Hans L. Trefousse Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York "Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel paints an absorbing picture of the daily life of America's greatest generation. Vets will find themselves reliving their own experiences-the boredom, the loneliness, the fear, and the role of fate in life and death. For the rest of us, Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel is social history at its best." -Dr. Stanley J. Michalak Senior Associate, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia Professor Emeritus of Government, Franklin and Marshall College "A vivid story brought to realistic life." -Midwest Book Review "Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel delicately mixes fiction and history to tell the story of an American air corpsman during World War II. His precious letters enhance a grand book deserving warm appreciation. People from my hometown will be as moved and fascinated as many Americans who will, no doubt, eagerly read it." -Jacques Wynants, Belgian Historian Author of Verviers 1940 and Verviers Libéré PLOT SUMMARY On October 7, l942, Don Quix enlists in the Air Corps. He's slated to be an aerial gunner, but his flying dreams are shattered when he's caught AWOL with buddy Ken Jackson. Don manages to become a radio truck supervisor in a fighter control squadron while Ken goes to a demolition unit. As an army engineer, Ken barely survives D-Day on Normandy's "Bloody Omaha." During a baseball game in a French forest, Don moves his head slightly, saving himself from a sniper's bullet. Arriving in Verviers, Belgium in September 1944, Don and his fellow radio men endure frequent buzz bomb attacks. Due to a miscalculation in army strategy, they find themselves on the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Don's reunion with Ken, now a tech sergeant with a bomb disposal outfit, is marred by tragedy, dampening Don's torrid love affair with beautiful seamstress Denise Vervier. Denise's husband, sent to a forced labor camp in 1940, is presumed dead. When he unexpectedly returns, Don and Denise face a heartbreaking choice.