Many of the vets I interviewed asked me why I was interested in World War II. I never forgot when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I was five years old and standing at the end of the kitchen counter next to the black art deco style radio. The announcer was very loud and excited but I didn’t know what he was talking about. My mother was at the other end of the counter standing in front of the kitchen sink washing a dish. All of a sudden she turned off the water and came over to stand in front of the radio. I had never seen a look on her face like that before. She called my dad to come here. Both of them stood in front of the radio with these shocked and unbelieving faces! I never forgot that experience. We next went to Sunday school and church and I remember all of the adults were talking to each other in low tones with stunned looks on their faces.
Soldiers of Memory explores the complexities and ambiguities of World War II experience from the Estonian veterans' point of view. Since the end of World War II, contesting veteran cultures have developed on the basis of different war experiences and search for recognition in the public arena of history. The book reflects on this process by combining witness accounts with their critical analysis from the aspect of post-Soviet remembrance culture and politics. The first part of the book examines the persistent remembrance of World War II. Eight life stories of Estonian men are presented, revealing different war trajectories: mobilised between 1941 and 1944, the narrators served in the Red Army and its work battalions, fought against the Soviet Union in the Finnish Army, Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe, the German political police force and Wehrmacht, deserted from the Red Army, were held in German and Soviet prison and repatriation camps. The second part of the book offers a critical analysis of the stories from a multidisciplinary point of view: what were the possible life trajectories for an Estonian soldier under Soviet and German occupations in the 1940s? How did the soldiers cope with the extreme conditions of the Soviet rear? How are the veterans' memories situated in terms of different memory regimes and what is their position in the post-Soviet Estonian society? What role does ethnic and generational identity play in the formation of veterans' war remembrance? How do individuals cope with war trauma and guilt in life stories? Offering a wide range of empirical material and its critical analysis, Soldiers of Memory will be important for military, oral and cultural historians, sociologists, cultural psychologists, and anybody with an interest in the history of World War II, post/communism, and cultural construction of memory in contemporary Eastern European societies.
Out of the carnage of World War II comes an unforgettable tale about defying the odds and finding hope in the most harrowing of circumstances. Wheels of Courage tells the stirring story of the soldiers, sailors, and marines who were paralyzed on the battlefield during World War II-at the Battle of the Bulge, on the island of Okinawa, inside Japanese POW camps-only to return to a world unused to dealing with their traumatic injuries. Doctors considered paraplegics to be "dead-enders" and "no-hopers," with the life expectancy of about a year. Societal stigma was so ingrained that playing sports was considered out-of-bounds for so-called "crippled bodies." But servicemen like Johnny Winterholler, a standout athlete from Wyoming before he was captured on Corregidor, and Stan Den Adel, shot in the back just days before the peace treaty ending the war was signed, refused to waste away in their hospital beds. Thanks to medical advances and the dedication of innovative physicians and rehabilitation coaches, they asserted their right to a life without limitations. The paralyzed veterans formed the first wheelchair basketball teams, and soon the Rolling Devils, the Flying Wheels, and the Gizz Kids were barnstorming the nation and filling arenas with cheering, incredulous fans. The wounded-warriors-turned-playmakers were joined by their British counterparts, led by the indomitable Dr. Ludwig Guttmann. Together, they triggered the birth of the Paralympic Games and opened the gymnasium doors to those with other disabilities, including survivors of the polio epidemic in the 1950s.Much as Jackie Robinson's breakthrough into the major leagues served as an opening salvo in the civil rights movement, these athletes helped jump-start a global movement about human adaptability. Their unlikely heroics on the court showed the world that it is ability, not disability, that matters most. Off the court, their push for equal rights led to dramatic changes in how civilized societies treat individuals with disabilities: from kneeling buses and curb cutouts to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Their saga is yet another lasting legacy of the Greatest Generation, one that has been long overlooked. Drawing on the veterans' own words, stories, and memories about this pioneering era, David Davis has crafted a narrative of survival, resilience, and triumph for sports fans and athletes, history buffs and military veterans, and people with and without disabilities.
Charley Valeras own father had spent almost 4 years fighting during WWII and lived out the rest of his life without a story to tell. To share stories that hadnt been discussed in decades, Valera conducted heartfelt interviews using video to pen and chronicled them in a way to bring the reader into the battlefield, aircraft or destroyer. A combination between The Greatest Generation and Saving Private Ryan.
"This book was written to provide and preserve an oral history of the eighty-four men and women who were interviewed...sharing their memories of World War II. The stories include seventy-six veterans and eight women who served as USO volunteers, Red Cross service workers, a Holocaust survivor, and women who worked on the home front...All of the veterans and the women who served in various support roles have a connection to Indiana"--from the Preface.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, LOS ANGELES TIMES, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER “A band of brothers in an American tank . . . Makos drops the reader back into the Pershing’s turret and dials up a battle scene to rival the peak moments of Fury.” —The Wall Street Journal From the author of the international bestseller A Higher Call comes the riveting World War II story of an American tank gunner’s journey into the heart of the Third Reich, where he will meet destiny in an iconic armor duel—and forge an enduring bond with his enemy. When Clarence Smoyer is assigned to the gunner’s seat of his Sherman tank, his crewmates discover that the gentle giant from Pennsylvania has a hidden talent: He’s a natural-born shooter. At first, Clarence and his fellow crews in the legendary 3rd Armored Division—“Spearhead”—thought their tanks were invincible. Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit. After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater. But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany. Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans. As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time. Praise for Spearhead “A detailed, gripping account . . . the remarkable story of two tank crewmen, from opposite sides of the conflict, who endure the grisly nature of tank warfare.” —USA Today (four out of four stars) “Strong and dramatic . . . Makos established himself as a meticulous researcher who’s equally adept at spinning a good old-fashioned yarn. . . . For a World War II aficionado, it will read like a dream.” —Associated Press
In one volume, three unforgettable memoirs that capture the brutality, fear, and heroism of the American land, air, and sea war in the Pacific. “Every generation is a secret society,” former Marine pilot Samuel Hynes wrote. “The secret that my generation—the one that came of age during the Second World War—shared was simply the war itself.” This volume brings together the powerful memoirs of three Americans who came of age fighting in the Pacific and who survived to tell their stories. Remarkable literary achievements that capture history with the immediacy of lived experience, all three—presented here in an illustrated collector’s edition—are classics of the modern literature of war. In With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (1981) Marine veteran E. B. Sledge bears unflinching witness to the horror, fear, and degradation of prolonged close-quarters combat. A mortarman serving in a front-line rifle company, Sledge survived thirty days of nightmarish fighting on the remote coral island of Peleliu, where heat, thirst, filth, and fear and hatred of the Japanese “eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.” On Okinawa he faced an even greater test of endurance amid deep mud, driving rain, and incessant shelling, as men “fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.” Written with precision and clarity, Sledge’s memoir is a haunting testament to his struggle to hold on to decency and sanity, and a moving tribute to the esprit de corps of the U.S. Marines. Flights of Passage (1988) is Samuel Hynes’ evocative and elegiac memoir of his “fairly ordinary flying war.” A “true believer in the religion of flight,” he writes with lyricism, candor, and humor about the joys and dangers of his stateside training as a dive-bomber pilot, the beauty and excitement he experienced flying in combat over the Ryukyu Islands, and his wartime education in the realities of friendship, sex, love, and sudden, random death. Alvin Kernan enlisted in the Navy in 1941 at age seventeen to escape life on a failing Wyoming ranch. Crossing the Line (1994, revised 2007) is a vividly written account of his remarkable service on three aircraft carriers, first as an aviation ordnanceman and then as an air gunner. A perceptive and thoughtful observer of the sailor’s life at sea and on shore, Kernan witnessed the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack and the launching of the Doolittle Raid, armed planes at Midway, survived the sinking of the Hornet, and flew on the final mission of the fighter ace Butch O’Hare. With thirty-two pages of photographs and endpaper maps.
