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Chasing Ghosts is a gripping narrative about a daughter's quest to achieve reconciliation with her father during the last years of his life when he finally broke his silence about his military experience before and during World War II. When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn't realize her quest would take ten years or that it would yield more revelations about the man--and herself--and the effect of his military service upon their family than she'd ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn't merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and reviled because of his mistreatment of her. Although she at first believes she wants to uncover his story, the story of a man who was no hero and who was adversely affected by his military service, she learns that what she really wants is to recover the man he was before he went away. As DeSalvo and her father uncover his past piece by piece, bit by bit, she learns about the dreams of a working-class man who entered the military in the late 1930s during peacetime to better himself, a man who wanted to become a pilot. She learns about what it was like for him to participate in war games in the Pacific prior to the war, and the war's devastating toll. She learns about what it was like for her parents to fall in love, set up house, marry, and have children during this cataclysmic time. And as the pieces of her father's life fall into place as DeSalvo works to piece together the puzzle of everything she's learned about this time, she finds herself finally able to understand him. Chasing Ghosts is an original contribution to the understanding of workingclass World War II veterans who did not conventionally distinguish themselves through \"heroic\" actions and whose lives were not until recently considered worthy of historical or cultural attention. It personalizes the history of those sailors who served in the Navy aboard aircraft carriers and on islands in the Pacific prior to and during World War II and contributes to the current vital conversation about the often-unrecognized effects of war and its traumas upon those men and their families. It reveals the lifelong devastating consequences of military service on those men and women who fell in love, married, and set up house. And it reveals the complexity of what it is like to be the daughter of a father who has gone to war.

Frederick R. Gabriel graduated from medical school in 1940, entered the US Army, and was assigned to the newly-created 39th Station Hospital. His letters from the Pacific theater—especially from Guadalcanal, Angaur, and Saipan—capture the everyday life of a soldier physician. His son, Michael P. Gabriel, a professional historian, has faithfully preserved, edited, and annotated that correspondence to add a new dimension to our understanding of the social history of World War II, which he presents here in  Physician Soldier: The South Pacific Letters of Captain Fred Gabriel from the 39th Station Hospital .  Like most wartime hospitals, the 39th Station Hospital was positioned in a rear area and saw limited direct action. And like most wartime hospitals, the 39th Station Hospital spent each day confronting the injuries and casualties of frontline combat. Gabriel supervised a ward and oversaw the unit’s laboratory, serving a hospital that provided care to four hundred patients at a time. Gabriel’s letters home capture this experience and more, providing a revealing look into day-to-day life in the Pacific theater. He discusses the training of medical officers and female nurses, recreational activities such as Bob Hope’s USO show, and even his thoughts on the death of FDR, the end of the war in Europe, and ultimately the horrors of the atomic bomb.

A blend of memoir, history, and oral storytelling, The Time Left between Us bridges the gap between the generation who fought World War II and the generation who has forgotten it. Alicia DeFonzo takes an unplanned visit to the Normandy beaches while staying in Paris. Her grandfather \"Del\" (Anthony DelRossi) had fought in World War II, and she becomes distraught after realizing how little she knows about the war and his experiences, which until then had remained largely unspoken. Across landscapes and lifetimes DeFonzo retraces her beloved grandfather's tour through World War II Europe. The eighty-four-year-old DelRossi recounts stories as an army combat engineer surviving major campaigns, including Normandy, St. Lo, the Bulge, Hürtgenwald, and Remagen, then liberating concentration camps. In this braided narrative, we see DeFonzo's childhood in a traditional Italian American family with an erratic Marine Corps father and a beloved grandfather. Spanning ten years, DeFonzo's travels and research take an unexpected detour after she inherits a Nazi Waffen-SS diary from her grandfather, and, in her final trip, returns to Germany to confront the diary owner's family. DeFonzo's and her grandfather's stories merge when Del undergoes open-heart surgery and Alicia must be the one to safeguard the past. Both nostalgic and gripping, The Time Left between Us is a meditation on how deeply connected the past is to the present and how the truth-and what we remember of it-are fragmented.

\" With a foreword by Stephen Ambrose and a preface by Franklin D. Anderson Forrest Pogue (1912-1996) was undoubtedly one of the greatest World War II combat historians. Born and educated in Kentucky, he is perhaps best known for his definitive four-volume biography of General George C. Marshall. But, as Pogue's War makes clear, he was also a pioneer in the development of oral history in the twentieth century, as well as an impressive interviewer with an ability to relate to people at all levels, from the private in the trenches to the general carrying four stars. Pogue's War is drawn from Forrest Pogue's handwritten pocket notebooks, carried with him throughout the war, long regarded as unreadable because of his often atrocious handwriting. Pogue himself began expanding the diaries a few short years after the war, with the intent of eventual publication. At last this work is being published. Supplemented with carefully deciphered and transcribed selections from his diaries, the heart of the book is straight from the field. Much of the material has never before seen print. From D-Day to VE-Day, Pogue experienced and documented combat on the front lines, describing action on Omaha Beach, in the Huertgen Forest, and on other infamous fields of conflict. He not only graphically -- yet also often poetically­­ -- recounts the extreme circumstances of battle, but he also notes his fellow soldiers' innermost thoughts, feelings, opinions, and attitudes about the cruelty of war. As a trained historian, Pogue describes how he went about his work and how the Army's history program functioned in the European Theater of Operations. His entries from his time at the history headquarters in Paris show the city in the early days after the liberation in a unique light. Pogue's War has an immediacy that much official history lacks, and is a remarkable addition to any World War II bookshelf. Franklin D. Anderson, Forrest Pogue's nephew by marriage, is a longtime educator. He lives in Princeton, Kentucky.

A US Naval Aviator's odyssey through pivotal moments in 20th-century history The rise of Adolf Hitler, America's Great Depression in the heartland, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American life following World War II, the Korean War, America's development of atomic weapons in the Cold War age, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift. Captain Allen Brady not only witnessed all of these events but actually participated in them, in many instances as a US Naval Aviator. So many Americans and global citizens alike are not even aware of the importance of these pivotal moments; as generations age and pass on, without important accounts like this one, much is forgotten. More than just a memoir, Brady's book is an important document from one of the last of his generation, reminding us of the pivotal moments that should not be lost to history. Witnessing the American Century is Captain Brady's firsthand account of his incredible life, and his memories elucidate America's role in the most significant world events from the previous century. Capt. Allen Colby Brady is a retired Naval Aviator. Throughout his thirty-plus years of service, Capt. Brady found himself in the front row to all of the major events surrounding the emerging Cold War, nuclear proliferation, America's fight to defeat the Communists in Cuba, and, most notably, his long stint as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Following his retirement, Capt. Brady lived for over six years aboard a sailboat, even using his sailing expertise to liberate exiled communities of Cubans in the early 1980s.

\"This remains a superb story. Bruce C. Smith has a wonderful eye for detail and a compelling perspective and voice. We care about this place and the people who live here.\" -James H. Madison, author of Wendell Willkie: Hoosier Internationalist and A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America The War Comes to Plum Street brings to life the Second World War through the eyes of a small group of neighbors from a Midwestern town. Bruce C. Smith presents their stories just as they happened, without explanation or interpretation. To experience the war as they did, insofar as it is possible, we must understand how they perceived everyday events and recognize the incompleteness of their knowledge of what was taking place in Europe and the Pacific. The inhabitants of Plum Street in New Castle, Indiana, resemble many other average Americans of their day. As we discover how they experienced those fateful years, these Americans may have something to teach us about how we live in our own turbulent time.

Written with passion and intelligence, the letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in World War II express the raw idealism of anti-fascist soldiers who experienced the war in boot camps, cockpits, and foxholes, but never lost sight of the great global issues at stake.When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, only one group of American soldiers had already confronted the fascist enemy on the battlefield: the U.S. veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer army of about 2,800 men and women who had enlisted to defend the Spanish Republic from military rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). They fought on the losing side.After Pearl Harbor, Lincoln Brigade veterans enthusiastically joined the U.S. Army, welcoming this second chance to fight against fascism. However, the Lincoln recruits soon encountered suspicious military leaders who questioned their patriotism and denied them promotions and overseas assignments, foreshadowing the political persecution of the postwar Red Scare. African American veterans who fought in fully integrated units in Spain, faced second-class treatment in America's Jim Crow army. Nevertheless, the Lincolns served with distinction in every theater of the war and won a disproportionate number of medals for courage, dedication, and sacrifice.The 154 letters in this volume, selected from thousands held in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at NYU's Tamiment Library, provide a new and unique perspective on aspects of World War II.

On his first day in basic training in 1942, Lawrence Cane wrote his wife Grace from Fort Dix, New Jersey. I'm in the army now?really!he wrote, complaining, I don't have enough time to write a decent letter.Three years later, Capt. Lawrence Cane went home from World War II. He'd landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, helped liberate France and Belgium, and survived the Battle of the Bulge. He won a Silver Star for bravery. And he still managed to write 300 letters home to Grace. This book is a different kind of war story--both an powerful chronicle of life in battle and a unique portrait of courage fueled by a life-long passion for political justice.Cane's fight for freedom began well before D-Day. In 1937, joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and got wounded fighting for democracy in Spain. In 1942, at age 30, he enlisted in the new war against fascism, and as an officer with the 238th Combat Engineer Battalion, went ashore in Normandy to clear mines, destroy fortifications, and open roads from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. Of the 400 Spanish Civil War veterans in World War II, Cane was the only one to go ashore on D-Day.After the war, Lawrence Cane fought for civil rights and peace until his death in 1976. Discovered in 1995 by Cane's son David, his letters are not only classic accounts of war and unforgettable expressions of love for family. They are the fiercely patriotic words of a left-wing, working-class New York Jew (and one-time Communist Party member) who knew exactly why we fought---to create a better world by destroying all forms of fascism, one battle at a time.With a fascinating introduction by David Cane, detailed notes, and much additional material, these letters add a new dimension to the meaning of American patriotism and an invaluable chapter to the history of the greatest generation.

This is the story of Isaac Pope - an African-American centenarian, grandson of slaves, son of sharecroppers, and unassuming WWII veteran and unsung hero of the civil rights and workers' rights movements. This film gives viewers an intimate view of 100 years of American history captured through Isaac Pope's spellbinding storytelling. It's the tale of his – and the nation's – spirit, loss and love, the story of an extraordinary ordinary man. Mr. Pope reflects on his struggle to achieve the “American Dream\" and reveals a path forward toward racial peace and harmony in the South.