Voices of War: Stories of Service from the Home Front and the Front Lines - Hardcover

Thomas Wiener

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792278380 ISBN 13: 9780792278382

Publisher: National Geographic, 2004

Synopsis

The experience of war has affected every generation in the 20th and 21st century. Every soldier has a story to tell, and since the year 2000 the Veteran's History Project, a new permanent department of the Library of Congress, has been carefully collecting and preserving the memories of the veterans of all wars. The collection is astonishing in its scope. In addition to more than 50,000 recorded oral histories, the VHP has amassed thousands of letters, photographs, scrapbooks, and invaluable mementos from nearly a century of warfare.In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of this collection historian TK has organized the book into chapters by themes common to all war experiences: Basic Training, First Combat, Courage, Special Bonds, Fate, Fun, and Coming Home. Short introductory essays introduce each topic, but historian TK then allows the veterans their chance to speak, deftly interweaving the letters, photographs, sketches, and pages of compelling oral history of U.S. veterans' experiences in World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Brief connecting passages provide background information where necessary. Readers will discover the extraordinary memoirs of men like John Casper Wister, a so-called "ordinary soldier" who vividly described army life in World War I and tried to warn his fellow soldiers about Germany's threat in the years following the war. They'll experience the courage of soldiers like Bruce Fenchel, who fought all five of the major battles of Europe under the command of General Patton. Blasted in a tank explosion at Chaumont, he hung onto a gas truck with frozen hands long enough to be dropped at a Belgian family home and pub, where he was hidden in the attic. After fierce battles at Bastogne and the Rhine River, he witnessed terrifying sites of torture apparatus and death when his division liberated the Ohrdurf Concentration Camp. They'll meet Red Cross worker Peggy Henry, who was plunged into a harrowing story of survival during the Battle of the Bulge when she and two local women had to flee the advancing German army under cover of darkness. They'll read about the bonds of brotherhood experienced by Walter Morris, who trained the Army's first all-black paratrooper unit. They'll read about families and sweethearts on the homefront, and share the remarkable stories of "ordinary" wives like Margerie Gufein, who each month during World War II and the Korean War created a handmade "Goofein Journal" to update her husband on family happenings. Photographs of these touching homemade newspapers illustrate the text. They'll share the extraordinary story of a husband and wife who volunteered to go to Vietnam together rather than be separated by the draft, and meet Rod Hinsh, an army special forces fighter assigned to the highly unusual task of guarding USO performer Martha Ray during the Vietnam War. Twenty-three years after the war, Ray vividly recalled their first meeting. They'll also see how the legacy of war continues in the modern world, experiencing how the story of was has changed with emails, digital photographs, and embedded journalists. And finally they'll read the heartwarming tale of Ray Shipley, a veteran of World War II and Korea, who each day for the past two months has been rising at 6am to go to BWI airport to extend a handshake and free phone cards to soldiers returning from Iraq on leave. Though he has no official authority, he carries their bags, points them to their connecting flight, and never forgets to say "welcome home." Through the diverse stories collected in this volume emerges the moving story of America at war. This is a book that will provoke memories and thoughtful reflection and truly celebrate the sacrifices made by the millions of veterans who have fought to defend our freedom. The experience of war has affected every generation in the 20th and 21st century. Every soldier has a story to tell, and since the year 2000 the Veteran's History Project, a new permanent department of the Library of Congress, has been carefully collecting and preserving the memories of the veterans of all wars. The collection is astonishing in its scope. In addition to more than 50,000 recorded oral histories, the VHP has amassed thousands of letters, photographs, scrapbooks, and invaluable mementos from nearly a century of warfare.In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of this collection historian TK has organized the book into chapters by themes common to all war experiences: Basic Training, First Combat, Courage, Special Bonds, Fate, Fun, and Coming Home. Short introductory essays introduce each topic, but historian TK then allows the veterans their chance to speak, deftly interweaving the letters, photographs, sketches, and pages of compelling oral history of U.S. veterans' experiences in World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Brief connecting passages provide background information where necessary. Readers will discover the extraordinary memoirs of men like John Casper Wister, a so-called "ordinary soldier" who vividly described army life in World War I and tried to warn his fellow soldiers about Germany's threat in the years following the war. They'll experience the courage of soldiers like Bruce Fenchel, who fought all five of the major battles of Europe under the command of General Patton. Blasted in a tank explosion at Chaumont, he hung onto a gas truck with frozen hands long enough to be dropped at a Belgian family home and pub, where he was hidden in the attic. After fierce battles at Bastogne and the Rhine River, he witnessed terrifying sites of torture apparatus and death when his division liberated the Ohrdurf Concentration Camp. They'll meet Red Cross worker Peggy Henry, who was plunged into a harrowing story of survival during the Battle of the Bulge when she and two local women had to flee the advancing German army under cover of darkness. They'll read about the bonds of brotherhood experienced by Walter Morris, who trained the Army's first all-black paratrooper unit. They'll read about families and sweethearts on the homefront, and share the remarkable stories of "ordinary" wives like Margerie Gufein, who each month during World War II and the Korean War created a handmade "Goofein Journal" to update her husband on family happenings. Photographs of these touching homemade newspapers illustrate the text. They'll share the extraordinary story of a husband and wife who volunteered to go to Vietnam together rather than be separated by the draft, and meet Rod Hinsh, an army special forces fighter assigned to the highly unusual task of guarding USO performer Martha Ray during the Vietnam War. Twenty-three years after the war, Ray vividly recalled their first meeting. They'll also see how the legacy of war continues in the modern world, experiencing how the story of was has changed with emails, digital photographs, and embedded journalists. And finally they'll read the heartwarming tale of Ray Shipley, a veteran of World War II and Korea, who each day for the past two months has been rising at 6am to go to BWI airport to extend a handshake and free phone cards to soldiers returning from Iraq on leave. Though he has no official authority, he carries their bags, points them to their connecting flight, and never forgets to say "welcome home." Through the diverse stories collected in this volume emerges the moving story of America at war. This is a book that will provoke memories and thoughtful reflection and truly celebrate the sacrifices made by the millions of veterans who have fought to defend our freedom.

About this title

About the Author

The Library of Congress, located in Washington, D.C., is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution. The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.

From Publishers Weekly

Chosen from among the more than 30,000 oral histories collected by the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project, these first-person impressions of some 60 men and women who took part in the U.S.'s most salient 20th-century conflicts—WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm—come together to form a meaningful narrative. The object, editor Weiner notes, was "not to cover every engagement in each war, but rather to offer an impressionistic and intensely felt portrait of the ground-level soldier, slogging through the mud of France, the jungles of the Pacific, or the desert of Kuwait," and many other places in between. The book contains scores of brief entries organized by topic ("Under Fire"; "Coming Home") and war, enhanced by 175 color photos. Sometimes the flow constricts as narrators shift from doughboys in European trenches to Kevlar-helmeted infantrymen in the Kuwaiti desert, but the editors have chosen their testifiers well. As with any oral history, what we get are personal reflections, not historical syntheses. And with a foreword by Rep. Ron Kind, an introduction by former Sen. Max Cleland and an afterword by Sen. Chuck Hagel, there is plenty of veteran elected representation here, too.
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Edition details

• Publisher: National Geographic
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0792278380
• ISBN 13: 9780792278382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336