• Complain
LitArk » Books » Detective and thriller

Rona Simmons - The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines

Here you can read online Rona Simmons - The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2020, publisher: Kent State University Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Rona Simmons The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines
  • Book:
    The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Kent State University Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2020
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Gold Medal, History, Military Writers Society of America

The untold stories of troops serving miles away from front lines

For decades, the dramatic stories of World War II soldiers have been the stuff of memoirs, interviews, novels, documentaries, and feature films. Yet the men and women who served in less visible roles, never engaging in physical combat, have received scant attention.

Convinced that their depiction as pencil pushers, grease monkeys, or cowards was far from the truth, Rona Simmons embarked on a quest to discover the real story from the noncombat veterans themselves. She sat across from 19 veterans or their children, read their letters and journals, looked at photos, and touched their mementos: pieces of shrapnel, a Japanese sword, a porcelain tea set, a pair of wooden shoes, a marquisette wedding gown.

Compiling these veterans stories, Simmons follows them as they report for service, complete their training, and often ship out to stations thousands of miles from home. She shares their dreams to see combat and disappointment at receiving noncombat positions, as well as their selflessness and yearning for home. Ultimately, Simmons finds the noncombat veterans had far more in common with the front line soldiers than differences.

Simmonss extensive research gives us a more complete picture of the war effort, bringing long-overdue appreciation for the men and women whose everyday tasks, unexpected acts of sacrifice, and faith and humor contributed mightily to the ultimate outcome of World War II.

Rona Simmons: author's other books


Who wrote The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.


Rona Simmons - A Gathering of Men
A Gathering of Men
Rona Simmons
A Gathering of Men
Rona Simmons - The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines
The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines
Rona Simmons
The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines

The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓
↑
Reset

Interval:

↓
↑

Bookmark:

Make
1234567...58
The Other Veterans of World War II
The Other Veterans
of World War II
Stories from Behind the Front Lines
Picture 1
Rona Simmons
Picture 2
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
2020 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-60635-398-1
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are courtesy of the individuals photographed or a member of their family.
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
24 23 22 21 20 5 4 3 2 1
To Bill, Joe, Bob, Eleanor, Bud, Ike, Louis, George,
James, Orin, William, Jack, Howard, Joyce, Frank,
Josephine, Marie, Randy, and Pete
Picture 3
All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters.
Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Dont ever let up.
Dont ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a
job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain.
GEORGE S. PATTON,
General, US Army
Contents
My fathers story was the first war story I heard, fifty years after he stepped from the cockpit of his P-38 fighter aircraft for the last time. He was one of sixteen million men and women who served in World War II, and like many others of his cohort, he had never shared his experience. The war was long over, the United States had moved on, and so had he. But, at my urging, together we flipped through his photo album and opened his string-tied folder of yellowed rosters to relive each assignment, each raid over North Africa and Italy, each medal earned. Throughout our discussion, he dismissed his service and his deeds as nothing remarkable, but, at the end, he smiled and rose, standing perhaps a hair taller than when we had begun.
Years later, on the cusp of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the war, realizing how many stories like my fathers had not been told and would soon be lost, I began searching for veterans who would share their memories. I looked past the popular big-screen panoramas of artillery fire bursting over embattled beaches and dive bombers strafing ships at sea to discover the men and women who had served in noncombat positions, behind the lines. They were the people who had made it possible for my father and the millions of other frontline soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to carry out their duties and who helped deliver them safely home. They made up more than half of the US military forces in World War II.
The first story I found was that of Lt. Col. Francis D. Peterson with the armys Graves Registration Service. His moving tale of designing and building cemeteries only hours after a battlethen burying the fallen American, ally, and enemy alikeillustrated for me the enormous gap in my knowledge of the war and of the men and material that compose an army, navy, or air force. I suspected my contemporaries shared that gap in knowledge.
Inspired, I traveled to air shows, attended veterans meetings, and spoke to authors of military history books and former soldiers who had written their memoirs or were willing to talk about their experience. The yearlong search brought me to nineteen veterans and their sons and daughters, most of whom thought they had nothing to say.
The nineteen veterans whose stories are told here represent a tiny fraction of the sixteen million Americans who served in uniform during World War II. The tellers of these tales did not fly through flak to escort bombers to their targets and then limp back to their base with fuel tank gauges screaming empty like my father did. They did not scramble across mine-strewn beaches, tramp through knife-edged grass in damp jungles, or fire a single shot. Like their counterparts who served on the front lines, however, they, too, rushed to enlist on hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They served just as proudly and proved every bit as instrumental in winning the war, whether they served in Europe, in North Africa, in the Pacific, or at home.
They, too, have stories to tell.
Like George Keating from Cosmopolis, Washington, who expertly wielded crowfoot and spanner wrenches, hammers, and pressure gauges to keep B-17 bombers aloft and saw each of his planes return safely to their base in England. Or like Randy Bostwick from Niles, Ohio, who, while artillery shells flew overhead, loaded cartons of medical supplies into the back of his truck and then delivered them just in time to aid stations and field hospitals. And, like Eleanor Millican Frye from Griffin, Georgia, who, when she wasnt having the time of her life in Charleston or New Orleans, read navigational charts and assigned ships to positions within convoys for their voyages across the Atlanticpositions where she hoped they would be safe from German U-boats.
The stories are told as the veterans remembered them, both with the perspective of time and the flaws introduced by the passing of seven decades. During the interviews, some of the veterans cited dates and times and places without a moments hesitation, while others struggled to find the words they wanted. Some needed a gentle nudge to rekindle their thoughts or to glance through folders bursting with timeworn records or to touch a keepsake. The mementos of those times lit their faces, and, as they spoke, their words unfroze their arthritic hands and squared their shoulders as if they were fresh faced and twenty-one again.
To plug holes and stitch together fragments, facts, and figures from official military studies, unit histories, celebrated biographies, unpublished memoirs, and veterans diaries and letters supplement the accounts. These references also reveal little-known but fascinating aspects of the war such as the governments takeover of hundreds of US colleges for military training; the staggering amount of supplies needed to sustain a single soldier for one day; the mountains of trucks, tanks, and jeeps the military left behind; and the fact that after the war there was not one American cemetery in Normandy but 350 scattered across Europe alone.
The stories begin long before the war, when the men and women portrayed here were young boys and girls or teenagers. They went to high school, worked on farms and in factories, and went to college. Some lied about their age to enlist or counted the days to eligibility. Soon, however, they were kissing their mothers, sisters, and wives or sweethearts good-bye, turning to brush a tear from their cheek, and rushing aboard a train or ship, eager, fearless, and naive. After the war, they returned home with the same fervent belief in their country with which they had joined. They married and had families of their ownat last count totaling 210 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildrenand moved on with their lives.
As it unfolds, this book follows the recruit from induction and training to traveling to their base of operation, to performing their duties during the war, to coming home, experiencing the war as they might have. Along the way, it contemplates the roll of the dice that sent one man to combat and another to noncombat and asks: How did they come to play a noncombat role? How did their service differ from the soldier who saw combat? How, after the war had ended, did they measure their contribution? The veterans answer these questions and more as they tell their stories. But they do much more. They tell their stories for their descendants, the descendants of all Americans, and for readers everywhere, and in doing so they pass on their memories, bits and pieces of history, and their spirit.
Next page
1234567...58
Light

Font size:

↓
↑
Reset

Interval:

↓
↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines»

Look at similar books to The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Tracy J. Libby - Reporting for Duty: True Stories of Wounded Veterans and Their Service Dogs
Reporting for Duty: True Stories of Wounded Veterans and Their Service Dogs
Tracy J. Libby
Reporting for Duty: True Stories of Wounded Veterans and Their Service Dogs
Jenny La Sala - Never Forgotten: The Vietnam Veteran Fifty Years Later
Never Forgotten: The Vietnam Veteran Fifty Years Later
Jenny La Sala
Never Forgotten: The Vietnam Veteran Fifty Years Later
Emma Jones - Who Are Veterans?
Who Are Veterans?
Emma Jones
Who Are Veterans?
Joshua Morris - Moral Injury among Returning Veterans: From Thank You for Your Service to a Liberative Solidarity
Moral Injury among Returning Veterans: From Thank You for Your Service to a Liberative Solidarity
Joshua Morris
Moral Injury among Returning Veterans: From Thank You for Your Service to a Liberative Solidarity
No cover
No cover
Suzanne Gordon
The Battle for Veterans’ Healthcare: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Policy Making and Patient Care
Kate Hendricks Thomas - Invisible Veterans
Invisible Veterans
Kate Hendricks Thomas
Invisible Veterans
No cover
No cover
Tracy Crow
Red, White, and True: Stories from Veterans and Families, World War II to Present
No cover
No cover
Daniel R. Green
Front toward Enemy: War, Veterans, and the Homefront
Rona Simmons - A Gathering of Men
A Gathering of Men
Rona Simmons
A Gathering of Men
No cover
No cover
Ron Kent
First In: The Airborne Pathfinders: A History of the 21st Independent Parachute Company, 1942–1946
Holmstedt - Soul survivors: stories of wounded women warriors and the battles they fight long after theyve left the war zone
Soul survivors: stories of wounded women warriors and the battles they fight long after theyve left the war zone
Holmstedt
Soul survivors: stories of wounded women warriors and the battles they fight long after theyve left the war zone
No cover
No cover
Frank L Grzyb
Touched by the Dragon: Experiences of Vietnam Veterans from Newport County, Rhode Island
Reviews about «The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.