WWII

WWII PDF Author: Nigel Fountain
Publisher: Reader's Digest Association
ISBN: 9780762103768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Here is a tribute to the ordinary men, women, and children who recall their experiences in World War II, complete with a 70-minute audio CD that dramatically relates their stories.

WWII

WWII PDF Author: Nigel Fountain
Publisher: Reader's Digest Association
ISBN: 9780762103768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Here is a tribute to the ordinary men, women, and children who recall their experiences in World War II, complete with a 70-minute audio CD that dramatically relates their stories.

Since You Went Away

Since You Went Away PDF Author: Judy Barrett Litoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780700607143
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Last night Mel and I were talking about some of the adjustments we'll have to make to our husbands' return. I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left-I'm twice as independent as I used to be and to top it off, I sometimes think I've become 'hard as nails'. . . . Also--more and more I've been living exactly as I want to . . . I do as I damn please." [These tough words from the wife of a soldier show that World War Ii changed much more than just international politics.] "From a fascinating collection of letters, filled with wonderfully distinctive human stories, Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith have shpaed a rare and brilliant book that transports the reader back in time to an unforgettable era."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. "This is a wonderful volume, full of admirable women struggling in a difficult situation, doing their best for their families and their country. Ah, the memories it brings back! Highly recommended for those who lived through the war, and for those who want to understand it."--Stephen E. Ambrose, author of Eisenhower and D-Day, June 6, 1944 "Offering a remarkable view into the lives of ordinary women during wartime, this book will enlighten and catch at the hearts of general readers and cause historians to reconsider how women experienced World War II."-Susan M. Hartmann, author of The Home Front and Beyond. "From among 25,000 of an estimated six billion letters sent overseas during World War II, Litoff and Smith have culled and skillfully edited a sampling by 400 American women. These letters, starting with one to a seaman wounded at Pearl Harbor, are compelling documents of home-front life in varied ethnic, cultural, and financial milieus. Tragic, touching, and funny, the correspondence is full of prosaic news and gossip about jobs and neighbors, along with accounts of births and intimate allusions to love-making. The stress of separation was intensified for women whose loved ones were hospitalized, or imprisoned as either conscientious objectors or security risks. Some women wrote General MacArthur and others for news of missing men or to obtain details of their deaths. Many of these heartrending documents also express acceptance-and even pride-in the sacrifices required by war."--Publishers Weekly. "Other scholars of WW II have published letters written home by servicemen, but this is the first collection sampling the letters written by sisters, sweethearts, wives, and mothers, saved by thousands of servicemen. Chapters are organized around themes that were important to these women: courtship, marriage, motherhood, work, sacrifices. . . . What women tell readers in these letters about their concerns and their wartime feelings will cause historians [readers?] to rethink what has been written about the homefront."--Choice. "Despite the popular appeal of Rosie the Riveter, nine out of ten mothers with children under six were not in the labor force, which helps to account for the vast outpouring of mail from the home front to 'our boys' in the European and Pacific theaters. Some couples wrote every day for four years. This is the rich historic documentation that the authors have drawn upon to create a panoramic pastiche of indefatigable, energetic, patriotic female letter writers in the war years. . . . One is struck by the hard-headed practicality of many of the letters-stories of plucky, sometimes even grumpy, coping. There are letters of growing independence, with strong and at times explicit indication that the boyfriend or husband will be facing a very different woman upon his return from the one he 'knew' when he disembarked for his own, often terrible, venture. . . . Every war leaves mothers with broken hearts. What this volume most remarkably demonstrates is just how prepared American women on the home front were for that dread eventuality."--Jean Bethke Elshtain in the Journal of American History. "Fascinating and often heartbreaking letters. . . . The letters illuminate a time when sex roles were first showing the changes that would culminate in the women's movement. 'I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left,' Edith Speert wrote to her husband, Victor, in 1945. 'I'm twice as independent as I used t be, and I sometimes think I've become hard as nails. I don't think my changes will affect our relationship.'. . . In the end, it is the small human dramas in these letters that stand out. Anne Gudis, miffed to distraction by her soldier-swain Sam Kramer, writes what may be the shortest Dear John on record: 'Mr. Kramer: Go to hell! With love, Anne Gudis.' A woman working at a Honolulu nightclub assures a pilot that she'll wait for him-until she's 20. The wife of an Air Corps navigator reads in a news story that only 15 of 1,500 Allied bombers were lost in a raid over Europe and later learns that her husband died in one of the 15. And a grieving mother whose son died in the Pacific asks Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in desperation, 'Please general he was a good boy, wasn't he? Did he die a hard death?'"--Smithsonian. "'They made it possible for me to retain my sanity in an insane world,' wrote one pilot about the letters his wife sent him throughout World War II. The letters contained in this collection explain the soldier's sentiments. Whether full of passionate longing for a missing sweetheart or merely detailing domestic gossip, the letters offer a rich introduction to how American women experienced the war. Since military authorities ordered soldiers not to keep any letters written them by their loved ones, the authors have done a magnificent service in obtaining letters that soldiers either surreptitiously hid or whose authors copied them before sending them on."--Library Journal.

First World War Poems from the Front

First World War Poems from the Front PDF Author: Paul O'Prey
Publisher: Imperial War Museum
ISBN: 1912423324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
From the worst horrors of modern trench warfare a small handful of soldiers and nurses created a body of poetry that is so vivid and intense that one hundred years later it has engraved itself on our national consciousness. This anthology focuses on those poets who were on the front line, from the famous Sassoon, Owens and Graves, to nurses like Vera Brittain. The poems are accompanied by a brief and accessible introduction, which sets the context for a reader new to the poems, as well as short biographical profiles of the poets.

Letters from the Trenches

Letters from the Trenches PDF Author: Jacqueline Wadsworth
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781592845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
A history of the First World War told through the letters exchanged by ordinary British soldiers and their families.??Letters from the Trenches reveals how people really thought and felt during the conflict and covers all social classes and groups Ð from officers to conscripts and women at home to conscientious objectors.??Voices within the book include Sergeant John Adams, 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers, who wrote in May 1917:'For the day we get our letter from home is a red Letter day in the history of the soldier out here. It is the only way we can hear what is going on. The slender thread between us and the homeland.'??Private Stanley Goodhead, who served with one of the Manchester Pals battalion, wrote home in 1916: 'I came out of the trenches last night after being in 4 days. You have no idea what 4 days in the trenches means...The whole time I was in I had only about 2 hours sleep and that was in snatches on the firing step. What dugouts there are, are flooded with mud and water up to the knees and the rats hold swimming galas in them...We are literally caked with brown mud and it is in all?our food, tea etc.'??Jacqueline Wadsworth skilfully uses these letters to tell the human story of the First World War Ð what mattered to Britain's servicemen and their feelings about the war; how the conflict changed people; and how life continued on the Home Front.

Letters and News from the Trenches and the Home Front

Letters and News from the Trenches and the Home Front PDF Author: Marie Clayton
Publisher: Atlantic Publishing, Croxley Green
ISBN: 9781909242609
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Letters and editorial published in the Daily Mail give a first hand contemporary record of the Great War

Letters from the Front

Letters from the Front PDF Author: John Gresham Machen
Publisher: P & R Publishing
ISBN: 9781596384798
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
When the United States entered The Great War in 1917, along with the mobilization of the military, charitable organizations activated their programs to support the troops. One of these organizations was the Young Men's Christian Association. J. Gresham Machen left the comfort of his teaching position at Princeton Theological Seminary to work with the Y.M.C.A. This book provides transcriptions of his complete correspondence with his family during his service in 1918 and 1919 annotated with footnotes, maps, and a glossary of people and subjects.

Letters from the Home Front

Letters from the Home Front PDF Author: Barbara Bannister
Publisher: Abbott Press
ISBN: 1458209598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
After years of being apart, cousins Carolyn and Patty are eager to catch up with each other at a relatives wedding. They bring the letters they exchanged during World War IIwhen they were childrenas a way to reminisce. As the women read through the letters, they are transported back to the American home front. When they begin writing letters, Carolyn has just moved from Nebraska to Oregon, and the two girls desperately miss each other. But their communication is soon overshadowed by the events of December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor is bombed. The tone of the letters changes as the girls grow preoccupied with the war. Patty tells Carolyn about how their Japanese American friends move to Canada to avoid being put into camps, while Carolyn expresses her relief that her father cannot enlist in the navy due to a blind eye. Whether they write about gas rationing and blackout regulations or saving money to buy war stamps, Carolyn and Patty reveal the wars impact on their lives. But as the two discuss the contents of the letters at their reunion, they realize just how much the war years shaped who they are as adults. Artfully switching between the past and the present, Letters from the Home Front is a charming novel of America during World War II.

Yankee Correspondence

Yankee Correspondence PDF Author: Nina Silber
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813916682
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
They are grouped by six major themes: the military experience, the meaning of the war, views of the South, politics on the home front, the personal sacrifices of war, and the correspondence of one New England family.

Germans in the Civil War

Germans in the Civil War PDF Author: Walter D. Kamphoefner
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
German Americans were one of the largest immigrant groups in the Civil War era, and they comprised nearly 10 percent of all Union troops. Yet little attention has been paid to their daily lives--both on the battlefield and on the home front--during the war. This collection of letters, written by German immigrants to friends and family back home, provides a new angle to our understanding of the Civil War experience and challenges some long-held assumptions about the immigrant experience at this time. Originally published in Germany in 2002, this collection contains more than three hundred letters written by seventy-eight German immigrants--men and women, soldiers and civilians, from the North and South. Their missives tell of battles and boredom, privation and profiteering, motives for enlistment and desertion and for avoiding involvement altogether. Although written by people with a variety of backgrounds, these letters describe the conflict from a distinctly German standpoint, the editors argue, casting doubt on the claim that the Civil War was the great melting pot that eradicated ethnic antagonisms.

Home Front Soldier

Home Front Soldier PDF Author: Philip L. Aquila
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791440766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Presents a multi-layered social history of a soldier and his Italian American family during World War II.