Finding Your Father S War

A guide to learning more about your relatives’ experience serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. In this fully revised edition of Finding Your Father’s War, military historian Jonathan Gawne has written an easily accessible handbook for anyone seeking greater knowledge of their relatives’ experience in World War II, or indeed anyone seeking a better understanding of the U.S. Army during World War II. With over 470 photographs, charts, and an engaging narrative with many rare insights into wartime service, this book is an invaluable tool for understanding our “citizen soldiers,” who once rose as a generation to fight the greatest war in American history. “Jonathan's Gawne’s book is a 5-star blueprint, well-written and beautifully illustrated, to deciphering a loved one’s WW2 U.S. Army service.” —The Commander’s Voice “A great read not only for genealogists wishing to research an ancestor, but also for those who simply have an interest in the United States Army during World War II . . . written so that anyone, even those with no military background, can understand, yet also includes more advanced information . . . detail is phenomenal . . . a must read reference book for any professional genealogist or military historian.” —APG Quarterly

Here, for the first time is the story of the 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion, told in the pictures and memories of the veterans themselves with the son of a mortar company commander as their voice.

"There's a bit of everyone's family in this moving and heartwarming journey. I know that Janet has been hungering to write this story her whole life, and I'm happy to report: she done good!" -Paul Reiser, Actor, Author, and Comedian "Seemingly ordinary, yet eloquent love letters sent to a GI's future wife during wartime, proved to be a never-imagined godsend for their yet-to-be-born daughter. Not only did they lead Jan on a quest to bond with the father she lost at a young age, but they offer us a deeper insight into every soldier's struggle amidst the chaos of war to hold on to his dream of returning to the life and loves he left behind. It's a story that captured my heart... a marvelous work." -Captain Louis Matjasko, USN Retired; Executive Director, Circle of Change Veterans Dog Program "Identity and memory are the universal themes that bind human experience and fuel the quest to understand the past from a very personal perspective. Being able to touch actual artifacts that are precious family heirlooms, gives meaning to our very existence as daughters and sons, as witnesses to history, and as human beings. They give us unexpected road maps that reveal not just the greater geographical world around us, but the hidden chambers within our own hearts. A box of letters inspired Krulick-Belin to bravely embark upon this journey of longing. Using her keen curatorial eye and art historian's sleuthing abilities, she discovered the father she barely knew, and in turn, her own place in the world. We are privileged to travel alongside her on this odyssey she so generously shares." -Marissa Roth, Pulitzer Prize winning Photojournalist, Documentary Photographer (One Person Crying: Women and War), and Writer. "Krulick-Belin does an impressive job of placing her father's experiences in North Africa, a theatre of WWII that is little known or understood, in historical perspective. In addition, she helps shine a spotlight on her father's Jewish identity as a U.S. soldier serving in North Africa and the Mediterranean, his contacts with the local Jewish populations, and his desire to enlist in the struggle against Nazi Germany despite his age. An interesting work about a daughter's discovery of both her father as well as her own heritage." -Lawrence Bell, Executive Director, Arizona Jewish Historical Society "Jan researched the history, culture, and religions of North Africa, while looking through a very personal lens to rediscover her father. She tells a compelling story particularly for those interested in the North African campaign of World War II, and those interested in the Moroccan Jewish community." -Robert J. Silverman, U.S. Director of Muslim-Jewish Relations, American Jewish Committee; Former Senior Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State

Both history and memoir, The Flight tells the story of Richard W. “Dick” Bridges’s heroic service in World War II. Bridges survived a German attack on his plane, the Fascinatin’ Witch, by parachuting out of the exploding B-24. He escaped detection in Austria, became the first American prisoner of war in Hungary, was sent to Yugoslavia, escaped from his POW camp there, was sheltered by the Partisans one step ahead of the Germans, and was finally airlifted to safety in Italy by the British. Bridges’s story, which seems almost too astonishing to be true, went untold until after his death in 2003, when his son, Tyler Bridges, pieced it together. The younger Bridges’s odyssey in search of his father’s wartime experiences connected him with the families of other crew members aboard the Fascinatin’ Witch and led him to retrace his father’s footsteps through Austria, Hungary, and the former Yugoslavia. With his findings, Bridges has woven a story not only about World War II and the bravery of this unique group of soldiers, but also about fathers and sons, what can get lost in the gulf between generations, and how patience and understanding can bridge that gap.

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.

A #1 New York Times bestselling author traces her father’s life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell. “An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary.”—Forward Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having “a novelist’s ear for the way people speak,” Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she’d write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father’s life and her parents’ marriage. In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers’ compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father’s—and her own—relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined. Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen’s life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.

The other two, Guadalcanal and Peleliu, are legendary.

The author draws on her father's account of the war and her extensive interviews with other veterans of the 92nd Division to describe the experiences of a naive southern white officer and his segregated unit on an intimate level. During the war, the protocol that required the assignment of southern white officers to command black units, both in Europe and in the Pacific theater, was often problematic, but Johnston seemed more successful than most, earning the trust and respect of his men at the same time that he learned to trust and respect them. Gene Johnston and the African American soldiers were transformed by the war and upon their return helped transform the nation. The 92nd Division of the Fifth Army was the only African American infantry division to see combat in Europe during 1944 and 1945, suffering more than 3,200 casualties. Members of this unit, known as Buffalo Soldiers, endured racial violence on the home front and experienced racism abroad. Engaged in combat for nine months, they were under the command of southern white infantry officers like their captain, Eugene E. Johnston.