THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP discussion

Starting on the 2nd November 2019 - Q&A with John Ulferts about his new book; "Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes".

Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes by Dr. John David Ulferts
Description:
During the 1990s, 140 veterans of World War II, including 20 Medal of Honor recipients, shared their stories of valor and sacrifice with the author who promised to keep them alive through the classes he taught and the pages of this book.

Iwo Jima, 1945. “How bad am I hit?” Sergeant George Barlow questioned his buddy, John Snyder. Barlow had just saved the lives of everyone in the squad by throwing himself on a grenade the Japanese had hurled into the GIs machine gun emplacement. As he cradled Barlow’s head in his arms, Snyder told him he’d been hit pretty bad. Barlow’s lower torso had been blown away.

“You’re not going to leave me here to die?” Barlow asked softly.
“No, George,” Snyder promised. Snyder knew that without help, Barlow wouldn’t last till morning. With the Japanese entrenched everywhere, Snyder set off in the black night to find the company medic. Though he managed to find G Company’s Captain McCarthy, Snyder was told it was too dangerous to risk a corpsman’s life to go back with him to help Barlow. Dejected, Snyder somehow made it back to Barlow, and was by his side when, just before daybreak, Barlow died.

Snyder was the only member of his squad to survive the hell of Iwo Jima. Snyder honored his promise not to let Barlow die on Iwo Jima by telling Barlow’s story to anyone who would listen.

The voices of World War II have grown silent as the greatest generation has all but slipped away. Through the pages of Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans’ Eyes, 140 veterans speak again, their stories of heroic sacrifice kept alive, never to be forgotten. Together their first-person narratives tell the history of World War II when the future not only of the U.S., but of democracy itself, laid in the balance.

As long as their stories are told, the veterans of World War II will never die.

This revised edition includes additional photographs of the veterans and a Discussion Guide for book studies.


The Author:
John David Ulferts was born and raised in Rockton, Illinois, a small town in north central Illinois. For thirty years, he's worked in public schools – eight years as a special education and social studies teacher, followed by thirteen years as an Elementary Principal, and, finally, for the past nine years, Superintendent-Principal of the Shirland School District, a small Kindergarten thru 8th grade district. John has also taught as an adjunct professor for Concordia University in Wisconsin for fifteen years. In the 1990s while serving as a teacher with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, John and his wife Christina spent their summer vacations camping throughout Europe with their two young toddlers. Despite spending 55 straight nights in a tent with two toddlers still in diapers, John and Chris are still married and very much in love some thirty years later. During their summers in Europe, they paid homage to the sacrifices the W.W. II Greatest Generation made by visiting the D-Day beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of the Ardennes Forest, Remagen Bridge, the concentration camps of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, and numerous memorial museums to the victims of the Nazi regime. Auschwitz’s gymnasiums still full of artificial limbs, eyeglasses, stuffed animals, and human hair bear witness to what was at stake in W.W. II. Filled with eternal gratitude, John began writing to W.W. II veterans to express his thanks, and invited them to share their stories if they wished with his students. For every letter John sent out, he received more responses than expected, as veterans shared his letters with their pals and reunion committees. John knew he had the makings of a book. But, as a school administrator who was blessed with three children of his own (Nick, Ashley, and William), it would take John another twenty years before he completed his W.W. II tribute to the veterans. In 2015 John completed his Doctorate in Education. His dissertation, An Evaluation of Staff Recruitment and Retention in the Smallest Illinois School Districts, won the Chance Memorial prize from the National Rural Education Association and his findings were published in The Rural Educator and in the AASA School Administrator. Realizing that if he could finish a dissertation he could certainly write a book, John began writing Always Remember – W.W. II Through Veterans’ Eyes in earnest.

I'll lead off (in honor of the 7th game of the World Series) with the first question.

I think it is great that you are preserving all of these accounts and conveying them to your students. Are all of your stories and anecdotes in the book from 1st person interviews? Pretty incredible, if so, at the rate these heroes are passing away these days (although I realize many of the stories come from the 1990s, from your bio above).

I am interested to read your thought and experiences with the compilation process and hope you share a couple (but not too many!) of the good stories from the book as we have this discussion. Thanks for taking the time to share with our group!

Added to my reading list - the book is available on kindle unlimited

The author will drop in to answer your questions on Saturday 2nd November but I don't think there is any harm in loading up a few for him :)

Paul wrote: "I'll lead off (in honor of the 7th game of the World Series) with the first question.

I think it is great that you are preserving all of these accounts and conveying them to your students. Are all..."

Hi Paul,

The book really tells the story of World War II through the eyes of the veterans that were there. The stories all come from the letters the veterans wrote me, or the interviews I conducted with them, through the 1990s. At the time, I was a teacher with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Germany. I visited, and took pictures of many of the sites associated with WW 2 and sent them to the veterans. Sometimes a veteran would ask me to try to find a grave of a friend or a landmark they remembered. For example, at Remagen, a veteran asked me to find a cave he took refuge during the battle that was in a hill above the bridge. At the time, two of my children were just toddlers so they went along on all of our adventures. In all, 142 veterans are included in the book (20 of whom were Medal of Honor recipients). I will be including some stories from the book in the coming days.

The music of WW II evokes the heartache, anxiety, and romance of the era. I titled each chapter with a popular WW II song partly to reintroduce some of these old songs. Chapter One is called I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire: Days of Infamy and Surprise and details the Japanese surprise attacks on December 7th at Pearl Harbor and on US possessions in the Pacific.
William J. Agen of Wrightstown, Wisconsin had just completed a 4am to 8am signal watch on the bridge of the USS Honolulu, and was in the washroom getting cleaned up so he could join a liberty party going to Father McGuire's services. His plans changed abruptly when he heard a bugler.
As soon as the bugler finished his general quarters on the bugle, the boatswain’s mate of the watch came on the intercom. He said, “General quarters, general quarters, general quarters! Men this is no shit, general quarters!” At the same time, we heard gunfire, and I mean gunfire; it sounded like our main 6-inch battery going off. This was unheard of in Pearl Harbor!
All four of us tried to get through the washroom door at once. I was up on main deck in about two seconds. The first thing I saw was an airplane in flames, going right over our ship headed for the water. This was shocking enough for a peace time sailor, but what really stands out in my memory is the big red ball on the wing of the plane.
As Agen raced down the main deck towards his general quarters station at the after-signal bridge, Lieutenant Taylor, the admiral’s flag lieutenant, passed him and told Agen to get the admiral’s personal flag down.
The blue square flag, with its two white stars in the center, signified that the USS Honolulu was carrying a rear admiral. If the flag wasn’t taken down immediately from the mainmast yardarm, the cruiser would become an even bigger target for the attacking Japanese. Contemplating climbing the steel deck 50 feet above him, Agen wondered to himself, “Why me?” Still, being a good sailor, Agen did as he was commanded:
Changing my direction, I headed for the mainmast on the ship. I could see, as I was running towards the stern of the ship, two Japanese torpedo planes passing the stern...One of them had just released its torpedo which was dropping down in the water.
I finally reached the mainmast and the ladder going up to this small steel platform around the mast. This is where the halyard which was attached to the admiral’s flag flying on the yardarm of the mainmast was tied. I looked up the ladder and up at the small platform about 20 feet above, with no protection around it and then glanced in back of me.
More torpedo planes were coming in. By now I could see the machine gun tracer fire. It looked like it was headed right in my direction. The rest of the men around were diving under or getting behind some kind of obstruction. I looked up at the two-star blue flag again and said, “God! Damn!” This could be considered praying and cursing at the same time.
I closed my eyes and climbed up the ladder like a shot, and was standing on the little steel deck, and groping for the halyard to the flag before I realized my eyes were still closed. I opened them, and the first thing I saw or thought I saw, was bullets ricocheting off the deck below. Again, I glanced over my shoulder and saw more Jap planes passing astern with their machine guns blazing. I quickly unraveled the halyard and hauled down the flag.
The sensation I had in the next few moments I have never forgotten. I think I actually experienced standing before a firing squad and being shot. I thought I actually felt bullets going through my body. I kept looking around for the blood and waiting for the pain.
Although it felt like an eternity, Agen got the flag down in a matter of minutes, and hurried off to the signal bridge. The situation there wasn’t much better. Although the Browning machine guns were located at the signal bridge, the ammunition was locked up, and nobody had the keys. Unable to fire back at their attackers, the signalmen instead got their intercom hooked up and began communicating with the main signal bridge. They were ordered to secure their signals aft and report immediately to the main bridge, which, they were told, offered more protection from the machine gun strafing.
By this time our five-inch AA battery was manned and was firing at the high altitude bombers. We had to make our way through this gun battery, with hot shell casing flying all over, on our way to the main bridge. A couple of the signalmen tripped and fell, but nobody got hurt.
Once at the main signal bridge, Agen and the other signalmen found Admiral Leary, seemingly dazed, pacing back and forth the bridge muttering to himself, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!” With the Japanese planes strafing again, the signal officer ordered the excess signalmen inside to the flag plotting room, whose armor plating offered protection against the enemy fire. Agen recalled what happened next:
Just as we were all crowded inside this plotting room, it happened. The ship was hit by an aerial bomb, not actually hit, but the bomb dropped between the dock and the ship and exploded underneath the waterline. Inside this small compartment it was as if the steel deck came up and touched the overhead or ceiling. I know this couldn’t have happened but that is the way it looked and felt to me. Some were knocked down, but I grabbed hold of the chart table and stayed on my feet. After the lights came back on and the dust cleared away, we found that nobody was hurt in the compartment, but we all rushed outside on the bridge to see what had happened out there.
The deck was full of glass that had broken out of our 12-inch signal light bulb. Outside of the glass all over the deck there wasn’t any other damage and nobody was hurt on the bridge. Spad Malich, who normally had a very dark complexion, was a shade lighter. One of the signal light bulbs had fell on top of his helmet.
The rest of the ship was a different story. Up until this time the Honolulu had been desperately trying to get up enough steam to get underway, but after the bomb explosion there was no hope of Honolulu getting out of the harbor. Although the side of the ship hadn’t been penetrated, most of the oil lines were ruptured and leaking, gauges broken, power lines disrupted, and there were some leakages in the hull. Miraculously, outside of cuts and bruises, not a man was killed. Unfortunately, the ship, Honolulu, was out of action.

After the Honolulu was hit by the bomb, the sister cruiser, St. Louis, tied up alongside her, cut her lines, and steamed off pulling away from the Honolulu and giving its weary men a clear view of Battleship Row.
Agen recalled that the Oklahoma had not yet completely turned over, but was half way over on her port side. All of the battleships with the exception of the Nevada and Arizona seemed to be smoking or sinking. The Nevada was slowly limping away, about half way into the channel at the time.
As Agen looked at the Arizona, she seemed pretty intact to him from where he stood on the bridge:
But as I gazed at her, all of a sudden, she was surrounded by a black cloud of smoke that covered the whole ship and seemed to rise up in the air. Then it slowly settled back down to the water and began to clear away. As the smoke cleared, I was looking for the ship, the Arizona. She wasn’t there. At least I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I kept looking and said to somebody, “Where’s the Arizona?” Finally, after a minute or so, the smoke cleared some more and I spotted the ensign, the flag, the Stars and Stripes still flying on her stern. That was it. The rest of the Battleship Arizona was gone underneath the waters of Pearl Harbor.
The Battleship Arizona would lose some 47 officers and 1,057 men.
The days that followed the attack at Pearl Harbor were horrific as the toll of the attack became fully understood. The terrible images were forever seared into Agen’s memory:
The stench in the harbor, the water covered with oil leaking from sunken ships, black oil-soaked bundles that were human bodies being hauled out of the water. The sight of the USS Oklahoma with just her keep sticking out of the water and the knowledge that there were shipmates still alive inside her hull.
img src="https://photos.google.com/search/_tra..." width="40" height="100" alt="William J. Agen"/

Reviews are important for any book, but not very many readers take the time to leave them. I'm grateful for every one of the seven reviews I have on Amazon which I've included below -
Tim
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing stories from amazing men!
March 16, 2019
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Awesome book! I truly don’t know a better way to begin this review. Every chapter I found myself thinking, “WOW! That’s going to be my favorite story/chapter!” But then I would read the next chapter and it continued that way until the very last chapter. The next chapter taking the book to the next level until finally the end that you didn’t want to come to. The stories in this book are at times graphic and it’s truly hard to imagine being in the shoes of these young men and dealing with what they had. It is easily the most moving book I’ve read in quite a long time. I’m grateful to have read it because it opened my own eyes and expanded an already large respect for our veterans.
This book is a wonderful tribute to these men. I’m not a war or even a history buff, but if every war or history book I read moving forward is half as good as this one, I might very well become one.

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsVital Veteran Voices
July 21, 2019
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The shared experiences of WWII veterans in their own words provide depth and color to the historical framework presented by the author. Their memories in correspondence depict true horrors of war and describe why this was a war that truly had to be fought and won. Well written and fascinating cover to cover - must read!

Christopher
5.0 out of 5 starsA great read about American heroes
June 30, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This is a great well written account of the heroes of WW II. I love how Dr. Ulferts tells the stories of the combat soldiers, sailors, and airmen who were ordinary people who did extraordinary and heroic things. The writing is first and keeps the reader engaged from the first page to the last.

Mary Morgan
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderfully written
April 11, 2019
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The stories made the war human. I was in tears more than once. The photos touched my heart as much as the written words.

Davoicesf
5.0 out of 5 starsVery Informative Book
September 4, 2019
Format: Kindle Edition
I love reading 1st hand accounts of those who served in combat, especially WWII. I was surprised that so many living Medal Of Honor(MOH) recipients were included in this book. Speaking of the MOH & this both a trivial & irrelevant fact. The author refers to it as the Congressional Medal Of Honor. While it is indeed awarded by Congress, it is technically speaking, simply the MOH. I would most definitely recommend this book & if there already isn't one, would love to see a 2nd book by the author on this subject. Excellent reading.

Audrey Martin
5.0 out of 5 starsMust Read for all Interested in What Americans Actually Did and Experienced During WWII
March 5, 2019
Format: Kindle Edition
A we'll written book weaved together a logical flow of historical events with memories added of those who were there from the Pacific to European theaters. Includes events and first-person accounts I haven't read or seen other places. Pictures of the veteran who shared their stories added to the breadth of the book. This is a must read for all interested in what Americans actually did and experienced during WWII.

Twenty Medal of Honor recipients are featured in the book, including Jefferson DeBlanc of Lockport, Louisiana, who learned exactly how much his life was worth when he was shot down in the Solomon Islands and captured by headhunters.
On January 31, 1943 Lieutenant DeBlanc led a six-plane section of Fighting Squadron 112 as it escorted dive bombers and torpedo planes targeting Japanese ships near Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands. When they came under fierce enemy attack, DeBlanc kept fighting even though his aircraft was rapidly losing fuel. He later told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans:
We needed all the guns we could get up there to escort those dive bombers. I figured if I run out of gas, I run out of gas. I figured I could survive a bailout. You’ve got to live with your conscience. And my conscience told me to go ahead.
In a matter of minutes, DeBlanc shot down five Japanese planes, but in doing so, DeBlanc’s fighter took direct hits setting it afire and spraying him with shrapnel. There was nothing DeBlanc could do but bail out of the burning craft, parachuting into the ocean. He swam some six hours before coming ashore to Kolombangara, which was occupied by the Japanese.
DeBlanc managed to elude capture for several days hiding in an abandoned hut. But he was eventually captured by an indigenous tribe of head hunters. DeBlanc was confined to a bamboo cage as tribal elders met to decide his fate. DeBlanc was in the cage for a full day before he saw another tribesman arrive with a bag that he presented to DeBlanc’s captors. DeBlanc wrote in a 2000 letter that the contents of that bag saved his life:
You see, I know exactly how much I am worth – a sack of rice!! I was picked up by headhunters in the Solomon Islands after I had been shot down early during the Guadalcanal campaign. We were not winning the war then and the native islanders are not stupid. Most of them during these dark days were with the winners; that is, the Japanese. I was very lucky since I was traded to the Coast Watcher’s loyal natives for a sack of rice.
The tribesman who traded the bag of rice to save DeBlanc was named Atitao Lodukolo. He had been connected to the Coast Watchers, a group of islanders who spied on the Japanese aircraft and ships in the Solomons and rescued downed Allied pilots. Because of Atitao’s bag of rice, DeBlanc’s life was spared and he went on to fight another day. By the end of the war, DeBlanc was credited with shooting down nine Japanese aircraft, and was presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Truman.
In his letters to the author in 1999 and 2000, DeBlanc was eagerly planning his last return to the Solomon Islands where he hoped to meet up again with “Ati”, the islander whose bag of rice saved his life. Ati was 95 at the time, DeBlanc 80. As DeBlanc poignantly wrote in his January 3, 2000 letter, “I will be returning to the Solomon Islands this month to meet (God willing) with Ati the native Islander who saved my life. It will be “full circle” for me.” DeBlanc was well aware that for Ati, then 95, and himself, then 80, “the runway was getting shorter for us.” DeBlanc got his wish. The two men were reunited, posed for pictures, and saluted one another. Life had indeed come full circle for DeBlanc.
img src="https://photos.google.com/search/_tra..." width="40" height="100" alt="Jefferson DeBlanc, Medal of Honor Recipient"/

I met Deblanc, along with many other recipients at the Pacific Wing of the National WW II Museum dedication. He was a really good natured guy.

Very cool - I never got to meet him, but we did correspond for a while. He was very excited about his upcoming reunion with Ati, the islander who saved his life. I always thought DeBlanc's story would make an incredible film.

Robert Bowen of Linthicum Heights, Maryland served with Company C, 401st Glider Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division with glider and parachute soldiers. But on D-Day, because of a shortage of planes and gliders, Bowen and the men he led as assistant squad leader landed on Utah Beach by a landing craft vehicle personnel boat (LCVP also known as a Higgins boat). As the ramp of the LCVP dropped with a splash, Lieutenant Aspinwall looked Bowen sternly in the eyes and said, “Let’s kill some Germans, sergeant.”
Once in the ice cold, chest deep water, Bowen struggled to wade the 100 yards to get ashore. As German shells racked the area, he was almost pulled down by the weight of his gear. Bowen recalled, “We passed sunken LCVPs, floating bodies in life preservers, knocked out trucks and tanks, etc. to reach a beach with many dead and wounded.”
Once on the beach, Bowen followed others to a 10 foot hole in the seawall. “A string of bodies lay in my path, a man with nothing but a bloody glob for a face, another looking as if he were asleep.” Upon reaching the hole, Bowen found it partially blocked by a stalled tank and bodies. Following a causeway which led inland, Bowen saw more stalled tanks and trucks, their occupants huddling in ditches trying to avoid the incoming shellfire. Bowen was startled by an even more ghastly sight:
I could see high poles with Teller mines on top, anti-glider defenses, and signs in German saying Achtung-Minen[Danger-Mines]. An American lay prone in ankle deep wire, both hands missing, the middle of his body a bloody hole and a string of entrails strung out behind him.
Bowen’s objective was “…to establish a base for the division which had been dropped by parachute and glider the previous night.” On their march to St. Marie Du-Mont, Bowen’s unit encountered some German resistance. They opened fire on a group of Germans moving through the brush, but didn’t pause long enough to engage in a firefight with them.
Bowen’s stomach turned when he discovered a group of nine dead German soldiers lying in a ditch along the road. “All had been shot through the back of the head their foreheads blown out...it had been cold-blooded slaughter, completely unnecessary.” The American paratroopers that had landed there the night before had obviously taken no prisoners.
On D-Day plus 1, Bowen’s 401st was just south of St. Marie-du-Mont when they heard the roar of airplane motors and saw a glider infantry unit coming in for the landing no more than 200 feet above them. Bowen was glad he wasn’t one of the glidermen on board:
The Jerries saw them too opening up with every weapon they had. The gliders were cut lose, began their descent to fields just around us. They came in skidding and flopping around like awkward albatrosses, most crashing headlong into the hedges. As the emerging glidermen hit the ground, we tried to cover them, firing and shouting for them to come in our direction. That any of them made it was a small miracle. But they did, formed on the road, and marched away taking some wounded with them.
After his right ankle was fractured when he was thrown into a ditch by a rocket explosion, Bowen was reluctantly evacuated to the 4177th Hospital in Birmingham, England for three weeks. He got his first real news about how his glider company had fared since D-Day fro the company clerk, who had remained behind in England. Bowen was mortified by the losses:
We had about 45% casualties, but other units had more than 55%. I lost some good friends there; my platoon leader 2nd Lieutenant John Aspinwall from Staten Island, a wonderful person and great guy, killed by machine gun fire; Sergeant Freddie Grethel, killed by a sniper, a fun-loving guy who liked to clown around in the barracks; Staff Sergeant Franke DeMarco, from Detroit, a wife and two kids who wanted in the worse way to go home. 2nd Lieutenant Rat Karcy, the weapons platoon leader had been wounded and evacuated to a LST, as had Private First Class Louie Wofford, and the LST hit a mine while leaving the beach and sank with all its crew and wounded. There were other deaths, of course, but none affected me like those mentioned. All the romance for war I had harbored as a kid from reading about World War 1 and playing soldier burst like a bubble. I knew I was not invulnerable, that witnessing the pain and suffering seen on the battlefield and in the hospital was a reality which struck like a blow.
Bowen would soon return to combat as the squad leader of his glider men in Operation Market Garden. During the Battle of the Bulge, he would become injured again and had a harrowing experience as a prisoner of war. image: img src="https://photos.google.com/search/_tra..." width="40" height="100" alt="Robert Bowen"/

Some excellent posts/stories John, thanks for taking the time to provide the details on such brave men. I am sure quite a few group members will be interested in checking out your book for more great accounts.

'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Some excellent posts/stories John, thanks for taking the time to provide the details on such brave men. I am sure quite a few group members will be interested in checking out your book for more gre..."
Thank you Aussie Rick! It is an honor to share their stories and to keep their memories alive. Thank you for hosting this thread.

This excerpt is from a chapter I called A Little on the Lonely Side: Living with War.
GIs who fought in the European theater found themselves in perhaps the best place in the world to drink beer. For Charles Savage of East Smithfield, Pennsylvania, alcohol was definitely a necessary part of combat:
In combat you will do four things. You will laugh, cry, swear, and pray. And if there is a fifth thing possible, you will do that too (of course there is a fifth thing – you’ll get drunker than a skunk).
In the days following VE-Day, Savage remembered spending as much free time as possible “…drinking the true the one and only Pilsner BEER!) and falling in love with the beautiful Czech women.”
The fifth thing Savage referred to, alcohol, was a welcome escape for the GIs who couldn’t wait to get their hands on it.
John Winslow of Eugene, Oregon recalled that it was much more welcome than water. Apart from the obvious reasons, alcohol was also considered safer, since GIs feared the Germans poisoned their abandoned wells to kill the advancing Allies.
Winslow credited German beer with giving him the necessary edge, and the element of surprise, to single-handedly capture 15 German soldiers shortly after he crossed the Rhine River. Winslow was going house-to-house as the GIs advanced searching for the enemy with his M1 slung over his right shoulder and his Tommy Gun in his left hand:
I entered a house where food was still hot on stove and near the rear entrance, I noticed a large keg. One that resembled a beer keg. Not having had a beer for nearly a year and it was a hot day (can’t think of any other excuses) I got a glass and started to drink from the keg. It must be near beer I thought. But after about five glasses and when I stood up, I realized it was the real thing. I stumbled into the next house, where I surprised the Germans bent over a table studying a map. Well, out of my mouth came words I wasn’t prepared for and didn’t understand myself. I raised my right hand over my head trying to prompt them to get their hands in the air and said something like, “American Soldate Shissin.” I heard a giggle from a couple of them, but I did manage to bring them in. Later on, I was told I should of said Shessen instead of Shissin cause I must of said ‘shit’ instead of ‘shoot.’

That was a very funny story John, really enjoyed; “American Soldate Shissin.”

Has there been one story that you have come across in your research that has stuck with you, something that a veteran has told you that took you by surprise or that is stuck in your mind?

Your story about DeBlanc reminded me of the movie No Man Is An Island (1962), which depicts George R. Tweed's survival on Guam.

Thank you for your comment Liz. I've not seen No Man is An Island and will have to check it out. I wish I knew more about DeBlanc's reunion with Ati. I'm just glad their runways met once again.

Aussie Rick, I thought about your question overnight. After my correspondence and visits with them, I came to think of the brave veterans in my book as friends. Many of their stories have stuck with me, and have become a part of me. I guess though I was most surprised by the veterans' candor, their desire to tell the truth as they saw it. Veterans didn't hold back. War can bring out the best and the worst in soldiers. Sometimes veterans recalled crimes our own side committed.

Jim Dorris of Chattanooga, Tennessee was one veteran I became very close to. He impressed me so much. Like Desmond Doss, who I also corresponded with, Dorris stayed true to his Christian faith throughout. Dorris was shaken by the heinous cruelty the Nazis had inflicted upon their helpless victims at Dachau.

Dorris was assigned to spend the night in the same barracks where the Nazi prison guards had slept. For Dorris, it was a sleepless night as he tossed and turned and wondered “What kind of man slept here last night? Did his conscience bother him about what went on here?” The following day, April 30th, Dorris was loaded onto a tank that was sent to Munich, where he found little resistance and was greeted by German civilians who gave the Americans flowers and bottles of wine.
While on patrol in Munich, Dorris heard a woman screaming from the second floor of a nearby building. With Dachau still fresh on his mind, Dorris knew he had to act. As the screams got louder, Dorris ran up the office building’s steps two at a time. The screams were coming from an old woman, who appeared to be in her seventies, who stood in the doorway of what appeared to be a dentist’s waiting office.
I ran through the door and to my right saw a large glass case filled with dental instruments. To my surprise, I saw one of my platoon buddies smash the glass case with his rifle, spraying shards across the room.
Behind the dentist’s chair, Dorris spotted two of his platoon buddies striking the old dentist with their rifles as he cowered helplessly in the corner.
“They yelled at him as they hit him. I couldn’t believe this was happening having seen what German guards had done in Dachau just the day before,” Dorris explained.
Dorris was only a private first class, and his buddies were sergeants. But Dorris knew he had to stop the senseless violence:
I shouted as angrily and as loud as I could, “Stop it! Or I’ll shoot the next one who hits the old man!”
The room grew immediately quiet. The sergeants angrily turned towards Dorris, measuring him up, determining whether he would really shoot to protect the old man.
Finally, the tension was broken as Sgt. Ervin said, “Let’s go men.”
Dorris said a silent prayer thanking God that his bluff had worked. The old dentist and his wife hugged each other as the sergeants exited the office and went down the stairs. The old German couple looked at Dorris with love and affection. Dorris kissed the old woman and left the office.
The next day Dorris asked one of the men why the sergeants had beaten the old dentist. “He said Sgt. Ervin thought that dentists filled teeth with gold and he wanted the supply that office must hold.”
After Dachau, Dorris couldn't tolerate any more senseless cruelty, no matter whose side committed it.
Dorris encouraged me to write this book, and when his health began to fail, I worked that much harder to get it done. Fortunately, it was published in February, and Dorris was able to have his son read it to him, before he sadly passed away in April of this year. He was a real role model for me in many ways.

That's a great story John, thanks once again for taking the time to share the details with the group.

Dorris deserves much credit for his actions.

Just to follow up, Wikipedia says Tweed promised, and in 1946 delivered, a new car to one of the men who helped hide him--though I don't get the sense that survival hinged solely on that promise.

John did you have any veterans that did not want to tell their stories? Bottled their experience up as it were?

Honestly, I was amazed at how many of the veterans really poured their hearts out in their letters to me. Some of the veterans wrote 10-20 page letters to me. Many of them would end their letters telling me that they had never before shared these stories with their own families. I was the first person they had shared them with. Some of them would add that it felt therapeutic writing them down. I often wondered why it was easier to write to me. I guess because I was a teacher living in Europe, and that I was able to visit many of the WW II sites they had fought at. I would take pictures, pick up pamphlets, and send them to the veterans along with my letters. Sometimes a veteran would ask me to look for a specific spot. I remember trying to find a cave near the Remagen Ludendorff bridge. Most of the time, I'd strike out. But they knew I tried. But there were a few veterans that I corresponded with that rarely mentioned the war. Marcus Kipp, Jr. wrote me very nice, long letters, but hardly ever answered any questions. We still corresponded because he enjoyed doing so. I wanted to include every veteran who wrote me in the book, so it was a challenge for a few. I combed through every letter Kipp sent me and found one story that I could use for the book. I didn't want to leave anyone out. My next phase is trying to reconnect with the veterans if they are still living (most sadly are not) and their families to let them know the book is out there. Fortunately, Jim Dorris, Donald Chase, and Murray Shapiro all veterans prominently featured in the book did live to see me finally get it done and have approved of it. I wish I had finished sooner so that more of them could have enjoyed it. Incidentally, the e-version is on sale for Veterans day on Amazon if you are interested. That version also includes pictures of the veterans. I'll post a few more stories in the coming days.

I'd like to thank John for taking the time to respond to the groups questions in regards to his book "Always Remember" and I wish him and his book every success.

Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes by Dr. John David Ulferts