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By: Sharon Ledwith,
on 6/6/2016
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Sharon Ledwith: I came. I saw. I wrote.
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| The Death of Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan |
Today marks the 72ndyear the allies stormed the beaches of Normandy in the name of freedom. At the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks’ character (Captain John Miller) tells Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon) to ‘earn this’ before he perishes. It was quite an emotional scene charging Ryan to carry a tremendous load in the decades that followed his life. But carry he did, and because of Captain Miller and his battalion’s sacrifice to find and save Private Ryan, generations of Ryans would flourish. I think of the depth of that sacrifice, and the letting go of what could have been. My own grandfather (deceased since 1968) was the only survivor of his battalion in World War One at Vimy Ridge. And I often wonder if he felt any guilt at being the last man standing. I certainly hope not or I wouldn’t be here now. Thank you, Grandpa.
My mother managed to survive World War Two while living in Hertfordshire, England. The war started when she was ten, and ended five years later in her mid-teens. Some of her stories have brought tears to my eyes, and her own just by remembering certain events and incidents. One such time, mom was telling me about when the Germans invaded France, and scores of British men and women raced across the English Channel to rescue as many French people as they could in whatever boats they owned. Another memory is simpler, yet so profound. Mom wanted to go to the movie theatre with her friend to see Bambi, but my grandmother told her no for some reason. The same movie theatre got bombed that day with many casualties, including my mom’s friend. Thank you, Grandma.
Many times my mother would go to school, and there would be empty seats where students once sat. Back then, there was no grief counselling, so the children would have to ‘deal with it’ as my mother would say, and move on. Bomb shelters were a part of life, but my grandmother tried to make a game of it for her three daughters to ease their fears. That horrific war certainly brought out the resilience and stamina in people, as they had to live their lives as normally as possible.
The next book in my young adult time travel series called The Last Timekeepers and the Dark Secret will take place during World War Two. Fittingly, it will be released October 17th, less than a month before Remembrance Day (November 11th). During my research, I learned a lot about what the people of that era endured and how they coped in such adversity. It was so humbling to read what the survivors had to do to keep moving forward with purpose, and to be as resilient as possible. I want to express my eternal gratitude to ALL the veterans of ALL the wars for keeping the peace, giving us our freedom, and making the world a safer place to live. Although evil still slithers around the globe and makes its ugly presence known from time-to-time, I truly believe that good people will always out-weigh the bad people. If you don’t agree, take it from somebody who’s been there:
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. ~ Anne Frank
This D-Day, don’t forget to thank or hug a veteran. They’ve certainly earned it.
by Sally Matheny
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| The National D-Day Memorial |
The week of our family vacation began on a sunny note but quickly immersed under thick clouds and drizzling rain.
Even though the dreary weather lounged in Virginia for days, we still had plenty of choices of things to do.
The day of our departure was June 5. The dense fog that had lingered all week rose just above the treetops. The rain ceased so we hurriedly ventured on a chair lift ride up the mountain before checking out. By the time we reached the top, we were in the dense fog again and couldn’t enjoy the view.
We decided we might as well head home. As we descended the mountain, I thought about how the thick clouds caused problems on another June 5. Originally, WWII’s D-Day was scheduled for June 5, 1944.
But British meteorologists said the weather would not permit a successful invasion of Normandy, France. Although it was sunny on June 4, Eisenhower trusted the meteorologists and wisely postponed the invasion until June 6.
The National D-Day Memorial was a thirty-minute detour off our route home. Usually, the GPS is set for home and there are no stops except for the essentials—gas, food, and restrooms. But this year, we chose to deviate from our set ways.
By the time we reached Bedford, Virginia blue skies welcomed us. The admission tickets purchased at the Welcome Center include an optional guided tour. At first, I thought the price was a bit high but not after I found out it is a non-profit and does not receive federal or state funding. At the conclusion of our visit, we all thought the D-Day Memorial was clearly a worthwhile journey.
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One warm June day, Jack and Annie, siblings living in Frog Creek, PA, receive a message via carrier pigeon. The message is from their friend Teddy, asking them to come to Glastonbury, England immediately, their help is needed.
When Jack and Annie arrive in Glastonbury, they are met by Teddy who tells them they have arrived on June 4, 1944, two days before the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France by the Allies forces and the beginning of the end for the Nazis.
Teddy and Kathleen, who iare really young enchanters from Camelot, have been made agents in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) by Winston Churchill to do undercover work in countries occupied by the Nazis. But now, Kathleen is still in Normandy, France and needs to be rescued, but they only clues to her whereabouts is a coded riddle she sent Teddy by carrier pigeon.
Jack and Annie's job is to parachute into France and find Kathleen within 24 hours - they need to be gone by the time the invasion begins. Jack and Annie are told to try to find members of the French Resistance to help them, but to avoid the Nazis, who are everywhere. But when they land in a French field, they are spotted and chased by Nazis using a dog. Jack and Annie hide in a barn, calm the dog down and are found by a man and his wife, whose sons were members of the Resistance.
The couple feeds them, and help to figure out the riddle from Kathleen, then they give Jack and Annie two bikes and some money, and send them on their way. The road to Kathleen is fraught with both friend and foe, but eventually the two find her and now, they must figure out how to get her back to England. It seems Teddy forgot to give them the magic wand Kathleen needs, since her innate magic seems to have disappeared. Not only that, but Kathleen has acquired some fellow travelers she is determined to get out of France, a group of very young Jewish orphans, which means a bigger, more noticeable plane will be needed for the rescue. Oh yes, and a large vehicle to get all of them to the pickup point. And there is only a few hours left before the invasion begins, with all its bombing and shooting.
Can everyone be rescued in time and will Jack and Annie find their way back to Frog Creek?
This is an interesting chapter book. It is longer than the previous Magic Tree House books and the subject matter is much darker. And since the magic wand was forgotten, Jack, Annie and Kathleen have to rely on their own skills to solve problems and figure out how to escape France before the invasion.
Osborne gently introduces the reader to Hitler and the Nazis, and though she never uses the word Holocaust, Teddy does tell Jack and Annie that "[the Nazis] have killed countless innocent civilians, including millions of Jewish people." (pg 25) This may sound a little watered down, but consider the age of the reader and that for many this may very well be an introduction to that "darkest hour" of modern history.
i didn't expect to really like this book, but I did. With a willing suspension of disbelief, I found the story compelling and exciting, and I felt it was very clear that Osborne is comfortable with her characters and knows her audience. Things do work out nicely in the end, which is OK when you have magic on your side (and yes, there was some surprising magic used in the end).
At the back of the book, there is a "Track the Facts Behind Jack and Annie's Mission" that includes lots of information ranging from the use of pigeons in war, the German Enigma machine, and other interesting facts, all age appropriately described.
Besides the colorful cover illustration, showing Jack, in all his fear, and sister Annie parachuting into France, there are some wonderful black and white double page illustrations throughout the book, all done by Magic Tree House illustrator Sal Murdocca.
I have to confess, I have never read a Magic Tree House book before this. Sure, my Kiddo and all her cousins read and loved them when they were in elementary school. So did the kids in my classes, which made me happy since most of them were not yet reading at grade level. But I did hear Mary Pope Osborne speak at a BEA Children's Author Breakfast one year, so I knew that author Mary Pope Obsorne is a very generous donor of her books to kids who might not otherwise get copies of them. And I could help but wonder how many kids have become readers thanks to the Magic Tree House books?
You can read a two chapter sample of Danger in the Darkest Hour
HERE
This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL
By: Alice,
on 6/17/2014
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By Mary L. Dudziak
On 6 June 2014 at Normandy, President Barack Obama spoke movingly of the day that “blood soaked the water, bombs broke the sky,” and “entire companies’ worth of men fell in minutes.” The 70th anniversary of D-Day was a moment to remember the heroes and commemorate the fallen. The nation’s claim “written in the blood on these beaches” was to liberty, equality, freedom, and human dignity. Honoring both the veterans of D-Day and a new generation of soldiers, Obama emphasized: “people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it.”
Death is seen as the price of liberty in war. But war deaths are more than a trade-off or a price, shaping soldiers, communities, and the state itself. Drew Gilpin Faust wrote that during the Civil War the “work of death” was the nation’s “most fundamental and enduring undertaking.” Proximity to the dead, dying and injured transformed the United States, creating “a veritable ‘republic of suffering’ in the words [of] Frederick Law Olmsted.”
President Lincoln stood on American soil when he remembered the losses at Gettysburg. Does it matter that the site of carnage in World War II commemorated by President Obama was a transcontinental flight away? Americans were deeply affected by that war’s losses, even though the “work of death” would not so deeply permeate the national experience simply because the dying happened far away.
President Barack Obama marks the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion with veterans Clyde Combs and Ben Franklin as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Prince Charles on 6 June 2009. Official White House photo by Pete Souza via The White House Flickr.
Since World War II, war’s carnage has become more distant. The Korean War did not generate a republic of suffering in the United States. Instead, as Susan Brewer has shown, Americans had to be persuaded that Korea should matter to them. During the war in Vietnam, division and conflict were central to American culture and politics. A shared experience of death and dying was not.
If war and suffering played a role in constituting American identity during the Civil War, it has moved to the margins of American life in the 21st century. War losses are a defining experience for the families and communities of those deployed. Much effort is placed on minimizing even that direct experience with war deaths through the use of high-tech warfare, like drones piloted far from the battlefield.
Over time, the United States has exported its suffering, enabling the nation to kill with less risk of American casualties. Whatever the benefits of these developments, it is worth reflecting upon the opposite of Faust’s conception of Civil War culture: how American identity is constituted through isolation from the work of war death, through an export of suffering. With a protected “homeland” and exported violence, perhaps what was once a republic has become instead, in war, an empire of suffering.
Mary L. Dudziak is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory Law School. Her books include Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey and Cold War Civil Rights. Her most recent book is War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences. She will be on the panel “Scholars as Teachers: Authors Discuss Using Their Books in the Classroom” at the SHAFR 2014 Annual Meeting on Saturday, 21 June 2014. Follow her on Twitter @marydudziak.
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The post This empire of suffering appeared first on OUPblog.
Today is the 70th Anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, the event that ultimately turned the tide of World War II in favor of the Allied forces and began the liberation of occupied Europe from the hands of the Third Reich. What better day than today to review a book about D-Day, all the more so, since I have to be honest and say that, from a military standpoint, I don't know much about the actual invasion. I have read some books about it, but most were fiction and they were more about the protagonist that the invasion. In truth, when I look at a photo like this one of Omaha Beach on D-Day, the dyslexic in me sees so much chaos, I don't know how the invasion succeeded.
But now, Rich Atkinson has adapted his adult book T
he Guns at Last Light for younger readers, focusing on the plan. the preparation, the invasion on June 6, 1944 and what happened in the days that followed. Atkinson begins by taking the reader into the closed door meeting at St.Paul's School in London where admirals, generals, field marshals, logisticians and staff, as well as Prime Minister Winston Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower and even George VI, the King of England, had gathered for a final review of the D-Day plan.
And what a plan it was. It wasn't just a question of hitting the beaches and then pushing back the Germans. All kinds of necessities that you might not realize were needed had to be considered and obtained: things like 301,000 vehicles, 1,800 train locomotives, 300,000 telephone poles, 60,000,000 K rations and a lot of chewing gum, to name just a fraction. Even the number of crosses that would be used on the headstones of the casualties had to be thought about.
And then, the soldiers had to be trained before the invasion. For months, all over England, different kinds of military maneuvers were practiced over and over again.
The planning logistics are interesting, but most poignant of all is the actual invasion. Atkinson makes it clear that the decision to go ahead with the plan was been a very difficult decision for the Allied leaders to make right up to the last minutes, particularly given that weather conditions weren't ideal. Eisenhower had doubts and fears right up to the night before, even writing a note taking for responsibility should the invasion fail.
But the invasion didn't and Atkinson does an excellent job of breaking this very complicated event and making it comprehensible for younger readers, and me. Certainly, the Normandy Invasion went off with plenty of hitches, but reading about what these brave men managed to accomplish despite that and despite their own fears is what makes the story of D-Day so incredible.
There are plenty of photographs and maps throughout the book and Atkinson provides lots of interesting front matter such as lists of countries involved, both Allied and Axis; a WWII timeline; and an extensive who was who. Included back matter has lists of fascinating facts that aren't usually found in histories of D-Day: like the kinds weapons carried by troops; information on carrier pigeons, which were used extensively throughout the war; on Operation Fortitude: the Inflatable Army; how the wounded were cared for; equipment carried by new GIs and more. These are exactly the kinds of concrete details that appeal to many readers. My favorite: what K Rations consisted of.
Now when I look at the picture above, I don't see just chaos, but an as-well-as-humanly-possible-well-orchestrated plan of attack.
D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy, 1944 is an excellent overview of this important wartime event and should appeal to any young reader with an interest in history, WWII and/or military matters. And in the end, when I see the row upon row of headstones for the soldiers in the different Normandy cemeteries, it really gives me a whole new appreciation for the meaning of the words
The Greatest Generation.
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| American Cemetery and Memorial, Normandy, France |
This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an E-ARC from NetGalley
On June 6th of this past week, we marked the 68th anniversary of D-Day, the day the British, Canadian and American troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France and turned the tide of World War II for the Allied forces.
This week on June 6th, I was sitting in the Children's Book and Author Breakfast at the BEA and listening to a short speech by Walter Dean Myers. Myers is at the moment serving as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and not surprisingly, he is also the author of more than a few children's and YA books. Myers work cover a wide variety of topical themes, tough topics such as war, murder, drugs, juvy jail. But Myers has also written some wonderful historical fiction for teens, like
The Glory Field, the 250 year history of an African American family from the first ancestor forcibly brought to this country in 1753 to their lives in the 1990s.
Among Myers's other historical fiction is a short novel about the D-Day landings told through the eyes of a 17 year old boy, Scott Pendleton Collins, who enlists in the army, hoping to emulate the bravery of his great grandfather and father.who fought in the Civil War and World War I respectively. Their pictures hang in the Collins living room because they are considered war heroes by the family. And it is Scott's hope that someday his picture will hang with theirs.
No one was supposed to write anything about what was going on in a war in case they were captured and had written some vital information down that could be of use to the enemy. And Scott knows this, but he begins to write about his experiences anyway. And so we get a privileged look at his life at this pivotal moment in time, beginning in England and the monotony of training day after day while waiting for weather conditions to be perfect for a successful landing at Normandy Beach. The idea is to first take the beach back from the German army and that to quickly push the enemy further back until France is liberated. But finally the weather is good and the trip across the English Channel begins. It sounds so easy in theory, but when the chaplain prays for the souls of those who won't make it, war becomes a sobering reality. Scott begins to realize this and just before they reach France, he writes in his diary: "We know we're going to be fighting and some guys are going to get wounded or even killed. This is what war is all about. I am a little scared myself."
And scared for good reason - the invasion is not anything like Scott could have imagined. Knowing people would get killed was nothing compared to the reality of what happes in the water and on the beach. Yet, Scott manages to survive and keep going. As he moves forward, he gets separated from his outfit and has a few close calls trying to make his way back to them. But heavy loses keep forcing the army to reform the men into different outfits and companies and he finds himself in different units until he finally finds what is left of outfit his again.
More and more, Scott experiences the loss of old friends he grew up with in Virginia and new friends he made since joining up. This is perhaps the hardest part of the D-Day battle for him, prompting him to poignantly write in his diary "we had come over here as an outfit of neighbors. Now there were spaces in our minds where friends used to be."
Of all the books I could have chosen for D-Day, I thought this was the best one.
While reading your review, I was convinced this was a ‘true story’ it certainly reads that way. Another excellent review and I know I will be buying and reading 'we were heroes' soon.
Myers did a really good job at creating a realistic novel. I hope you like it as much as I did.
Interesting new cover. I should buy a new one, since it looks like a dog nibbled on my library copy. Myers does awfully good war books.
Great review again Alex and I agree that the cover is wonderful. This is exactly the kind of book I would have liked when I was a teen.
Great post for D-Day.
http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
I thought the cover was interesting, too. And the story would probably appeal to boys more than girls. I agree, Myers does write good war books.
Thanks, Zohar. I am not surprised this would have appealled to you. Probably does to lots of young boys. It was just so well done.
This sounds like an important book for today's young children to read. Even adults could benefit. We all need to be reminded that it's our boys who fight the wars for our country. Sad, but true. Loved your review of the book, Alex.
Deborah/TheBookishDame
I would love to read this book. I like that it isn't gory and that it portrays the timeperiod well. We all need to remember what has happened to ensure our freedom. D-Day is an important day for the world and this book sounds like something more young people should read. Excellent review!
~Jess
Thanks, Deb, I thought this was one of the better kids books that covered combat (not a favorite of mine, usually) but leave it to Walter Dean Myers to do it.
I liked it because it ws not gory, but really the portrayal of a young man scared of war after realizing it was what he thought it would be like. I hope kids read the reissue of this book, too.