Memorial Day is a day of rest for many, but also of remembrance for those sacrificed everything for our freedoms. This year, we have been seeing more and more of the last of Greatest Generation leave us forever. Here are three random books with different ways of remembering the WWII era:
Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches
Historian David Nichols serves a editor for this collection of some of journalist and war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s best dispatches during World War II, ranging Great Britain in 1940 to April of 1945, the month he died from Japanese gunfire on Iwo Jima. Pyle’s dispatches were very personable, very conversational, and very, very human. Pyle’s writings were more than just a newsreel or a report. They were like getting a letter from the battlefront, as well as a look at the the different people and places he visited along the way. He also gave us some cold, hard truths about the sacrifice of “dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monstrous,” as he did in his final dispatches: “To you at home they are columns or figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France…We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference….”
World War II in Numbers by Peter Doyle
Doyle’s Infographic Guide to The Conflict. It’s Conduct. And It’s Casualities is a visually dynamic look a the numbers of all things WWII. He compiles these numbers from pie charts to bar graphs, and everything in between, all accompanied by brief explanations. Doyle shows us the “numbers” connected to land campaigns worldwide, weaponry, volunteer numbers, war preparations, battles in the air and at sea, and most impactful…the sacrifices from Prisoners of War to Holocaust victims. His presentation is easy to understand but very thorough, and is a great resources to have on hand for both casual study and more detailed research purposes. It’s also a cool gift for history aficionados whether you’re into the aircraft used or the details of particular events like Operation Dynamo in Dunkirk.
The Two Thousand Yard Stare: Tom Lea’s World War II
As an El Pasoan, the works of artist and author Tom Lea are very special to me, but his eyewitness accounts and unforgettable paintings and drawings he created during World War II were known around the globe. The book is compiled by retired Marine Corps aviator and writer Brendan M. Greeley, and includes Lea’s beautiful landscapes, portraits, slices of life, horrifying depictions of the trauma of war This includes his famous “The Price” as well as the painting on which the title is based. It also features sketches, maps of his travels, photos and many many other relics of his life during World War II. “There is nothing, in the way of personal honor, to be ashamed of in going to war armed with nothing heavier than a sketchbook and a receptive spirit,” Lea said. “If that’s the way I can be most useful, that’s what I want to do.”
Memorial Day remembers soldiers from all wars, but WWII will always capture our imagination. It is the one in a generation and time when the world may have been at its worst in many ways. Yet, the American spirit was at its highest. Pick up a book on the era for the joy of reading and respect of the Greatest Generation.