Well, this month’s prompt
definitely presented problems. My favorite first –writing or non-writing –
experience. So many possible angles!
I wondered if I could
highlight a “first” relating to one of my hobbies: reading, travel, scrapbooking,
or genealogy research. And if you’ve been following me here, you’ve probably
noted that I like to tie my blogs into my WWII-themed author brand.
Then I remembered that I
created a scrapbook of my first visit to the National WWII Museum in New
Orleans in 2016 and my first WWII travel tour a few months later. The National WWII Museum graciously allowed me
the opportunity to read through their holdings from one former Red Cross Girl
while I was there. All told, I spent the better part of 3 days at the museum
and still had the sense that I was rushing through parts of it. If you've not visited it, I highly recommend adding it to your travel bucket list!
Their exhibits, arranged
thematically around the different theaters of the war in many cases, are
incredibly immersive. In the Road to Berlin exhibit, one moves from the
earliest battle scenes in North Africa and Italy to the reconstructed Nissen
hut from an American bomber base in England, 
This photo
gives you a flavor of the Road to Tokyo exhibit.
“Masters of
the Air” by Donald Miller is hands-down my favorite non-fiction work on the
Eighth Air Force in WWII Europe, and I’m still thrilled that I splurged on the
Miller-led tour that took us from London to the old bomber bases in East
Anglia, lovingly restored to their former glory by local villagers over the
last few decades. At each base, we had a chance to meet and mingle with older
locals who were children during the war. Their stories were captivating,
sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, but always related with a sense of awe and
appreciation for the American boys who took the war to Germany years before
D-Day and at such enormous cost.
This bomber
base was restored over the course of nearly 20 years, and I got a weird chill
when I realized that I had attended a study abroad program not more than a few
miles from this site in 1989, the year the local citizens began the restoration
process.
The 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe Abbotts had a fantastic display of photos and memorabilia from the Red
Cross Girls who had served at that location. One of the curators at the
American Military Cemetery in Cambridge helped me locate the grave of a Red
Cross Girl who died in a plane crash in Ireland late in the war.
I enjoyed
pulling out this album and sharing some of the highlights with you. Both these
trips were a memorable first for me, and though I’m years behind with some of
my scrapbooking projects, at least this one made it to the top of the heap.
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5 comments:
Eleri, When I visited Dover on my one and only trip to England, I stood on the beach and looked up at the white cliffs and remembered my uncle, who was a bombardier, talking about how he felt seeing those cliffs rising in the air when his bomber group returned from a mission. I was able to talk to an older man who had been a teen at that time. Our short conversation affected me deeply. Hearing his #ownvoice and remembering my uncle's. Thank you for bring these everyday heroes and heroines back into our awareness.
Eleri,
How fascinating! I see where you get your love of that era. My mom passed in 2019 and going through some of her boxes of "Stuff" my sister and I found some very old postcards. A few were from WWII. In fact the one postcard was a wartime era cartoon card of sailors, signed from my mom's friend Hazel who was in South Carolina with her husband.
The importance of Hazel, is the last week of my mom's life she kept calling me Hazel! neither my sister or I had ever heard of Hazel. Once I had the card I knew she had existed and was not only a high school friend of my mom's but a war time friend too.
We lived on Guam in the sixties for five years beginning when I was ten. One of the first things us kids learned was that people were still finding live hand grenades and bombs from WWII, so we should never touch anything that looked like the ones we'd seen on tv, but instead report it to a grown-up right away. We explored the many caves dug by the Japanese soldiers, crashed fighter planes and other relics, even artillery emplacements on cliffs overlooking the ocean. My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Herrero, told stories of life during the Occupation and during the war. WWII became very real to us.
The tours you've taken and research you've done make me feel transported to 1940s' Europe. It becomes so real for me! Amazing!
Judith, your uncle's experience was very common -- all those flyboys really loved seeing the White Cliffs of Dover (do you know the Vera Lynn song?).
Diana - you know I hear and read a lot about how people who lived as adults during WWII, who were really there in the thick of it, were deeply affected by those experiences, so it's not too surprising to me that they would remember those times most vividly later in life.
Sarah - oh my gosh, my next novel is set in Australia, New Guinea and Tinian (which I'm sure you know is near Guam). That's amazing -- I might have to ask you more questions about that!
Yes, I don't remember it all clearly but it was a song we sung, especially on road trips and family gatherings when the guitars were brought out.
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