I'm the oldest granddaughter of Leora, who lost three sons during WWII. To learn what happened to them, I studied casualty and missing aircraft reports, missions reports, and read unit histories. I’ve corresponded with veterans who knew one of the brothers, who witnessed the bomber hit the water off New Guinea, and who accompanied one brother’s body home. I’m still in contact with the family members of two crew members on the bomber. The companion book, Leora’s Letters, is the family story of the five Wilson brothers who served, but only two came home.
I wrote...
What Leora Never Knew: A Granddaughter's Quest for Answers
All five Wilson brothers served in World War II. Only two came home. Leora was their mother and my delightful grandmother.
I was a toddler underfoot when a dreaded telegram was delivered to the Iowa home of Clabe and Leora Wilson. Two sons were Missing in Action, but the telegram revealed the shocking news that the youngest son had been killed in training that morning. He’s the only one buried at home. One brother is buried in an American cemetery overseas. The other one is still missing. I had to know what happened to the three young pilots. What Leora Never Knewis part of my journey of remembrance.
A WWII P-51 pilot, lost in Germany during WWII, was not located by the Americans for decades. He left a widow and a baby daughter, who felt her father’s absence her whole life. The area where he fell became part of East Germany, so was inaccessible for decades. One local man buried his remains and cared for the grave for years.
This is the amazing story of how several people, speaking three different languages, eventually became a "society of the heart" through the internet and in person. The P-51 pilot's remains were brought home for a military burial.
The author takes the reader on a compelling odyssey, beginning with a wartime mystery which endured for nearly sixty years. A compelling and often gripping story of loss and discovery.
The B-25 of one Wilson brother was lost off New Guinea. This book is about the location and recovery of the remains of 22 men lost with a B-24 in New Guinea in 1944. Fascinating but tedious forensic work identified all 22 men.
Part I tells about bird hunters in Papua New Guinea finding remains of a large plane in 1980 and about Bruce Hoy, the first curator of the Aviation Maritime and War Branch of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea, who was obsessed with finding the remains of about 350 aircraft downed there between 1942 and 1945. A team, including the two bird hunters, located and identified the B-24, mapping out an area to begin identifying the human remains and artifacts with X-numbers. The pilot was from Iowa.
This book is historically valuable but also a poignant human story.
An in-depth account of the discovery of a crashed American bomber missing for thirty-eight years and the painstaking identification of the plane's passengers
Bones of My Grandfather is a grandson’s search for answers to the astonishing saga of a soldier lost in brutal fighting on a remote atoll in the Pacific and the hole that loss left in his family and their descendants. His loss was in the headlines because his family was well-known and wealthy, but even that didn't help them bring home his remains.
Woven among details of the battle are pockets of family history, the politics of finding and identifying remains, discussion of the War Graves Registration Service, amphibious warfare history, and even the politics of awarding war medals, the Medal of Honor had been denied to Bonnyman in 1944, but awarded to him two years later.
"War, reclamation, and what Tim O'Brien called 'the Lives of the Dead' are eternal literary themes for men. Clay Bonnyman Evans has honored that lineage with this masterful melding of military history and personal quest."-Ron Powers, co-author of New York Times #1 bestseller Flags of Our Fathers
In November 1943, Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, Jr. was mortally wounded while leading a successful assault on a critical Japanese fortification on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa, and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor. The brutal, bloody 76-hour battle would ultimately claim the lives of more than…
This is not only the story of a young American serving in WWII, it's a family story about what happens when that MIA or KIA telegram arrives. And how it permeates through the family when the family member is never found and the family is left in limbo, dealing with an ambiguous loss and unresolved grief that even affects more generations.
Because my Grandma Leora lost three sons during WWII, I can relate to the not knowing, as for one of the brothers, only God knows where his remains lie today.
It is encouraging to read about the author's trips to Europe and to learn how much the Dutch revere the young Americans who helped liberate their homeland. They publicly remember anniversaries and welcome visiting Americans, especially those hunting for answers.
This family history and historical journey, aiming for closure by one family, is a real American treasure.
A hero never came home from the war. Will his nephew’s painstaking twenty-year search finally offer the family closure?
Phil Rosenkrantz never met his uncle. All he knew was that the fearless 82nd Airborne Paratrooper was marked MIA, and seventy-three years later he still didn’t know the brave man’s history… or where his remains lay. But his two-decade quest to bring his relative’s sacrifice to light would reveal startling epistles, detailed sketches, and the vivid humor of a man confronting a bitter fight for freedom.
Letters From Uncle Dave: The 73-year Journey to Find a Missing-In-Action World War II Paratrooper…
Howard Snyder’s B-17 and crew were part of the 8th Air Force, stationed in England. They were shot down in February of 1944 on the French/Belgium border. Two members of the crew of 10 were killed in the plane, some were rescued and in hiding, and some were captured.
The author, Howard Snyder’s son, not only researched what happened to his father, but also the rest of the crew. He contacted a former German pilot who shot down theSusan Ruth.
Howard Snyder was kept hidden by brave Belgians. Paul Delahaye was 13 years old when the Americans forced out the Germans. Delahaye made it his mission to make sure the Americans were never forgotten, building memorials and starting museums. Steve Snyder kept in touch with his father’s rescuers, visiting Belgium and meeting Paul Delahaye.
Winner of 20 national book awards, SHOT DOWN is set within the framework of World War II in Europe and recounts the dramatic experiences of each member of a ten man B-17 bomber crew after their plane, piloted by the author's father, was knocked out of the sky by German fighters over the French/Belgian border on February 8,1944.
Some men died. Some were captured and became prisoners of war. Some men evaded capture and were missing in action for months before making it back to England. Their individual stories and those of the courageous Belgian people who risked their lives…
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…
