I finished 'Voices from World War II' about a week ago and am already a third of the way through my next read. However, I have come back to it in order to share a few lines from one of the hundreds of stories from men who participated in WW2.
Private Harry Courcha "was sent to training camp on the Isle of Wight" in 1943 and likely was familiar with a part of the island called The Needles, a particular land feature that my father was well familiar with too after he spied sharp pieces of chalk cliff the morning after he'd survived a German bombing raid upon the oil tanker Ennerdale. Harry "was sent overseas at the end of March 1944" and, after a memorable battle (I charged "up the hill with this heavy American 'Thompson', almost as big as myself. I was really expecting to die any second"), experienced something even more earth-shattering: The realization he'd stumbled over the bodies of B Company on his way up the hill, "All our friends."
"When it was all over we were ordered to bury our comrades. You have to take the identity disc and all their personal possessions and put them on a stretcher to carry them down. These were all my friends. They were the same age as me, just wanting to enjoy life. I'd been with them through training and on the boat out. Now they were dead, and I was searching them and carrying them down. I was devastated. I'd lost all my friends - I was all alone." (pg. 241)
Again I recommend this book to you. Modern life is built upon such stories.
Photos by GH
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