The best World War II stories gleaned from letters, diaries, and personal remembrances

Why are we passionate about this?

It is no secret that the World War II generation is fast disappearing, with fewer and fewer veterans of that global conflict alive today. As their voices are lost, wartime letters often can speak forcefully and eloquently for that earlier generation, informing modern-day readers about the grind, frustrations, and hardships those in uniform experienced. We discovered as much when we read the 505 letters that Ellen's parents, friends before the war, wrote to their respective families while serving in Europe to defeat Nazi tyranny. This collaborative project also taught us a valuable lesson: Before tossing out old letters stashed in drawers, closets, or attics, read them. Hidden treasures may lurk inside.


We wrote...

Army Guy, Red Cross Gal: The Lives & Letters of Two Small-Town Hoosiers Who Helped Win World War II

By Barbara Olenyik Morrow, Ellen England,

Book cover of Army Guy, Red Cross Gal: The Lives & Letters of Two Small-Town Hoosiers Who Helped Win World War II

What is our book about?

In early 1942, soon after Pearl Harbor, Bill Husselman–Ellen England’s father–left his law practice in Auburn, Indiana, to enlist in the army. A year later, Mary Brandon–Ellen’s mother–left her Auburn teaching job to join the American Red Cross. Bill and Mary, longtime friends, moved in the same social circles as young adults but never dated.

Sailing for Europe within months of each other, their paths never crossed as they worked to defeat Hitler’s forces. Bill served in General George S. Patton’s Third Army as it swept through France and barreled into Germany. Mary, assigned to rest centers in Italy, offered cheer and comfort to U.S. troops pushing northward. Their wartime accounts are separate and riveting and, in the end, meld into one.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Barbara Olenyik Morrow and Ellen England Why did I love this book?

This fast-moving telling of Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister proved invaluable in helping me understand the initial phase of World War II and of Britain’s need for a reluctant America to become a full-fledged ally.

The granular details Erik Larson serves up about Churchill, his loved ones, and well-known political figures during Germany’s 1940-1941 air bombing of Britain are especially delicious. Larson treats readers to conversations pulled from diaries, letters, memoirs, and other historical documents and weaves them into a seamless narrative that compelled me to keep turning pages.

In Larson’s skilled hands, l was the unseen guest in dining rooms and board rooms, in basements and on rooftops, vicariously experiencing London’s and the British countryside’s darkest hours–and Churchill’s finest.

By Erik Larson,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Splendid and the Vile as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis
 
“One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR 
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe &…


Book cover of Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Woman in World War II

Barbara Olenyik Morrow and Ellen England Why did I love this book?

Full disclosure: James Madison, professor emeritus of history at Indiana University, is someone I not only know but have long admired for his many books on Hoosier history.

In this book, he focuses on Elizabeth Richardson, a Red Cross Clubmobile hostess from Mishawaka, Indiana, who shared coffee, doughnuts, and small talk with soldiers in England and France beginning in 1944. In July 1945, she died overseas in a plane crash, and her remains rest today in the American Cemetery in Normandy, one of only four women buried there among the nearly 9,400 men.

Madison supplies vital background information about Richardson but also allows her to speak directly to readers through her many war-era letters and diary entries. We come to care deeply about this intelligent, curious, and determined Red Cross worker who – as Madison put it – “without firing a weapon ... came to know war.”

By James H. Madison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Elizabeth Richardson was a Red Cross volunteer who worked as a Clubmobile hostess during World War II. Handing out free doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes, and gum to American soldiers in England and France, she and her colleagues provided a touch of home-American girls with whom the boys could talk, flirt, dance, and perhaps find companionship. Usually the job was not hazardous-except when V-1 and V-2 rockets rained down on London-but it required both physical endurance and the skills of a trained counselor. Liz Richardson is a witty writer and astute observer. Her letters and diaries reveal an intelligent, independent, and personable…


Book cover of Washington Goes to War

Barbara Olenyik Morrow and Ellen England Why did I love this book?

Red Cross trainees were among the thousands of people who poured into Washington, D.C., during World War II, with Mary Brandon–in our book–arriving there for instruction in 1943. What was the city like?

Esteemed journalist David Brinkley shared his personal reminiscences of a 1940s-era Washington in this lively account, showing how the city morphed rapidly from a slow-moving Southern town into an initially ill-prepared wartime capital. Brinkley’s many anecdotes are amusing, astonishing, and always instructive, as when he noted that even though the army placed antiaircraft guns on roofs of government buildings, so few guns were available that some–it was later learned–were merely wood replicas.

Through Mary Brandon’s letters, I glimpsed wartime Washington. Brinkley’s book treated me to a full portrait.

By David Brinkley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Washington Goes to War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The noted television newscaster and commentator presents a social and political protrait of the nation's capital during World War II, profiling key personalities, and tracing the city's--and the nation's--transformation


Book cover of The Guns at Last Light

Barbara Olenyik Morrow and Ellen England Why did I love this book?

This is the third and final of Rick Atkinson’s three-volume Liberation Trilogy, and if you loved the first two, as I did, you’ll love this one. A meticulous researcher and masterful storyteller, Atkinson devotes this volume to the final year of World War II in Western Europe (D-Day to V-E Day).

Along with mining diaries and letters of soldiers, civilians, journalists, and world leaders for fresh details, Atkinson balances the human drama with crisp military analysis and engrossing background information.

I was indebted to this two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author for helping me better grasp what Ellen England’s father experienced while he labored, in concert with thousands of Allied troops, to cripple and ultimately defeat Hitler’s vaunted Wehrmacht.

By Rick Atkinson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Guns at Last Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most dramatic story of all - the titanic battle for Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the European war's final campaign, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of…


Book cover of No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII

Barbara Olenyik Morrow and Ellen England Why did I love this book?

It’s no secret that uniformed men and women welcome canine friends in wartime. In our book, Bill Husselman and Mary Brandon wrote home regularly about dogs they or their mates adopted in France, Italy, and elsewhere.

That said, Robert Weintraub’s book is no ordinary tale about bonding between humans and animals. Weintraub painstakingly recounts how an RAF radar technician named Frank and a purebred English pointer named Judy survived separate hells at the start of World War II, only to be imprisoned in an internment camp in the Pacific. There, despite being close to starvation, they used their wits to keep each other alive, even as they were subjected to ever-worsening cruelty and malnutrition.

Weintraub’s story is spellbinding and inspiring–and no less a love story of loyalty between man and dog.

By Robert Weintraub,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked No Better Friend as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An extraordinary tale of the remarkable bond between one man and his dog during the Second World War.

The two friends huddled close together, each of them the other's saving grace in a world gone to hell . . . There was nothing terribly unusual about POWs suffering horribly at the hands of their Japanese captors. All across the Pacific theatre, Allied captives were experiencing similar punishment. But there was one thing unusual about this particular duo of prisoners.

One of them was a dog.

Flight technician Frank Williams and Judy, a purebred pointer, met in the most unlikely of…


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Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

Book cover of Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

Patrick G. Cox Author Of Ned Farrier Master Mariner: Call of the Cape

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

On the expertise I claim only a deep interest in history, leadership, and social history. After some thirty-six years in the fire and emergency services I can, I think, claim to have seen the best and the worst of human behaviour and condition. History, particularly naval history, has always been one of my interests and the Battle of Jutland is a truly fascinating study in the importance of communication between the leader and every level between him/her and the people performing whatever task is required.  In my own career, on a very much smaller scale, this is a lesson every officer learns very quickly.

Patrick's book list on the Battle of Jutland

What is my book about?

Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.

When the Consortium employs an assassin from the Pantheon, it becomes personal.

Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

By Patrick G. Cox, Janet Angelo (editor),

What is this book about?

The year is 2202, and the recently widowed Captain James Heron is appointed to stand by his next command, the starship NECS Vanguard, while she is being built. He and his team soon discover that they are battling the Consortium, a shadowy corporate group that seeks to steal the specs for the ship’s new super weapon. The Consortium hires the Pantheon, a mysterious espionage agency, to do their dirty work as they lay plans to take down the Fleet and gain supreme power on an intergalactic scale. When Pantheon Agent Bast and her team kidnap Felicity Rowanberg, a Fleet agent…


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