H-Hour Plus Three

Whoa!

I decided to do a little background searching on the places where my Uncle Warren trained and served during World War II.

Nothing complicated. Just pull up Wikipedia and type in a location name.

In some cases, I got a lot. In others, not so much.

And then about halfway through this exercise... I found this letter.

And then (I'm not sure how) I realized that this letter was part of a larger work.

It was, in fact, a book, found on Google Books, and all of the places Uncle Warren told a Spencer, Indiana newspaper reporter about were shown as links in the Google Books preview. Camp Edwards, Fort Deaver, Carabelle here in the Florida Panhandle, New Guinea, the Phillipines.

Sure enough, a fellow soldier in Uncle Warren's unit wrote a book about their WWII experiences. The book covers a few places where Uncle Warren did not serve. This is because the author, Henry Allan, entered the service in his native Iowa. "Hal" Allan also continued with the unit all the way to occupied Japan after Uncle Warren had mustered out.

The "About This Book" page has many links which take you to the sections of the book that connect with places Uncle Warren has mentioned. The "Preview This Book" allows you to essentially read the entire book.

Uncle Warren mentioned yet another memorable escapade to Curt when telling him about the book. Here's Curt's email:

Hi Lee -- I've been tied up in federal court jury duty much of the past 1 1/2-weeks and am sorry I haven't gotten back with you sooner. I spoke with Mom and Dad about the book and they do have a copy. They bought it about 2 years ago at one of the Army reunions. The author was there and had books for sale.
I want to get a copy of my own as well so I appreciate you sending me that info. Dad does remember several of the names of the fellows he served with but I don't know how many of them were mentioned in that book.
He said at one point--while they were in New Guinea I think--the ship with their supplies and rations had been delayed in arriving so they were running short on about everything. They decided to do some fishing in the bay and first tried using handmade poles with line I think but soon elected to use dynomite sticks instead. They had all the fish they wanted after lighting a stick and tossing it into the bay as far away from their boat as possible--the fish floated to the top after being stunned/killed by the pressure of the blast.
Gotta run for now. Talk to you later.
Curt

It's hard recognize Uncle Warren in the pictures. But we have to realize that he was much younger then than when we baby boomers and gen-Xers first got to know him... and they weren't particularly well fed like soldiers today. There's no mistaking, from some of the photos, that they were in the jungle. Some of the photos have "National Geographic" written all over them! Oh... and that hip guy in the picture on page 146?.... the second guy from the left who is leaning on the jeep?.... Warren Thacker!