An Eagle in the Snow by Michael Morpurgo

After spending the night in a shelter, Barney, 10, and his mother return home to find their house on Mulberry Street reduced to rubble, as result of the bombing of Coventry. Even knowing all was lost, Barney tries to look through the remains to find his beloved toy trains, but is stopped by a Civil Defense Warden.

Realizing that all has been lost, Barney's mother decides to relocate to Cornwall, spending the rest of the war living with her sister. Barney's dad is away in the army, stationed in Africa with the Royal Engineers. Taking the 11:50 train to London, mother and son are soon joined in their compartment by a stranger. But almost immediately, Barney realizes that the man looks very familiar. Sure enough, the stranger is none other than the Civil Defense Warden who had carried Barney out of the rubble of his destroyed home. After they start chatting, it turns out the the man had also grown up on Mulberry Street, in the orphanage that used to be there.

Looking out the window, Barney spots a plane in the air, which the stranger immediately realizes is a German Messerschmitt, pushing Barney and his mother to the floor and covering them with his own body. After the train is attacked, the conductor drives it into a tunnel for safety. Suddenly, they are plunged into darkness, and Barney, who has a severe fear of darkness, begins to feel like it is closing in on him.

Coventry

To take Barney's mind off the darkness and pass the time, the stranger starts to tell the story of his life-long friend Billy Byron and their experiences together in World War I. After leaving the orphanage, the two friends had gone to work in a hotel, stoking the boiler there. Not much liking it, they decided to join the British Army and have some adventures. But it wasn't long before the war began and they sent to the front lines to fight. On their way there, Billy saw a little girl sitting by the side of the road, starving and in need of medical care. Picking her up, he carried her all the way to a field hospital against his sergeant's orders. All he knew about her was that her name was Christine, but her face haunted him all through the war.

Billy was a brave soldier, and by the end of the war he had been award a number of medals, including the Victoria Cross for valor in the face of the enemy. But all the killing and wounding of men really got to Billy, so at the end of the war, after the intense Battle of Marcoing, he allowed a German soldier to simply leave and return home to Germany.

Billy also returned home, haunted by the war. He never forgot Christine, and returned to Europe to try to find her. Eventually, he does, and now a grown woman, they two marry and settle down in Coventry. All goes well for them until Barney suddenly recognizes the German soldier he allowed to go free while watching a newsreel about the German Führer Adolf Hitler.

Was it possible that Billy was responsible for Hitler's rise to power and starting the Second World War? Billy needs to know

An Eagle in the Snow is a story that is based on speculation and reality with Morpurgo giving it all his own spin, and a surprise ending. It's a formula that really works well for him. In this story, Billy is based on the real life experiences of a WWI soldier named Henry Tandey, and while there is still a lot of speculation over whether Henry actually spared Hitler's life, it does make for a good novel.

Told in Morpurgo's typical story within a story format, An Eagle in the Snow is actually a little slow in the beginning, but readers who stick with it will be rewarded by the end. It is, however, a short, quick novel and well worth reading. He does go into the fighting that Billy and his friend took part in but it isn't graphic, and kids will most likely pay more attention to Barney's fear of the dark then to the scenes at the front lines.

There is lots of potential for speculation in the novel and in the accounts of Henry Tandy's wartime experience, as well as hypothesizing what one might do in Billy's shoes. Fans of Michael Morpurgo will definitely want to read this new novel, as will young readers who like historical fiction.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an ARC received from the publisher

Below is a painting that is featured in the novel, that hung on Hitler's wall at Berchestgaden, in the Bavarian Alps. Click the link to find out what part it plays in the life of Henry Tandey, Adolf Hitler, and in the novel, Billy Bryon.

Post battle painting by Fortunino Matania 

The Right Fight (World War II Book I) by Chris Lynch

Roman Bucyk loves three things: baseball, his girlfriend Hannah and his country.  Roman also knows that because of an ankle injury, he is never going to make to the big leagues, and he has even been slowly working his way down the batting lineup of the Cenreville Red Sox, his team in the Eastern Shore Baseball League.  Roman may love baseball, but he knows his major league career aspirations are over.

Since it also looks like the United States is preparing to enter the war soon,  Roman, along with some other members of the League, has enlisted in the army. Now, it's the very last game of the Sox season, tomorrow the league will no longer exist and Roman will be off to boot camp.  What to do?  He decides to ask Hannah to marry him, and she says yes.

During basic training, Roman is trained in tank warfare, and he turns out to have a real talent for driving  one.  Most of the time is spent on training and more training in the Carolinas and Louisiana, but Roman is chomping at the bit to get into real warfare.  And when the US finally does enter the war, he is sent to do more training in Ireland. After months and months of training under all kinds of conditions, Roman finally gets to fight Nazis in North Africa.

But war doesn't turn out to be what Roman thought it would be.  There is nothing romantic about living and sleeping sitting up in a cold tank day and night.  In fact, it is pretty scary the first time they come under attack, and each time after that.  From Algeria to Tunisia to Italy, amid all the loss and destruction, the introspective Roman realizes that the most important thing about the war is getting home to Hannah alive.  But the war has really just begun, and Roman has more fighting to do before going home can happen.

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I am not big on battle field books.  My interest is really on home front stories, yet I was pleasantly surprised when I read The Right Fight.  Chris Lynch really knows his way around the front lines and gives us a novel and a hero that will hold you captivated.

Roman goes to war with the same kind of ideologically naive patriotism and impatience to get to the front that causes many young men to enlist.  Yet, once he is part of the fighting, once reality hits him square in the eye, life changes.  Amid death and destruction, a heroic Roman emerges, heroic not so much because of his talented tank driving and loyalty to his tank mates, but because of his dawning realization that even though war is a dangerous, ugly business, he is determined to see it through and get home to his beloved Hannah and the kind of life he is defending.  

I am actually looking forward to reading Lynch's next WWII book, and I think I will chose one of his books about Vietnam for my War Through the Generations reading challenge.  And that is a great endorsement from someone who, as I said before, does not really like these kinds of books.

This book is recommended for readers age 11+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury

Eddy Okubo, 16, may have parents who were born in Japan, but he was born in Hawaii and considers himself strictly American.  Eddy is a smart kid and has already graduated from high school.  So far, though, all has been doing is helping his father out with his boat building business, not really know what he wants to do in life.

Now, Eddy thinks enlisting in the US Army might be something he would like to do after hearing about it from his friends, Chik and Cobra, both 18, who have just been drafted.  Trouble is that his Pop has other plans for him - he wants Eddy to go to Japan to learn about his culture and even expects Eddy to be loyal to the Emperor.  Pop's attitude has caused many clashes between Eddy and his father, who still holds on dearly to his Japanese heritage.

But, with Japan already at war, both are aware that things are heating up on the island for the Japanese who live there and it is no real surprise when the boat they have just finished building is set on fire and sinks.  In an attempt to prove his loyalty as an American citizen, Eddy forges his birth certificate and joins the army.  No sooner does he announce this at home, and his father stops speaking to him.

Seven weeks later, on his first leave, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.  Eddy's father sees the sneak attack as cowardly and shameful and tells Eddy "No make shame for this family.  You go. Fight for your country.  Die, even, but die with honor." (pg 41)  Eddy races back to his barracks, where soldiers are being loaded into trucks, everyone except for Eddy, Chik and Cobra and about 600 other island boys.  Instead, they are given tools and told to dig trenches on the base, and for the first time, they are referred to as "Japs" by their new Lieutenant.  Worse still, as they dig the trenches, machine guns are pointed at their backs, ready to shoot should they make one wrong move.

From then on, life in the army changes for Eddy and his friends.  No longer treated like soldiers, they become "grunts" and "Japs," isolated from the rest of the soldiers.  Eventually, the small number of Japanese Americans are separated from the rest of the island boys and forced to live in tents near the shoreline, again with machine guns pointed their way at all times.  Their job - to shoot any Japanese soldiers who might try to land or be shot themselves.

After a while, they are sent to the mainland, and while traveling to Camp McCoy, WI, they see other Japanese Americans who have been herded into internment camps.  At Camp McCoy, Eddy's unit is finally given the designation the Hundredth Infantry Battalion and for once, their immediate superiors are also of Japanese descent.

After a short stay at Camp McCoy, around 25 members of the Hundredth are transferred again.  A Swiss émigré had managed to convince President Roosevelt that dogs could be trained to sniff out enemy Japanese because they have a different smell than non-Japanese people.  Eddy and his friends are picked to go the Cat Island, MS, where they must participate in the training of army dogs by becoming the "hate bait" necessary to teach the dogs to hate and kill Japanese soldiers under the direction of the Swiss émigré.

This is the longest and by far the most disturbing part of Eyes of the Emperor.  And as I read it, it boggled my mind to think that we could treat human beings with such complete disregard for their lives, since much of what they were forced to do is insulting, humiliating and dangerous.  But remembering his father's words, Eddy always does what he is ordered to do - with honor.

In his very informative Author's Note, Salisbury writes that Eddy's story is based on real events and interviews he had with soldiers from the Hundredth Infantry Battalion Separated (as they were referred to, meaning separated from the rest of the army).  Some of the characters in the story are real men who actually experienced the events Salisbury writes about.  In addition, many of the men in the battalion eventually went on to distinguish themselves in battle when they were finally allowed to do what they had signed up for.  In fact, Salisbury points out that every man who was on Cat Island received at least one purple heart and one bronze star.  Salisbury has written a sensitive, perceptive yet hard hitting novel dealing with xenophobia and how it is experienced by those it is directed at simply because of how they look.  Indeed, this novel resonates even today.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was bought for my personal library

A PDF teaching guide for Eyes of the Emperor and Under the Blood Red Sky, both by Graham Salisbury is available here.

The experience of one Japanese American soldier, Ray Nosak, who was forced to participate in the Cat Island experiment can be found here.

Memorial Day 2010: From the Archives #4: Cherry Ames Veterans’ Nurse by Helen Wells

Today is Veterans’ Day in the United States and Remembrance Day (le jour de Souvenir) in Canada, a day for honoring veterans of all wars. It is celebrated on November 11th every year because that is the day the armistice became effective, ending the hostilities of World War I. In fact, in the US, it used to be called Armistice Day until 1954, when it was changed to Veterans Day to include all veterans of all wars. I have chosen Cherry Ames, Veterans’ Nurse specifically for this day.

Before her long and varied career history as a civilian nurse, Cherry Ames served in the armed forces. In Army Nurse, she joined the Army Nurse Corps, went through basic training and headed out to Panama City, to nurse wounded soldiers (see Cherry Ames, Army Nurse); in Chief Nurse, she helped organize a hospital evacuation on a Pacific island; in Flight Nurse, Cherry flew into battlefields to pick up wounded soldiers and bring them to hospital.

In Veterans’ Nurse, Lieutenant Ames is stateside, still in the Army but awaiting her discharge papers. Cherry is assigned to Graham Hospital, and though she lives in Nurses’ Quarters on the grounds, she is conveniently located 30 miles from her hometown of Hilton. Graham is a VA hospital specializing in bone injuries and, as the head of nursing Colonel Brown explains “Our job is to rebuild broken men, physically and mentally.” What she didn’t say was that

…each of these young men was wounded in the defense of his country – nor that to live and work again minus hands, arms, legs, eyes, or hearing was a terrific hurdle – nor that nurses here had to mend spirits as well as bodies, had to find useful and self-sufficient futures for these brave men. (pg 20)

Yet, Cherry knew this was exactly what she meant.

Cherry is a floater for two months, which means that she will go wherever she is needed, though that seems to be on the same ward with the same men throughout the novel. She is assigned to Building 7 (there are 6,000 beds and 100 buildings at Graham), where they are awaiting the arrival of new patients – men on stretchers, litters, and crutches, many wearing Purple Hearts pinned to their pajamas. Five men are assigned to Cherry’s care, but her most difficult patient is Jim Travers. Jim has lost his right leg in the war and is severely depressed about his future. He refuses to eat, to socialize with the other men, and call his mother to tell her what has happened and where he is.

Gradually, though, Jim does begin to improve, at least physically with the help of a Reconditioning Officer to increase his overall physical fitness, Occupational Therapy, where he learns skills for future employment, making beautifully crafted items of wood, and Rehabilitation Therapy, where he learns to adjust to the new artificial leg he is fitted with. Of course, Cherry’s excellent nursing care and cheerful optimism also helps him overcome his obstacles. When he finally masters his crutches, Jim is allowed to walk into the nearby village alone. Unfortunately, this doesn’t go well, but helps to show that pity can be very callous. While waiting to cross a street, he overhears two older women discussing him: “They whispered, what a shame, and wasn’t it too bad it was hopeless, and such a young man to go through life like that.” (pg 104) This is indeed a set back for Jim, who tells Cherry “A one-legged man, unable to do his old work, is an object of pity.” (pg 105) Jim's dark mood doesn’t last long, however. Cherry takes him home with her one weekend, where he is not treated as an object of pity.

There is a parallel story besides that of the wounded veterans. Cherry is introduced to the Demarests, a wealthy young couple with a 4 year old son named Toby and who are known for their generous hospitality towards the soldiers at Graham. Toby is bed-ridden due to a mysterious disease. His body is not able to absorb nutriments from food and he is wasting away. Cherry spends time at the Demarest home whenever she is able, visiting and telling Toby stories. One day, she shows up and discovers a new healthier Toby, thanks to a mysterious medicine his doctor has given him. At the same time, however, it is discovered that some very valuable amino acid medication is missing from the hospital supply room, despite being kept under lock and key. Cherry puts two and two together, and with the help of Jim, devises a plan to catch the thief and at the same time, bolster Jim’s confidence in himself.

Once again, Helen Wells did her homework and provides the reader with accurate, informative descriptions of what goes on in a VA hospital, albeit a bit sanitized for her young readers who might not be able to understand the dark psychological effects war can have on soldiers. To her credit, she made young readers aware of some very serious issues at the time when many probably were dealing with returning soldiers themselves. Wells mixed these issues in with some lighter fare, like the requisite love interest in the form of Captain Wade Cooper of the Army Air Force, an amusing teenage crush at home, descriptions of the pranks the nurses’ play on each other and the many squirrels on the hospital grounds who demand peanuts from everyone who crosses their path. Cherry Ames is still a fun though dated series and young readers will continue to discover her. Michelle Slatalia wrote a funny article in the New York Times called “Cherry Ames, My Daughters Will See You Now” which can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/fashion/thursdaystyles/06Online.html

I hope you will all join me in honoring the men and women in the Armed Forces here and abroad. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an excellent website which includes resources for teachers and students at
http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/ Stop by and check it out, and be sure to watch the short film located there.







And as an act of indulgence, I would like to dedicate this post to the veterans in my family and yours. And to Captain James Grace, whose name I wore on a bracelet when I was still too young to understand what war was all about:

From the Archives #1: Cherry Ames, Army Nurse by Helen Wells

I was looking through my bookcases where I keep all my old books and came across some old Cherry Ames. I loved these stories when I read them. The early ones were especially meaningful to me because my mother had been a nurse and had taken care of wounded soldiers and veterans before she married – just like Cherry.

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse and Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse follows Cherry through her three years of nurses training at Spencer Hospital. In the first book, she decides to become a nurse because “she wanted to do vital work, work that the world urgently needs.” (pg 5) In Senior Nurse, an Army nurse comes to her graduation to make a plea to the graduates: “You are needed, desperately needed! If we are to save our men out there fighting for us – if we are to even win this war – you nurses must help. Are you ready to serve?” (pg 215) Naturally, Cherry, along with her entire class, is ready to sign up, thus forming the Spencer Unit.

Cherry Ames, Army Nurse begins with Cherry receiving her orders to report for active training. Soon the Spencer Unit is off to Fort Herold, NJ. Here the nurses, and the Spencer doctors who also volunteered, are placed under the command of Captain Paul Endicott. Endicott takes an immediate dislike to Cherry and her friends Dr. Lex Upham, her boyfriend, and Dr. Joeseph Fortune, an old family friend and a researcher.

At Fort Herold, the nurses perform hospital duty and receive 4 weeks basic training under the direction of Sergeant Deake. Deake is an Army loving male “who regarded all women here as intruders, nuisances and nitwits…” (pg53) So when Cherry calls him Lovey and the name sticks, he has even more reason to resent them. Of course, by the end of basic, Deake turned out to be a real old softy, despite the pranks the nurses pull on him.

During basic, Cherry also meets her corpsmen Bunce Smith. Good natured Bunce can’t do enough for Cherry and even tries to come to her rescue when she leaves bivouac during a simulated battle to help a small injured boy on a farm not far away. When she returns to camp, she finds, to her surprise, that it is gone. Bunce finds her, but so does Captain Endicott and trouble naturally ensues. Endicott doesn’t like Bunce any more than he does Cherry.

Ultimately, Spencer Unit is sent to Panama City, Central America to work in the Army hospital there. Tensions continue to grow between Lex Upham, Joe Fortune, Cherry, Bunce and Paul Endicott. Dr Fortune, who has been working on a malaria serum, is refused permission to test it out. But when Cherry and Bunce find an old Indian ill with what looks like a rare form of malaria in an old house she is exploring, she manages to get him treated with Dr. Fortune’s serum, though without proper permission.  Cherry and Bunce are put on probation, thanks to Endicott – a demotion for both of them and they must now prove themselves once again. The story, however, leads to a very dramatic conclusion..

When I started to reread Cherry Ames, Army Nurse, I expected to roll my eyes and mutter “How corny!” But I was pleasantly surprised. The book held up well after all these years. And best of all, Cherry is not perfect; she gets into trouble, breaks rules for the greater good, has doubts about her abilities as a nurse and about joining the army.  I like that.

Of course, the first 6 books in this series were patent patriotic propaganda pieces aimed at convincing girls to think about army nursing as a career.   I wonder how many girls were influenced by the Cherry Ames books to go into nursing during the war. And although there were other wartime nursing series written for girls, Cherry Ames seems to have outlasted all of them and have even been reissued recently. Perhaps they held up because Helen Wells went to a great deal of trouble researching the Cherry Ames stories so they would sound authentic to her wartime readers. In fact, almost 60,000 nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps the way Cherry and her friends did. The four week training program they went through under Deake’s supervision was authorized in July 1943 to quickly familiarize nurses with army methods and approximately 27,000 graduated from it. To compensate for the shortage of nurses this left on the home front, the Cadet Nurse Corps was formed. In Army Nurse one of Cherry's friends joins the Cadets in her junior year. (pg 31) This was a great scholarship program that trained about 124,000 young women to be nurses. In exchange for free tuition, books, uniforms, room and board plus some spending money, these young women would have to serve as military or civilian nurses until the end of the war. This is how my mom became a nurse

Two examples of recruitment posters for army and cadet nurses:

Green, Ruzzie.. You are needed now : join the Army Nurse Corps : apply at your Red Cross recruiting station.. UNT Digital Library. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc365/. Accessed September 4, 2010.

Whitcomb, Jon.. Be a cadet nurse : the girl with a future.. [Washington, D.C.]. UNT Digital Library. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc249/. Accessed September 4, 2010.

A picture of my mom, on the right, with a fellow nurse.  The young man was an injured soldier.  The picture was taken outside the hospital where she worked, not where she trained

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

Sisters Octavia and Tali are sure that their summer vacation is absolutely ruined when they are told that they will be accompanying their grandmother on a road trip to a family reunion. But 'Ms. Marey Lee Boylen,' or Mare as she prefers to be called, is not your average granny: "She wears flippy auburn wigs, stiletto shoes and padded push-up bras." (pg 1) She also drives a sporty red car, wears long fake nails and smokes cigarettes. So it only stands to reason that Mare has a story that is not average either.

Octavia, 15, and Tali, 17, begin the trip bored and unhappy, bickering with each other and complaining about everything. Before they even leave the driveway, Mare must make a deal with Tali to stop her grumbling about her grandmother's smoking:

"Mare tugs an earphone out of Tali's ear. 'Don't put that thing on when I'm talking to you. You've had something to say from the beginning - first it's my driving, now it's my cigarettes. Tali, I'll tell you what -you keep those earphones out of your ears and I will keep my cigarettes in my purse.'" (pg 9)

The deal is struck and, throughout the trip, both are stubborn enough not to cave in.

The chapters in Mare's War alternate between Now, told by Octavia, and Then, told by Mare, with the past and present narrations separated by a postcard home from one of the girls about the trip. As they drive along, Mare begins to tell the unhappy girls about growing up black in Bay Slough, Alabama on a farm purchased by her now deceased father, about her mother and younger sister, Josephine (Feen) and about their fear of their mother's lecherous boyfriend, Toby. Mare had always been told to look after her sister, but after a problem with Toby, Josephine is sent to live with an aunt in Philadelphia. "Hasn't Mama been telling me all my life to watch after Feen? What am I supposed to do now?" (pg 45) The only thing left for the 'almost seventeen year old' Mare in Bay Slough is a job cleaning house for a white woman. But it is 1944 and the country is at war. Mare decides to run away and enlist in the WACS, or Women's Army Corps, lying about her age to get in because you must be 21 to join up.

As Mare and the girls drive along, Mare begins to talk about life in the WACS. There she meets a variety of young women and forms friendships that last a lifetime. After Mare is corrected in front of everyone by her Captain for saying "I ain't got boots yet," another new WAC, Peaches Carter, offers to make a deal with her:

"I'm offering a deal, Boylen, you show me how you crease your uniform so I don't get marked down like I always do, and I'll tell you when you get words wrong and help you say thing right. Deal?" (pg 73)

Of course, it's a deal and Mare and Peaches become fast friends.

After basic training, the women ship out for England. They are part of the 6888th Central Postal Battalion, a group of African-American women whose job it is to sort through warehouses full of letters and packages so they can be delivered to soldiers at the front. The 6888th is the only African-American female unit to serve overseas - first in Birmingham, England and then in Rouen, France and lastly, in Paris when the war is over, staying at the Hotel Bohy-Lafyette where they live lavishly compared to the Spartan lifestyle of the Army.

Despite being in the WACS and far away from her sister, Mare never forgets that she has promised Feen she would always take care of her and she continues to save for a place they can live in after the war. Throughout her service, Mare also writes home to her mother in Alabama on a regular basis, sending her money each payday to help out. Ironically, the woman who worked so hard to make sure soldiers received their mail from home, helping to keep up their morale, only received one letter from her mother the whole time she was in the army - a marriage announcement.

Mare's War is a journey of growth, revelation and understanding on many levels. By the end of the novel, all three women are not in the same place they started from and even the family reunion turns out to be something unexpected. And I loved this novel. I thought the characterizations of Mare, Tali and Octavia were absolutely spot on. One of the true marks of good historical fiction, for me, is the way the author uses her real material, and Davis did a great job of seamlessly weaving in some of the actual experiences of the 6888th with Mare's personal history. She also brought to light another part of African-American Women's history too long ignored. I couldn't recommend this book more highly.

Congratulations to Tanita S. Davis. Mare's War received the following honors:
Coretta Scott King Author Honor 2010
ALA Best Books for Young Adults Winner 2010
Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies Winner 2010
Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices Winner 2010
Notable Children's Trade Books in the Language Arts Winner 2010

The 6888th Central Battalion was finally honored for their service during World War II in March 2009. There is an interesting article about this at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022403571.html

For some interesting information about the road trip taken by Mare and her granddaughters, see
http://www.tanitasdavis.com/mare_roads.shtml

It also includes information about where to learn more about the WACS in general and the 6888th in particular.

The National Archives also has information about Aftican-Americans in World War II at http://www.archives.gov/research/aftican-americans/ww2-pictures

Below are some of the photos of the women in the 6888th Battalion you can find there:

"Somewhere in England, Maj. Charity E. Adams and Capt. Abbie N. Campbell,...inspect the first contingent of Negro members of the Womens's Army Corps assigned to overseas service." 6888th Central Postal Directory Bn. February 15, 1945. Holt 111-SC-20079.

Members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion take part in a parade ceremony in honor of Joan d'Arc at the marketplace where she was burned at the state. May 27, 1945 Pfc. Stedman. 111-SC-42644.

Alex