War in words of veterans
The Veterans History Project can be reached at 202-707-4916 or at the project's website. The project's website offers instructions for those who would like to contribute a veteran's history to the Library of Congress and a searchable online guide to those who have been interviewed. Some of the interviews, in text and video form, can be viewed at the site. A section of the site is devoted to D-Day.
The Atlanta History Center is one of 24 Georgia organizations (including Project StoryKeeper in Alpharetta and the Lilburn Women's Club) that have partnered with the Library of Congress to collect veteran histories. Sue VerHoef at the Atlanta center said its volunteers have collected more than 450 interviews in video form since 2003. Its archive is available now by appointment at the center but will eventually be accessible online. Contact: 404-814-4042
StoryCorps, the oral history project with an Atlanta office at the history center, has interviewed many veterans, and some of their stories can be heard at its Atlanta website, including this account by federal Judge Marvin Shoob from his experiences in Normandy.
The Naval History & Heritage Command website offers personal histories from various conflicts, including the Normandy invasion.
The National World War II Museum in New Orleans also offers oral histories from World War II.
The National World War II Museum in New Orleans also has a section dedicated to the sky soldiers of D-Day.
You can also visit the National D-Day Memorial, which is located in Bedford, Va.
On Thursday, Americans will remember D-Day, the 1944 invasion of the beaches of Normandy that served as the turning point of World War II, and probably none will remember more clearly than 92-year-old Robert “Punchy” Powell.
A retired advertising executive who lives in Decatur, Powell, 92, was among the 160,000 troops who participated in that operation, flying with the 352nd Fighter Group out of the Bodney Air Field in England. Powell piloted one of thousands of aircraft that helped create a wall of protection for the Allied forces steaming across the English Channel.
“I flew three missions that day,” Powell said recently. “I was in the air 16 hours.”
The towering column of fighter planes in the dim pre-dawn sky, the horrible collision when another member of the 352nd flew his P-51 directly into a control tower at Bodney, the sight of hundreds of troop carriers cutting through the gray water and unloading soldiers, Powell has described these experiences at dozens of speaking engagements and in two books, one of which was memorably titled “The Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney.” (The reference was to the blue-painted cowling of the unit’s aircraft.)
Powell was also interviewed for the Veterans History Project, a nationwide effort by the Library of Congress to collect the stories of veterans from every conflict since World War I. Monica Mohindra, a coordinator with the project, said volunteers have interviewed some 86,000 veterans.
Not all their stories have been processed yet, and only about 10 percent are “digitized” and available online.
More than 12 million Americans served in World War II. Surviving veterans now are in their 80s and 90s, and their numbers have been reduced drastically by time. According to some estimates the last World War II veteran will be gone in six years. There are a number of efforts under way to collect their memories before they all pass away.
Mohindra said as World War II and Korea veterans disappear, the next cohort to receive the focus of attention will be those from the Vietnam era.
Among those WWII veterans whose stories have not been collected is Walter J. Victor, a vigorous 95-year-old who lives in Dawsonville with his wife of 70 years, Lucy Victor.
A Pennsylvania native, Walter Victor ran away from home to avoid a career working in the coal mines, and he enlisted in the infantry during the war. He fought in Africa, Sicily and the European mainland, earning four Bronze Stars, eight Combat Stars and a Purple Heart.
Victor’s unit arrived in Normandy about four days after D-Day.
“We were scared,” Victor said. “The bullets were flying. I found a little hump in the rock and I stayed there. That hump saved my life.”
After serving as a gunsmith and helping to liberate the Dachau concentration camp, the returning soldier chose Georgia as a place to settle because his new wife loved “Gone With the Wind.” He eventually became the official photographer for the Atlanta Braves. Victor’s 40-year career with the Braves has received more attention than his exploits as a soldier, but when he looked back on his life in the book “Brave at Heart: The Life and Lens of Walter Victor,” he included some war stories too.
Powell praised the efforts by the Veterans History Project, along with the Atlanta History Center and the StoryCorps oral history collection, to preserve the history of this remarkable group of men and women.
But, he said, “it’s never complete.” He pointed out that “we just buried one this week,” a former B-25 pilot from Fairburn.
“You could not get to all of them that are still living,” Powell said, “and there’s a lot of history that goes underground when they die.”
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