This book was written to help celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day and to preserve the last personal voices of the truly great soldiers that went ashore at Normandy on June 6, 1944 or shortly thereafter. Soon, all these brave men will pass to another time and place. We believe that these men should never be forgotten. Their personal memories must be preserved. Paratroopers, glider pilots, artillery men, medics, dog soldiers, and even a sailor who witnessed Rangers storming the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc were personally interviewed. The interviewees ranged in age from 88 to 93 and to a man, each had some profound stories to tell. Those landing on the beaches have burning memories of the great armada of ships and vessels in the avenging invasion of Normandy. They remember the carnage of bodies on the beaches. I asked one of the Interviewees, George Pulakos to describe his experiences on the beach. GEORGE PULAKOS: They kept me on the beach, I could swim. I was a swimmer and I would recover bodies. We were stacking them like cord wood on the beach. For years I've carried horrific images in my head of all the bodies on the beach. They were stacked like cord wood, 4 and 5 feet high. This book describes such memories from 14 of these warriors. This may be the last documented eyewitness's memories of the D -Day invasion. Four have already died since our interviews of just a few months ago. We interviewed Eugene Meier October 30, 2013; he died 17 days later on November 16, 2013 at age 90. We interviewed Percy Scarborough November 22, 2013; he died 25 days later on December 17, 2013 at age 88. We interviewed Jack Carver December 1, 2013; he died 38 days later on January 8, 2014 at age 90. We interviewed Harold Powers December 9, 2013; he died 23 days later on January 1, 2014 at age 92. This book is indeed about the last eyewitnesses' memories. We begin this heroic, terrible, terrible war story in 1939. That was when the European war really started. That is when Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany. Many books have been written about World War II, but most have concentrated on well known leaders and celebrated heroes. We wanted to tell the story through the eyes and memories of the common soldier. Most of our heroic interviewees still had clear memories of the significant events they encountered. We present their memories in their own words because we want you to be able to sense their emotions. The interviews are split into sections so that we can integrate their memories with the chronological and historical framework of their experiences. Some of the interviews were so very visual that we could see the bodies floating in the waters at the beaches. We could see our soldiers falling in the hedgerows and roads of the country side. We could see our soldiers when they were captured and marched long distances in severe weather. We could almost hear the gunfire and smell the gunpowder. We could see the horrors of the German concentration camps. Let's never forget these memories.

When a machine-gun bullet ended the life of war correspondent Ernie Pyle in the final days of World War II, Americans mourned him in the same breath as they mourned Franklin Roosevelt. To millions, the loss of this American folk hero seemed nearly as great as the loss of the wartime president. If the hidden horrors and valor of combat persist at all in the public mind, it is because of those writers who watched it and recorded it in the faith that war is too important to be confined to the private memories of the warriors. Above all these writers, Ernie Pyle towered as a giant. Through his words and his compassion, Americans everywhere gleaned their understanding of what they came to call “The Good War.” Pyle walked a troubled path to fame. Though insecure and anxious, he created a carefree and kindly public image in his popular prewar column—all the while struggling with inner demons and a tortured marriage. War, in fact, offered Pyle an escape hatch from his own personal hell. It also offered him a subject precisely suited to his talent—a shrewd understanding of human nature, an unmatched eye for detail, a profound capacity to identify with the suffering soldiers whom he adopted as his own, and a plain yet poetic style reminiscent of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. These he brought to bear on the Battle of Britain and all the great American campaigns of the war—North Africa, Sicily, Italy, D-Day and Normandy, the liberation of Paris, and finally Okinawa, where he felt compelled to go because of his enormous public stature despite premonitions of death. In this immensely engrossing biography, affectionate yet critical, journalist and historian James Tobin does an Ernie Pyle job on Ernie Pyle, evoking perfectly the life and labors of this strange, frail, bald little man whose love/hate relationship to war mirrors our own. Based on dozens of interviews and copious research in little-known archives, Ernie Pyle's War is a self-effacing tour de force. To read it is to know Ernie Pyle, and most of all, to know his war.

“The selection of remembered events from a cross section of Germans provides a very human account of instances in war.” —Firetrench The first in a series of books, I Somehow Survived is an extraordinary collection of true stories giving testimony to those who survived World War II. Based on interviews with numerous veterans from across the spectrum of wartime experience, the book documents and reflects upon one of the most gruesome times in history. From anti-partisan warfare in the French mountains and atrocities in East Prussia to the experience of a Norwegian concentration camp, the accounts include rarely heard stories from a range of people caught up in the war. With the distance of time, these survivors have been able to offer new perspectives on their experiences and expose truths they would not have dared admit several decades ago. German Army officers reveal their role in the Vercors and Kiev massacres. A Luftwaffe officer-applicant who never flew describes service on the ground. And a Norwegian woman writes of marrying a German Kriegsmarine while her mother was in a Norwegian concentration camp for political activity and her father was in hiding from the Gestapo. “I have no objection to your marrying him,” her father told her, “I just want them to give us our country back.” “It is always refreshing to hear the German side of the story. The recollections seem pretty open and candid, and the supporting photos help reassure one . . . fascinating stuff.” —A Question of Scale

The book demonstrates an evidence-based approach to online memory practices of World War II. Network analysis is applied to reduce a massive and unreadable dataset of forum texts and user relations. Further, the results are combined with other text analysis methods, such as topic modeling and contrastive stylometric analyses. A sample of discussions from each group is read and categorized. Based on the results, the forum users‘ memory practices are labelled as empirical, conversational and conservational practices, whereby recent theoretical developments in Memory Studies are considered.

“A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.” Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded—a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. Praise for Last Witnesses “There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting.”—The Guardian “A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium. . . . Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses.”—The New Republic “A profound triumph.”—The Big Issue “[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities. . . . It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict.”—The Washington Post

This elegant narrative edition of Neil Kagan's best-selling Eyewitness to World War II offers incredible first-person stories and amazing moments of heroism, providing new context and perspective on history's greatest conflict. The unforgettable story of World War II is told through the words of those who lived it--both on the battlefield and the home front--creating a dramatic tapestry of the wartime experience. Personal writings and recollections of Roosevelt, Hitler, and Patton, as well as letters composed by soldiers at battle and diaries of women serving in the military at home, present an absorbing narrative that tells the entire history of the war from several perspectives. In this absorbing reader's edition, a carefully curated selection of memorable, significant photographs and illuminating maps from the 2012 book accompanies the revised text. Comprehensive and compelling, this finely wrought book is as gift-worthy as its predecessor.