This volume's table of contents features an intentionally modified image of the cover of my uncle Roy’s (1923-2012) WWII scrap book (unaltered scan above). I removed the possessive pronoun from the scan of the cover. The cover version best represents the service and sacrifices of men, women, and children in not only this collection, but also in virtually every volume of WLA. As this WWII-centric collection reveals across its diverse narratives and genres, women were equally skilled saboteurs, pilots, spies, machinists, snipers, medics, and (all too often) victims, collateral damage, and unaided survivors of the destruction. Beyond the combat zone, women also served the vital role of scribe.

   Women filled a growing void as the keen minds and kind hearts rebuilding and creating amidst the physical and emotional damage that encircled their lives. More to the focus on this artifact of memory, women on the homefront were the skilled narrators of their partners' odysseys overseas. Their care was more than a record of moments for the archives. It was also a way for these innate healers to assess potential wounds to flesh and faculties upon arrival of each letter, notification, and photograph. These artifacts were the coded warnings of fierce battles that began at the end of the war.

  The ongoing struggle to salvage the humanity stripped from survivors has been too often neglected in the intoxication of victory and its sobering moral and psychological consequences. War is never clean, contained, or controlled. Tolstoy expresses it this way in "Bethink Yourselves!" (1904): “War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.” Even for those serving under the virtuous and victorious wings of Allied forces during WWII, they too had to stifle the voice of their consciences. Fighting on the right side of history does little to silence the moments that burrow too deep and too brutal to ignore.  Edward W. Wood Jr., a featured WWII combat veteran in this volume, addresses this journey of recovery in On Being Wounded. He shares the healing that only a woman, his mother, could provide upon returning home: "Wounded, bitter, infuriated, I was unable to find any understanding inside myself, [...] So I found it in my mother. She made a cave for me with her strong arms, and I crept deep within it. [...] I let her caress my pain, her maternal love becoming my source, my strength, holding back the night and its harsh terrors, the memory of my fear" (82). Even now, victims' partners, family, and friends continue to wrestle with these terrors as they try to help, cope, and return to a life with meaning.
 
  Roy, the scrap book's leading man, shared with the family on multiple occasions before his passing that he wouldn’t have had much more than his induction and discharge paperwork if it hadn’t been for Annie’s loving curation of their fragmented moments during the war. She was a devoted wife and mother, master gardener, Smithsonian-level archivist, and unyielding, courageous and beautifully radiant architect of harmony. Annie stabilized three dimensions of the war at once. From the start, she nurtured family and friends into resilient and hopeful caregivers during homefront uncertainty and fear. She then tethered Roy to Kannapolis, NC while he was experiencing a world crumbling under combat's clash. Over the years rare glimpses at his experiences would escape. Most importantly, upon Roy's return, Annie experienced each one of Roy's wounds and moments stripped of fronts, sides, and sanity. She comforted him, awaking him from dreams that lured him back to the Hurtgen Forest, Bastone, and the POW camps. She struggled with him and for him as the almost nightly recalls to combat provoked Roy to kick, punch, and thrash in his sleep against long-dead captors and long-lost friends retracted moment when Annie was not near. Although it was Annie, bruised and weak from the nightly  the . Annie's steady voice and embrace became Roy's shelter.   

“His Service Record” details Roy’s journey from induction at Fort Jackson, South Carolina under the heading “Reported to Service” to follow-on reassignments under “Transferred” Starting in March 1943, aunt Annie would attach paper corners to each photo as new friends, locations, and events were carefully positioned over “PASTE PICTURE HERE.”  New artifacts were chemically bonded into thick manila pages of the collection—a fill-in-the-blank biography complete with spiral bound cover adorned with insignias and weapons representing all the armed services. The Hickory Publishing Company, Inc., New York had mastered the home front format, pulling everyone into the war’s open-ended narrative.  Inked details record his journey beyond North Carolina—Arkansas, Pennsylvania, England, France, Germany, Belgium, then deep into Germany to remote POW camps.  A photo of his arched smile and garrison cap is anchored under “His First Picture in Uniform” while clippings within the “Battles and Campaigns participated in” section feature electric newspaper copy--“From Paris to Siegfried Line, 28th Division Rolled In High!”   
 

It was Annie's hand that recorded the “INTERESTING AND PROMENENT PEOPLE HE MET OR SAW,” which included Roosevelt in Arkansas in April ’43; Eisenhower in South Wales in February ‘44 ; and De Gaule and Patton as the reviewers in a massive liberation parade in Paris in Aug ‘44. In an interview more than 50 years later, Roy told me that parade was one of his worst experiences of the war due to open exposure to hidden enemy snipers. In later months, Annie would add letters and handbooks from army replacement training centers in South Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia, and Massachusetts.  The crimson “Keystone” patch of the 28th Division. Germans referred to the unit as the "bloody bucket"  




I love how she altered the interior page.  Under "For God and Country" banderole you can see Annie's addition of "and wife" (top, right-hand image near top).  

 
 
The record prompts for nickname (“Barney”), branch of service (“Army—infantry”), and on—moving each page with Movietone News clip speed and fanfare.  “FOR GOD AND COUNTRY” arched, smiling beneath eagle and federal shield on page one.  Annie had added “and wife” in steady print to the proclamation soon after Roy’s return to Camp Pickett, Virginia immediately following their honeymoon.  On page twenty-eight she had woven the newspaper picture of their wedding day under “Newspaper Clippings and Mementos.”
 
Annie recalled the snowy glow of the white Gladiolus--sword lilies--in the church and the smell of the purple-throated orchids pinned to her wool gown. Roy was in his class A uniform—no medals, no stripes.  She had seen soldiers with rank, ribbons, and medals, and sensed the associated risk in their tones and stares.  She loved the clean simplicity, hoping the war would end before Roy shipped overseas.  Frequent visits to this spot had worn the bottom-left corner of the page.