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Researching “Ila’s War”

Researching “Ila’s War”

Prior to starting Ila’s War in the summer of 2008 I haunted bookstores looking for non-fiction books about the war in the South Pacific, specifically books written by U. S. Army nurses. I learned pretty quickly that WWII memoirs were written primarily by men about...

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Estate Sale Finds

Estate Sale Finds

Allied air plane spotter                                                                      Axis air plane spotter Russian ARK-3 Reconnaissance plane                                              German Junkers 87B Dive Bomber (remember Russia was one of our Allies...

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World War II Postcards

World War II Postcards

Among the hundreds of pages of letters that Ila wrote her parents were cartoon postcards from World War II. I’d seen cartoon drawings of Willie and Joe, the two dogface Infantry soldiers drawn by Bill Mauldin for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper published for the...

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Finding A Treasure Trove

Finding A Treasure Trove

In the spring of 1991 my 82-year-old grandmother decided it was time to start sorting through her accumulated treasures. Grammy had lived in the same house for 50 years, and as someone who’d grown up in stifling poverty, she’d saved everything. Her house was big, and...

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