Is anyone watching Ken Burn’s wonderful PBS documentary series, The War? If you aren’t, you should be. As usual, he makes history and the people who lived it come to vibrant life right in your living room. I’m learning things I never knew before--seeing how the ordinary people, both soldiers and the people at home, coped with the unexpected events that changed most of their lives forever.
Several of my uncles were in the Pacific on ships and my husband had uncles on the ground in Europe. Luckily, they all came home. Others didn’t. Many, many others didn’t. I do remember my mother talking about how sugar was rationed and what it was like to try to keep every bit of light from escaping at night during the blackouts.
What really hits home with me, though, is how through most of the years of fighting we were never sure that we were going to win. There was real fear that we might not. If those fears had come true, what kind of world would we be living in right now?
Makes me really appreciate my uncles, my husband’s uncles, and the men like them for all that they did. As well as those determined women who also went to war—both in far-away lands and on the home front.
How, exactly, this ties in with our stories of Everlasting Love, I’m not sure. Except that bravery and sacrifice through good times and bad, the ability to make the best of what you have at the moment, the fierce determination to survive and to overcome, the sensitivity to know when to look the other way, the blessings of forgiveness along with the power to forget … isn’t that a great part of what love does?
Ginger
4 comments:
Oh, Ginger, your post gave me chills. What would our world be like if we hadn't won? I remember my parents talking about the rations, too. I think we all have relatives who were in that war, just like we do now.
Real life is scary. That's why I like fiction.
Me too, Linda! Fiction is my refuge. I love to write it and to read it. And for exactly the reason you said--because real life is scary.
I thought I knew quite a bit about World War II, since I live with a WWII nut who reads everything he can get his hands on about it. But hearing the voices of the people who lived it, along with film and photos, and with Ken Burn's mastery in putting it all together, The War really got to me. I couldn't shake it. So I wrote about it.
Ever the writer!
Ginger
Here's what your insightful comments have to do with Everlasting Love: Read the November books! Geri Krowtow and I, unbeknownst to each other, wrote stories which focused on WWII. They are being released in November in honor of Veteran's Day. So, there's your connection!
I have a feeling Geri and I will be blogging about the books in a very short while.
I have watched the Ken Burns production and felt as though I was there, too. It's wonderful. And scary. Scary enough for goose bumps. The details he's uncovered and revealed make the reality of those times ever stronger. Watching men in their late eighties and earlies nineties recall and shed tears now in 2007 tells me their experience still lives in their hearts - despite their silence these many decades. My own dad never spoke about it except once when he said, I don't want to talk about it.
Glad to be of service to introduce the November books. I had no idea. Can't wait to read them!
Ginger
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