“A lot of guys died in my arms.”

Roger Stillpass | St. Louis, MO

Submitted on 8/13/2007 through KETC

One of Ken Burns' main motivations for producing THE WAR was to capture the memories of the World War II generation who fought on the battlefront of felt the impact on the homefront.

Excerpts from other people's stories:

Brooke Maroldi, Milwaukee, WI

Although he fought in Guadalcanal, and was part of the liberation of Manila in the Philippines, my Dad (Joe Maroldi) didn't talk about the war very much….He always insisted that the men and women who lost their lives were the heroes, not him.

Submitted on 8/20/2007 through Milwaukee Public Television

Albert A. Gaydos, West Mifflin, PA

...After a short while, all hell broke loose and the so-called haystacks revealed small German tanks! I was fortunate enough to find an irrigation ditch below ground level. I laid down, taking a chance that a tank may run over me and prayed to my God to spare me...

Submitted on 8/19/2007 through WQED

Betty Hunter, St. Louis, MO

In my school, and I am sure many others, a Red Cross volunteer came to show us how to knit nine inch squares in brightly colored, wool yarn…The volunteer would return periodically to gather our squares to be sewn together to make blankets for the wounded servicemen in hospitals. As an adult I have wondered what the men thought of all of those squares of uneven stitches made by our small hands.

Submitted on 7/31/2007 through KETC

Tony Gasbarro, Frankfort, IL

I was stationed aboard the Battleship U.S.S. Maryland as a Gun crew and gunner on a 20 millimeter machine gun anti air craft gun. My ship was bombed at Pearl Harbor [on] Dec 7, 1941. The ship got out of Pearl Harbor after receiving a 500 pound bomb hit on her quarter deck...

Submitted on 8/13/2007 through WTTW

Linda Fleming, Evanston, IL

We awoke in the night and I felt everything around me moving and shaking and then there was silence. We were trapped in a collapsed shelter, buried under earth and debris...

Submitted on 9/19/2007 through WTTW

Bill McBride, Avalon, NJ

Two or three months after my father's death, my mother received a letter written in French by a Belgian couple who had hidden Dad in their farmhouse along with four other soldiers of the 423rd Infantry, 106th Division. My sister Alice was in eighth grade at St. Richard's parochial school when we received the letter, and took it to the nuns to translate the French into English… My father was buried at an American military cemetery at Henri-Chapelle in Belgium… It would be many years before anyone in the family traveled to visit the gravesite.

Submitted on 7/10/2007 through WHYY

Local story collection is sponsored by NCO with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.