Witness to War: important reading this Memorial Day

by Sean McLachlan on


Every Memorial Day weekend we remember the soldiers who fought for the United States. For those of us who have never experienced war, however, it’s hard to understand their experiences.

The Witness to War program is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the wartime memories of veterans and helping to give civilians a better idea of what they went through. As their website says, “These are the stories of scared 18 and 19 year olds thrust into circumstances of such intensity and violence, that they became the defining moments of their lives.”

Some are video interviews, like Hap Chandler’s thoughts on his involvement in the Dresden bombing, and Jim Paine’s harrowing memory of being the only survivor when his Jeep ran over a German mine. There are also written memoirs and wartime diaries. Some are short anecdotes while others are more extensive. Tucker Smallwood gives us 23 pages of his gripping Vietnam memoir.

All of the stories Witness to War collects will be donated to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project and other non-profit organizations willing to spread their message.

There’s plenty of reading here and a lot of food for thought. So sometime this Memorial Day, take a break from the cookouts and TV and check this out.

[Photo of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Last WWI combat veteran dies: where can you see his legacy?

by Sean McLachlan on

Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran of WWI, has died aged 110. Born in England in 1901, he was too young to enlist in the army when the war broke out in 1914, so he waited until he was 15 and enlisted in the Royal Navy, where he saw service throughout the war.

Unlike most veterans, he liked the service and stayed on. While working as a visiting instructor for the Australian Navy, he fell in love with the country and moved there. When war broke out again he fought for his new country in its navy. He retired after 40 years in service but never stopped being active. At the tender age of 80 he took up writing and penned his memoirs. Over time he became a pacifist and controversially refused to participate in ANZAC Day parades. There’s much more to his story, so check out the link and his memoirs, assuming the book isn’t sold out by now.

Choules fought on the sea, so with no battlefields to visit, where can you see the legacy of WWI’s last combat veteran? A good start would be the museums of the two navies in which he served. The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, UK, currently has an exhibition called Sea Your History: 20th Century Royal Navy that shows what life was like aboard naval vessels during the two world wars and beyond. This gives a good insight into what a teenaged Claude Choules had to endure. The Royal Australian Navy Heritage Centre at Garden Island Naval Base near Sydney also has displays about life in the navy. I wouldn’t be surprised if both museums make special exhibitions to mark the passing of this remarkable man.

But you don’t have to go to the UK or Australia to see Choules’ legacy. He lived through the most momentous event of the early 20th century. The war changed Europe and the world. The millions of deaths seriously weakened Europe’s hold on their colonies and emboldened independence movements in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The old aristocracy found itself hit hard financially and began to lose their grip on society. Large numbers of women got to work in factories and other “man’s jobs” for the first time, and began to question why they couldn’t vote.

While the First World War wasn’t the sole factor in the end of colonialism or the rise of women’s rights, it was a major one. If you want to see Claude Choules’ legacy, just look around you.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Travel read: Around the Bloc

by Brenda Yun on

I stumbled upon Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s writing on a stopover in New York City. She was reading from her third and most recent travel-related book, Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines, at Book Culture near Columbia University. I was immediately struck by her engaging use of language and her savvy presence. It’s a pleasant sight to behold a young, female traveler and writer who is curious about the world and daring in her attempts to understand it.

Her reading finished, I bought her debut book, Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, and when I asked her to sign my book I told her I too was an aspiring travel writer, working on a memoir of my own. “Can’t wait to read about your travels someday,” she wrote in curly script on the title page. I have since been in correspondence with Griest, who has agreed to have me interview her in early January. Until then, I plan to review her three books for Gadling. Here is the first review, of her debut book on her travels around the Communist bloc of Russia, China, and Cuba.
Griest’s three-part memoir documents her experiences in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana during the late 1990’s, and it does so with humor and humility. It took nearly three months for me to make my way through Around the Bloc — not because it was a slow read, but because I wanted to gain an understanding of the three places she writes about in her memoir. Russia, China, and Cuba have long intrigued me as culturally rich places with politically backward power struggles.

Similar to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, where the traveler’s experiences are summarized by culturally specific activities, Griest’s journey around the bloc are punctuated by drinking, dining, and dancing:”…while Russians bonded over drink and Chinese over dinner, Cubans connected through dance.” Griest’s youthfulness and occasional naiveté captures just how eye-opening one’s travels abroad can be. It is clear by the end of the memoir just how much her experiences in these countries reshaped her values and shook the foundation upon which her life had been seemingly secure.

The tragic Russian Mafiya, Chinese propaganda, and Cuban Revolution stories swirling in Griest’s memoir make her self-discovery that much more palpable. Griest navigates the socialist and political struggle of being in the bloc, and walks away not at all unscathed. Rather, she sets her original assumptions straight again, allowing herself to understand her place in the world that much better.

Of the three parts presented in her debut novel, I must say the most enlightening was the first on her experiences in Russia. It seemed that here, in Moscow, Griest experiences the most profound awakening. I sense these early times, fresh from her undergraduate studies in Austin, that Griest transforms from a hippie wannabe to a truth-seeking, life-living journalist and hearty traveler.

If the popular Eat, Pray, Love is any comparison, I feel Griest’s Around the Bloc far surpasses Gilbert in all the categories I hold dearest to a literary travel writer. Griest masters the art of language and humor; she is finely atuned to her youthful innocence (and, at times, ignorance); just as in life, Griest does not tie her three parts together into a perfect red bow. Instead, there is an imperfection that permeates through her memoir that is raw and real — not just real, but realistic. If Gilbert’s travel memoir satisfied you just enough, then Griest’s will take your breath away. It will teach you things you didn’t know before, but more than this, it will make you get off your couch and out into the wide world, experiencing things you once dreamed of but now can see with your own two eyes.

My review of Griest guidebook, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, is forthcoming in about a week. Should you pick up any of Griest’s three offerings during the holidays and have a question you’d like me to ask her during my interview with her in early January, feel free to shoot me an email (brendayun@gmail.com).

One for the Road: Evidence of My Existence

by Kelly Amabile on

Jim Lo Scalzo has been a staff photographer for US News & World Report since 1994. His new memoir is a moving look at the life of a photojournalist who has traveled the world. Evidence of My Existence tells the story Lo Scalzo’s 17 years on the job as an “obsessive wanderlust” — He handled assignments in over 60 countries, capturing important news stories, while jeopardizing his relationships and his very own life, for the sake of his career.

Eventually, Lo Scalzo had to make a choice, as this recent book review explains: He had to make a decision about what was the most important to him: his profession or his family. It is a decision that many photojournalists have to make but rarely talk about in the direct way that Lo Scalzo does.

Be sure to watch the compelling trailer for the book, which begins with the question, “How to stop moving?” Whether we’re taking photos or not, it’s a question that all travelers are faced with. This book explores how one man answered the question for himself.

One for the Road: The Unheard

by Kelly Amabile on

A few weeks ago I heard Josh Swiller speak about his new memoir on NPR, and I’ve been meaning to mention it ever since. The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa is Swiller’s account of his experiences as a hearing-impaired American serving in the Peace Corps in Zambia. Sick of feeling like an outsider as a deaf man in the U.S., Swiller headed to Africa, where he was placed in the remote village of Mununga. He was the first white man to live in the impoverished community, and also the first person there with a hearing aid.

Swiller’s travels to Africa was much more than a do-good trip. His true journey was an inner one, during which he learned “just to be grateful for each moment.” His primary assignment to dig wells soon became secondary to more pressing needs of the village that he called home for two years. Swiller has received much praise for his debut memoir, a gripping account of an experience that was much more than cultural immersion. You can read one review here, from our friends at World Hum.