When It Was Our War: A Soldier's Wife on the Home Front (Shannon Ravenel Books)
Books / Hardcover
Books › Biography & Autobiography › Military
ISBN: 1565124030 / Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book, October 2003
The author offers an intimate portrait of life on the home front during World War II, capturing her experiences as a military wife following her husband around the country from base to base and waiting back home for him to return.
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When It Was Our War is a personal story that brings a new perspective to "the greatest generation" by giving voice to the military wives on America's home front during World War II.Still a teenager when America declared war on Germany and Japan, Stella Suberman, not hesitating for even a moment, bought a blue Vera Maxwell suit and a leghorn hat made of fine straw, found a rabbi, and married Jack a week after he joined the Army Air Corps. By the time the war ended in 1945, Stella was twenty-three, and very much an adult. Now eighty, she tells her story - the story of a young woman who, like so many others, watched her husband go off to war overseas, not knowing if she would ever see him again and waiting for what seemed an eternity for his letters home.In this frank, insightful record of those war years, Suberman takes us back to the Miami Beach of her high school days when hotel signs boasted Always A View, Never A Jew. She recalls the passenger ship lingering just off Miami Beach, a boat full of European Jews hoping for sanctuary and later known as the Voyage of the Damned. She describes setting forth alone across the country to join Jack at his training camp in California. Kicked off trains to make room for soldiers, her luggage stolen, arrested for "soliciting," she was determined to follow her husband. Stella discovered she could take on and handle hard things: the anti-Semitism she encountered almost everywhere, the gradual recognition of her own prejudice, and even having her first baby far from home. Meanwhile, she took Jack's buddies into her heart, and when some were lost in battle, she grieved, but went on.
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