THE GREATEST GENERATION ~ Cleo Lampos

                              Learning About the Greatest Generation

Retirement delivered many opportunities for speaking to senior groups and at extension classes of local colleges. Several historic fiction books hit the market, and life sailed along with my husband and cat in a Chicago suburb. Then, in November 2019, I read Jennie Allen’s book, Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul.

I prayed that God would do anything in my life that would draw me closer to Him.

Gail Kittleson e-mailed me two days later.

An author of WWII historic fiction, Gail asked if I would want to co-write a book about the food that people ate during the war. After praying about this, I decided to jump full into the project. Research is one of my library skills honed over the years.

The range of material was vast. Trips to the library yielded books on WWII to read. The internet produced articles, memoirs, and PHD. Dissertations on the topics of military chocolate bars, ration kits, sugarless baking, foxhole foraging, the Victory Gardens, the Land Girls, Donut Dollies, and how the Dutch ate tulips. The women of North Platte, Nebraska, who served food to over 6 million GI’s in four years astounded me. Recipes and photos for all for all these topics bubbled from friends cleaning out their attics, historical archives, and government sources. A coffee table album on the topic complete with quotes, articles, photos and recipes resulted.

Then Gail and I decided to bring the sacrifices and ingenuity of celebrating Christmas during the war to the album format. Again, conversations with elderly friends, relatives, and reading memoirs gleaned so many insights. Reading books like Soldiers of a Different Fabric brought the stories of chaplains at Christmas to light. Compilations of accounts of POWs and GIs in the field at the season of Christ’s birth allowed the emotions of the time to come into our writing. Photos from private parties made their way to this book.

So much happened to me emotionally as these projects were researched.  My uncles enlisted during the war but spoke little about their experiences. Uncle Melvin took us to the cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, every time we visited him so we would remember the Sullivan Brothers and see all the white crosses. Now, I read the accounts of the sailors and soldiers in foxholes and on ships in hostile countries sharing their fears and hopes.

 My appreciation for the Greatest Generation increased as I read the letters of mothers and wives who put up a brave front even as they scrounged every day to make ends meet. The words of President Roosevelt, the volunteering of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the inspiring quotes of Eisenhower, Nimitz and MacArthur stirred a piece inside of me that had long lay dormant.  The folks who lived through WWII represented the best of our nation.  They are in a class by themselves.

It is with humility and pride that Gail Kittleson and I present the companion books that give the present generation a glimpse into the valor and courage of our parents and grandparents. The Greatest Generation.

Featured Books Will Release in September 2020

The Food That Held the World Together

World War II Christmas Scrapbook

Authors: Gail Kittleson and Cleo Lampos

Publisher: Wordcrafts Press

Genre: Historical non-fiction

Two companion books

Target Audience: High school to adult seniors who love history

Gail Kittleson

Gail Kittleson creates women’s historical fiction from her northern Iowa home where she lives with her husband, a retired Army chaplain. She is a frequent speaker and workshop presenter at libraries and other venues.

Cleo Lampos

Cleo Lampos is a retired schoolteacher who speaks to adult extension classes at local colleges, writes fiction, enjoys quilting, and helps her urban gardener husband on their Chicago suburban plot.

THE GALS WHO WROTE THE WAR ~Linda Shenton Matchett

The Gals Who Wrote the War

Guest post from Linda Shenton Matchett

As a former Human Resources professional, I am fascinated by the history of women in the workplace, especially during World War II when millions of ladies stepped into positions formerly held by men. Some of the newer types of commerce such as aircraft manufacturers welcomed women. In fact, Minneapolis-based Strato Equipment, a designer of high-altitude pressure suits for pilots, boasted a female workforce of 100%. The only guy in the factory was a department store dummy! Other industries such as the quintessential male profession of war reporting were tougher to break into.

Initially, the military used the accreditation process to control war correspondents, refusing outright to accredit women. A lengthy process that required background checks on the applicant, as well as his or her family, weeded out many candidates. According to photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, “By the time you are accredited you have no secrets from the War Department and neither do your ancestors.”

By the end of the war, of the nearly 2,000 accredited war correspondents in WWII, 127 were women. Accreditation acted as a contract: The Army or Navy transported reporters, fed and sheltered them, and sent their dispatches home. In return, correspondents followed military law and censorship. Correspondents who defied rules lost credentials.

They received a pocket-sized “Basic Field Manual” of rules (which frightening enough included a waiver of liability for injury or death). Correspondents carried a green accreditation card and wore uniforms without symbols of rank, to indicate they would neither give nor take salutes. Instead, they wore green “WC” armbands, which evolved into “U.S. War Correspondent” patches, and were treated as captains, a rank that allowed them to eat with officers and facilitated POW exchanges if taken prisoner.

Nearly every commander in the Allied forces refused to allow women near combat. They feared women breaking under pressure, balking at a lack of women’s latrines, or influencing soldiers to take risks to protect them. Needless to say, this frustrated most of the female reporters.

Journalist Martha Gellhorn is considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20^th century. She said, “I have too frequently received the impression that women war correspondents were an irritating nuisance. I wish to point out that none of us would have our jobs unless we know how to do them and this curious condescending treatment is as ridiculous as it is undignified.”

Some accredited women did see combat. Sometimes the front shifted, catching women in the thick of action, as was the case with Ruth Cowan in North Africa. Others asked officers to write letters of introduction to combat zones, as did Bourke-White in Italy. A few got there “by hook or by crook.”

Martha’s career lasted sixty years, and she covered nearly every major event that occurred during that time, occasionally taking matters into her own hands to ensure she was there. In order to reach the beach and report on the D-Day invasion, she sneaked aboard a hospital ship and hid in the bathroom during the entire voyage then impersonated a stretcher bearer to disembark. She got the story, but lost her credentials. Her response? “I followed the war wherever I could reach it.”

The grit and gumption of these 127 women enabled them to provide eyewitness accounts to the harrowing events of WWII. I hope my Ruth Brown mystery series honors these ladies in a small way.

Book Blurb for Under Fire: Set in April 1942, Under Fire tells the story of Ruth Brown whose missing sister Jane is declared dead. Convinced her sister is still alive, Ruth follows clues from their small New Hampshire town to war-torn London trying to find her. Discovering that Jane has been murdered results in a faith crisis for Ruth, and she decides she must find Jane’s killer.

Purchase Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ B0743MS95H

Books 2 (Under Ground) and 3 (Under Cover) are now available for pre-order! Visit my website for more information.

Bio: Linda Shenton Matchett is an author, speaker, and history geek. She writes about ordinary people who did extraordinary things in days gone by. A volunteer docent and archivist for the Wright Museum of WWII, Linda is also a lecturer with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute through Granite State College. She is also a trustee for her local public library. Linda was born a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland and has lived in historic places all her life. Now located in central New Hampshire, her favorite activities include exploring historic sites and immersing herself in the imaginary worlds created by other authors.

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