Very few WWII veterans ever talked about their war experiences. If they saw combat action, they were highly unlikely to ever speak of it. That's the way it was with my Dad.
When I was growing up, he would tell me a little vignette now and then. But that was all. He never actually told a long story about his wartime and POW experiences. As I grew older I began to ask him to record his experiences. He flatly refused. It was out of the question for him to do so.
The years went by and I continued to pester him to tell his story. The reply was always the same. "I will never do that."
By and by, he became very ill and in 1993 had to go on dialysis to stay alive. He clearly knew he would never go off dialysis and that he was entering the last years of his life. That's when he began to relent about telling his story.
I saw my opportunity and pressed harder for him to record what he went through. I bought the best cassette recorder I could find and the highest quality tapes, too. I bought Mom a foot-operated transcription machine. Then I began working with them both to create an outline that Dad could follow.
It was actually a very simple process. I simply put everything in chronological order from when he entered the service until the time he was discharged. It was almost like a step-by-step recipe.
The biggest trouble Dad had was with the actual recording process. He simply couldn't do it without breaking up and becoming distraught and emotional. Finally, he worked out a doable plan. He went into the small den of their house at night. He put a towel at the bottom of the door and turned out the lights. it was pitch black in that little room. And then he would start talking into the tape recorder.
As long as he talked in the pitch black he was OK and did just fine. Somehow trying to describe his harrowing experiences with a hint of daylight changed his emotions dramatically. Luckily, he was able to record all of his experiences before he became too frail in advance of his death in August 1998.
Meanwhile, my Mom dutifully stayed ahead of the transcription process and had most of what Dad said put into an MS Word document ever before Dad died. After the trauma of the funeral and burial passed, she began working with her friend, Babs Douglass, to render the transcripts and photos into a real book.
Either Mom or Babs or both heavily edited portions of Dad's memories. A lot of the raw emotion was taken away from his words and the book seems to make Dad rather detached from his experiences. To a degree, he was indeed detached but he was also very human and was deeply affected by his painful and life-threatening experiences.
Mom and Babs did a truly fine job in creating the book. It is a balance between being too raw and being too polite. It strikes a very objective medium and tells Dad's story well.
I believe Mom printed 2,000 copies of the book in late 1998. She was insistent on selling the book for $25 a copy. She was also very protective about any usage of it online. I tried early and often but failed to encourage her to give the book wide distribution. After many years passed, she began giving the book away to various special people she encountered in her life, whether it be a store clerk or a fellow church member.
Eventually, the book circulated widely enough to actually wind up in the hands of various online used book sellers. My Mom died December 15th, 2011 and I returned to arrange her services and burial and deal with her Estate.
Unfortunately, she improperly stored the remaining inventory of the book and I could salvage only 20 usable copies. The others had to be trashed. As the months passed since Mom's death, I realized Dad's book needed to be preserved for posterity and future generations. His is a timeless story of courage, heroism, strength and love. However, how could a mere 20 books become any sort of legacy?
That's how this project began. I found a great book scanning service linked at the bottom of this page. This is just the beginning of a whole new phase for Dad's book. Eventually, it will become a full-fledged ebook and it will also become available in the "POD" market. POD means "Print On Demand" and people will be able to buy one single copy of the book for a very reasonable price, probably about $10, plus shipping.
So far, we are very pleased with the initial efforts to preserve the book. We welcome your feedback, suggestions, ideas and whatever you may wish to share with us.
Thank You for visiting this site and thank you for reading this "back story" and THANKS for reading my Dad's book!
Sincerely, John Randolph Parsons.
We created a separate email address for this project and you can reach me by using:
johnrobertparsons19221998 (((at))) gmail.com
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