WWII STORIES

Chasing Time: A millennial’s quest to catch the WWII Generation BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE

The goal of this oral history project was to collect stories from WWII vets, Holocaust survivors, liberators of concentration camps, and many others who all experienced WWII in diverse ways. Through all the stories that this millennial collected, the WWII Generation taught her life lessons as she was CHASING TIME for almost a decade.
Chasing Time (book and documentary film) will be released soon. Please sign up to receive e-mail updates about the release of Chasing Time.
Below are all stories that Victoria has heard firsthand accounts of. The following stories are in CHASING TIME:
-Veterans who fought at Iwo Jima
-Veterans who defeated Nazism and liberated concentration camps
-Veterans who reported to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center
-Veterans who were membersof bomber crews
-Veterans who were commanders of their VFW post
-Veterans who were WWII Pilots
-Veterans who were at Okinawa
-Veterans who were part of the U.S. Air Corps
-Veterans who were B-17 flight engineers
-Veterans who were in Airforce during WWII
-Veterans who were pilot bombardiers and navigators
-Veterans who were a part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps
-Veterans who were Marines in the Marine Corps
-Veterans who were in the Navy Reserves
-Veterans who were captured by the Japanese after parachuting from their disabled plane
-Sailors in the Pacific
-Veterans from the China-Burma-India Theater
-Members of the 8th Air Force
-Veterans in the Army (infantry) in the European Theater of Operations
-Veterans in the Navy and on the ship U.S.S. Makassar Strait, CV 6-91
-Veterans on board the Queen Mary
-Veterans who went into concentration camps to give prisoners water and food
-Veterans who dug mass graves with a bull dozer
-Reluctant soldiers
-A Sergeant in the American Division from 1943-1945
-Fort Logan and Camp Barkley
-The Philippines
-The island of Leyte
-The last 100 ship convoy that went out to Europe
-A member aboard the USS Hermitage
-Veterans who were medics in WWII
-Centenarians and their life advice for younger generations
-Louis Zamperini and how he overcame difficult odds
-Nursing home residents and their trials and tribulations
-POWs
-MPs and brig guards in the 2nd marine division
- A Veteran who was part of the 2nd U.S. Airborne Glider
- Veterans who fought for the Russian Army
- A Veteran on a Landing Ship Medium (Rocket) LSM(R) while in the Navy
- A 292nd engineer division engineer
- A Veteran part of the 201st engineer battalion that was part of a unit of thirteen men who held off the Nazi Army
- Korean war veterans
- A Veteran who had his plane shot up by German ack-ack fire
- Elderly in nursing homes
- Elderly in mental health facilities
- St. Mere Eglise
-Fr. Rookey, O.S.M. - a Servite Priest who helped hundreds of sick people to heal
- The sinking of the Leopoldville
-A rifleman in the 262nd Regiment
- People who lived through the Great Depression
- What the Allied Powers did to stop what was happening at Dachau
-Reims, France
-France awarding a Veteran the war cross for fighting the Axis Powers and for helping to restore postwar communications
-A Jewish family that had to flee the Gestapo in Germany and sail off to Shanghai
-A Hungarian, Jewish man in Nagy Banya, who was moved to a Jewish ghetto and then to Auschwitz
-A woman who lived in Germany during the Nazi regime and fled to France
-A woman who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto
-A woman who was a teenager during the war and an air raid warden in Chicago from 1942 until 1944
-People who lived through the aftermath of the atomic bomb
-The invasion of Okinawa
-A twenty-eight person team of partisans that fought against the German military and security forces in Czechoslovakia
-Major battles including: Rome-Arno, the Northern Apennines, the Rhineland and Central Europe
-The 101st Airborne Division - Screaming Eagles
-What it was like to be a member of Hitler Youth
-Liberating Belgium
-The Nazis invading Austria
-Kristallnacht
-A boy who was an orphan when the Nazis took over his orphanage
-An organization called Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE)
-Ravensbrück concentration camp
-People who lived under oppressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe
-Escaping from communist Hungary in 1956
-The Hungarian Revolution in 1956
-The 51 day-long siege of Budapest in 1944
-The Soviet take-over of Hungary in 1948
-The 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight
- Living in Ukraine during the war
- Living in Germany during the war
- Living in Japan during the war
- Living in Italy during the war
-A man’s Flying Fortress being shot down in enemy-occupied France
-A veteran being captured by Nazi recruits from Hitler’s Youth Corps
-Being a prisoner of the Third Reich
-Timespent in prisoner of war camps in Sagan, Nurnberg, and Moosburg
-The bitterly cold forced march in the winter of 1945 when Stalag Luft III was evacuated ahead of the advancing Russian Army
-Being liberated by General Paton’s Third Army
-Stalag III
-American prisoners of war that were held captive in a German prison camp in Austria: Stalag 17
-Being imprisoned in Krens, Austria in 1944-45
-Being captured by German troops and then brought to the infamous Stalag 17B
-A POW who spent time at Nuremberg, Germany 13D
-The torpedo that hit the Battleship USS Pennsylvania (BB-38)
-A woman who was a member of the WAVES
-Being in the Maltese army in WWII
-A nose gunner and a flight engineer on a B-24
-Pilots, co-pilots, radio operators, bombardiers, navigators, flight engineers and gunners
-Guam in the South Pacific
-A member of the British army during WWII
-Serving in the medical corps in England, France, and Germany
-Being a medic at the 101st General Hospital in Taunton, England
-A coxswain of Higgins landing craft boats in the invasions of Guadalcanal and other British Solomon Islands
-What it was like to live in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic during WWII
-Living in Poland during WWII
- Fighting in Europe during WWII
-The murder of the three airmen from the squadron VC-97 in the Pacific
-Crew members on a torpedo bomber during a dangerous typhoon
- D-Day - June 6, 1944
- Liberating Wobbelin Concentration Camp
- Interview with 5 Generations of War Veterans: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan

A NOTE FROM VICTORIA:

The stories that I collected from the WWII generation faithfully transmitted me back in time to a place where the world was experiencing war. There were a variety of different experiences from that one war. Through each perspective, I was able to view someone’s experience in different parts of the war. We all see the world contrarily based on what it is that we experience. World War Two was no different.

I cannot wait for you to read / watch CHASING TIME, so you too can hear these mesmerizing stories!
 
  Happy Reading,  
 
Victoria Hagerty

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