World War II Books and Mag.; Interesting Ref. to Relative

The email that I received from Peggy Farquhar has great reading suggestions, and a very interesting story about tracking down references to her sister-in-law, LaVerne, a nurse who was killed on Anzio Beach. The note reads in part:

The books I referred too were:
#1 "15 Stars" by Stanley Weintraub, author of "Silent Night". It is a good book, it also lets you see how the 'good old boys system' works.

#2 "And If I Perish"Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II, by Evelyn M.Monahan and Rosemary Neidel - Greenlee. 468 pages with loads of research.Monahan is a retired Psychologist who served in the U.S. Army WAC as a corpsman, Greenlee served in the U.S.Navy Nurse Corps, she is an RN with a Master's in Nursing.

#3 "World War II", the February/March 2009 issue of a bimonthly magazine, the nursing book was referred too in a letter to the editor. (She found this at Barnes & Noble.)

Carol and Mike loaned me their copy of "15 Stars"... When I saw the copy I got excited because when I was growing up those three gentlemen were in the news daily.

My daughter Cindi is a nurse and she is thinking about contacting the authors of the book, "And If I Perish." In the book it refers to an interview my sister-in-law had given too a Red Cross correspondent several days before she was killed. Her thinking was they might be able to give us more information on the interview. The telegram from the War Department didn't give the family a whole lot of information, and when her body was returned I don't think there was a whole lot of information known.

A side note - several years ago Bob (Peggy's husband) and I were researching something and we got a call from someone at Scott & White Hospital wanting some information on LaVerne and there was some correspondence between the hospital and us. Neither my brother-in-law's wife nor I knew LaVerne, just stories about her. My sister-in-law had occasion to be at Scott and White Hospital recently and she came across a small room off the lounge and there were reports about LaVerne in local newspapers when the incident happened, these papers were in glass cases. I, being a member of the Women's Military Museum in Washington go to the Museum every time I go thru Washington, looking in the computer for ladies I served with. They have a computer system with history and pictures of women in the services, it is in Arlington National Cemetery and opened to the public.

Thanks Peggy for a great story!

Normandy D-Day Tour Photos

The pictures in the slideshow highlight some of the places to be visited on the France/Germany tour in summer 2009.