Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 16

Above and Beyond: Radio Silence, a Remarkable WWII Historical Novel

Above and Beyond: Radio Silence by William A. Wright

From information about the book on Amazon: Above and Beyond: Radio Silence is a historical fiction account of an airman’s World War II experience. While much focus is given to Generals and those who rise to glory in fierce battles, this story focuses on a select group of airmen. Those who flew in unarmored, unarmed aircraft behind enemy lines, over battles–to drop troops, supplies, and evacuate wounded. This story is based on my father’s flight records, his notes, and his stories. The events actually happened, but much of the personal detail is based on speculation and interpretation; the backdrop of war is historical.

Those who served in World War II grew up in the shadow of the great depression, many had nothing but their freedom. Freedom was enough to risk dying for, so they volunteered to go into the unknown to face the terrors of an enemy war machine fiercer than the world had ever known.

Our story revolves around the formation of the 60th Troop Carrier Group and drafting of the Douglas DC-3 into combat. The DC-3 proved very quickly to be a workhorse or flying mule and became designated in the military as a C-53. Orders soon came into Douglas to produce a military modified version, the C-47 and C-47A. These troop transports and crews trained in the British Isles in preparation for the invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch. In North Africa the transport teams took quick training in the use of CG-4A “Waco” gliders. The combination of paratroop drops and gliders would be involved in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.

The story moves on to the night missions into the mountains of Yugoslavia, where supply drops and night landings into torch-lit meadows took place.

This story follows the effects of these events and war in general on average service men and women. Real people serve, real families wait back home, war affects everyone, and it is our mission to document the sacrifices those who serve make. Never forget why we have what we have, why we are a free people.

Our current world was brought about by each individual participant, not just generals and politicians. There is more to history than dates and events, there are emotions, feelings, fear, love, and hate.

My thoughts: Based on the life of his father, William A. Wright has written a masterful and introspective history of WWII during the difficult years of invading Sicily, Italy, and Yugoslavia. Edward G. Wright was awarded to Air Medals and three Oak Leaf Clusters as a radio operator with the 28th Troop Carrier Sq., 60th Troop Carrier Group in the Mediterranean Theater. Some of the most poignant scenes were clandestine missions including rescuing dozens of orphans from the Balkans. A remarkable chapter of WWII history.

Please check out Above and Beyond: Radio Silence on Amazon.

About the Author

William A. Wright (Bill) and Dale Ann Edmiston (Brave Knight Writers) are a husband-and-wife writing team who live in Pennsylvania.

Bill Wright writes and operates a hobby farm. He has won awards for flash fiction at Saint Davids Christian Writers Conference. Dale Ann edits and is an early childhood educator and laboratory preschool director within a high school. She earned two master’s degrees from Edinboro University. Committed to the writing craft, we attend writing conferences, and have completed master’s level writing courses at Southern New Hampshire University.

The website of Brave Knight Writers.

Here is their Amazon Author page.

The Poignant Provenance of My First Year of College

By the time I graduated from high school in 1962, my folks had been making payments on a small farm only a decade. After Dad was discharged from US Army Air Force, he searched a few years for a farm to buy.

But the counselor at Earlham High School determined during my freshman year that I should aim for college. But graduation was coming up and the problem of how to pay for it.

Joy Neal, 1962 Earlham Grad

When Grandma Leora heard about the dilemma, she decided to cash some bonds, enough to give $1000 to each of her four adult children. The money she gave Mom paid for my freshman year at the State College of Iowa.

I didn’t realize it then but that Grandma had bought those bonds with insurance money she received after the loss of Dale, Danny, and Junior. Those brothers helped me get started in college. I am so humbled by this.

I was the first my immediate family to get to attend college. The summer after my freshman year, I began working at the old college library. My sophomore year was challenging because, even with a small scholarship and the job, I still couldn’t make ends meet. The college’s brand new Donald O. Rod Library found three jobs for me there, and I applied for a National Defense Student Loan. By working in the library each summer, one of them full-time, I graduated in 1966 with a loan to pay off.

But Grandma’s gift was just one of the legacies she blessed with, especially knowing the provenance of this one.

Leora Wilson’s Poignant Income, 1947

Servicemen were urged to take out insurance policies, which the Wilson brothers did. After the loss of Dale, Danny, and Junior, and after Leora was widowed, she didn’t have another source of income. At the time she lived with her oldest son Delbert and his family on the acreage near Perry. 

I don’t know the circumstances for this deposition, but Leora declared her income and expenses as of April 1, 1947.

STATE OF IOWA
DALLAS COUNTY

I, Leora Frances Wilson, being first duly sworn on oath depose and say that I am 56 years of age, the date of my birth being December 4th, 1890, that the only source of income I have is insurance received as beneficiary on the insurance policies of my three sons, to-wit:
8BAAC
XC 6 085 514 Wilson, Daniel S. $54.80 per month
XC 4 134 793 Wilson, Clairborne [sic] J. $54.80 per month
XC 6 085 483 Wilson, Dale R. $52.50 per month
and then $90.00 per month pension, $30.00 on each above mentioned boy.
My expenses per month would be approximately $125.00.

___________________________
Subscribed and sworn to before me by the said Leora Frances Wilson, this 1st day of April A.D. 1947.
___________________________
Deputy Clerk of the District
Court, in and for Dallas County,
Iowa.

Fireworks for July Fifth

Fireworks for July Fifth

Fireworks for us cousins during the 1950s
meant Grandpa Neal’s birthday, which was July 5.
The clan celebrated with cake, homemade ice cream
and fireworks. Treats, served up by our moms,
and singing happy birthday came first. 

Then we kids played with sparkler wands
and black snakes that squirmed out of the sidewalk
with an odd smoky smell, leaving black marks.

Our dads launched the real fireworks into a pasture.
One year a spark fell into the box of fireworks
resulting in a memorable finale, with rockets
shooting in all directions. After things calmed down,
Grandpa quipped, “I’ve never seen a bunch of
Presbyterians move so fast.”

-----
Black Snakes fireworks. Thanks to cousin Vince Wells for remembering Grandpa's comment!

Another post about Kenneth Neal.

Four Generations

The local papers used to often publish five generation family photos. We didn’t manage five generations on the planet at the same time, but I’m thankful for a few photos with four generations.

Four generations: Doris Neal, holding baby Joy, Grandma Leora Wilson, Great Grandmother Laura Goff. Rural Minburn, Iowa, July 4, 1944

I was a month old when his was taken July 4, 1944, before Dad flew up from Texas to drive us back with him. Mom and I stayed with her folks, Clabe and Leora, while they still farmed near Minburn, Iowa, although all five sons were off to sever in the war. One of Leora’s brothers had driven their mother, Laura Goff, to Minburn from their home in Omaha. The first four-generation photo of my motherline.

Laura Goff, Leora Wilson, Doris Neal, Joy Neal, Guthrie Center, Iowa, mid-1950s. All four of us are the oldest daughter in her family. Three of us are also firstborns.

Dad’s Side

Grandpa Kenneth Neal (who brought a baby locket for me while we were still in the hospital), Mom (Doris Wilson Neal) holding me, Great Grandpa O.S. Neal. (Orlando Swain, named for his mother’s brothers, both of whom served in the Civil War) June 1944

Grandpa Kenneth Neal, Doris (standing in for Dad) with baby Joy, Great Grandpa O.S. (Swain) Neal. I was Kenneth the Ruby’s first grandchild. Since it looks like Mom is still wearing a maternity top, this was probably right after we got “home” (Wilson’s Minburn farm) after the hospital.

Dad, Warren Neal, was in Texas training advanced cadets, so this one is an almost-four-generation photo. Swain Neal died shortly after WWII so I never got to know him, except through Mom’s stories. Swain and Nellie Neal were favorite neighbors when the Wilsons lived in the town of Dexter during the Great Depression.

If you’ve read Leora’s Dexter Stories, O.S. Neal is the man who hired Doris to work in the Dexter Canning Factory in 1935. (This is also the lineage that leads to Mayflower ancestors.)

Ministering to the Cherokees and to Confederate Soldiers

Dennis Peterson’s Look Unto the Hills: Stories of Growing Up in Rural East Tennessee is such an engaging memoir. He’s also written several scholarly books, including these two that I found especially fascinating. (The notes are from the books’ descriptions on Amazon.)

Evangelism and Expulsion: Missionary Work Among the Cherokees Until Removal

Christian missionaries prepared the Cherokees for civilization, education, government, and eternity.

Even before it really was safe for white men to travel in Cherokee territory, Christian missionaries were trying to reach those people for Christ. Evangelism and Expulsion traces the early unsuccessful missionary attempts to reach the Cherokees with the gospel and the later, more successful, efforts of the various major denominations—Moravians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists—to evangelize the Cherokee Indians. Peterson describes the work of some of the more prominent, though today little known, missionaries involved and the struggles they faced because of the Cherokees’ native culture, resistance from traditionalists within the tribe, and the U.S. government’s determination to drive the Indians from their lands. Although some results of the missionaries’ efforts—both political and spiritual—are obvious, others are subtler. Only God knows for sure whether the missionaries’ efforts were successful and to what degree. Evangelism and Expulsion also recounts how Sequoyah’s development of the Cherokee syllabary contributed to the spread of the gospel message, increased literacy among the Cherokees (making them one of the most civilized of the Five Civilized Tribes), and enabled the Nation to write its own constitution.

The missionaries’ faithful commitment to obeying the Great Commission among the Cherokees despite numerous hardships continues to bear fruit in the Cherokee Nation today.

Christ in Camp and Combat: Religious Work in the Confederate ArmiesHow chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs prepared Confederate soldier for life here and hereafter.

Religion has too often been relegated to the far periphery of the history of the War Between the States, eclipsed by the emphases on the battles, tactics, and personalities of the conflict. In reality, religion was the very marrow of who Americans were. Religion, specifically traditional and evangelical Christianity, was the very foundation of Southern society during the antebellum period, and that spiritual emphasis permeated society during the war.

When the war came, ministers and Christian laymen alike were burdened for the spiritual welfare of the generation of warriors who answered their country’s call to defend their homelands and who were fated to give their lives for its honor and preservation. A plethora of volunteers from every denomination of Protestant Christianity, as well as from among Roman Catholicism and Judaism, became chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs. Their mission was to help the soldiers avoid the negative temptations of a life away from the positive influences of home, church, and community and to prepare them for the real possibilities of death and gruesome wounds. They not only encouraged them to prepare for eternity but also to accept the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy as God’s will.

 Christ in Camp and Combat is the story of those Christian heroes, spiritual soldiers in a spiritual conflict amidst the raging winds of earthly warfare.

Dennis L. Peterson

Dennis L. Peterson is an independent author, historian, and editor with numerous published credits in regional and national journals and magazines. A former history teacher and history curriculum writer, his areas of special interest include Southern history, the War Between the States, the Great Depression, and World War II as well as biblical studies.

He is a member of several historical organizations, including the Society of Independent Southern Historians, the East Tennessee Historical Society, and the Travelers Rest (SC) Historical Society. He is also a docent for the History Museum of Travelers Rest. A native of East Tennessee, he now lives in Taylors, South Carolina.  Here is his website. 

—–If you like listening to stories, Dennis has recorded several delightful ones which have been produced by Our American Stories with Lee Habeeb.

Cheerful Four O’Clocks

The autumn of 1944, Danny Wilson had completed his training Santa Rosa, California, qualified as a twin and single engine fighter pilot. He’d been flying the P-38 Lightning, which is brother Dale had called “a man’s dream.” Dan was about to begin processing out and was awaiting overseas orders.

The east end of the house on the Perry acreage, with outbuildings to the west.

His folks, Clabe and Leora Wilson, had sent a photo of the little house they’d bought on an acreage near Perry, Iowa. “The new place looks like it can be fixed up to look very modern with a white picket fence and all,” Dan wrote. “Just a little paint, a few chickens, a couple of four o’clocks in the front yard, and a rusty pump, cow, and corn patch in the back.”

When I read his letter, I could smell the clean fresh aroma of Four O’Clocks. I haven’t grown any for several years, but they are delightful little bushy plants. Native to Peru and cultivated for hundreds of years, this drought-tolerant plant is named for the time of day its flowers open –give or take a couple of hours. In Iowa they’re annuals, but I collected their round black seeds every autumn to sow the next spring.

I’ve been going through Grandma Leora’s diaries. She mentioned planting Four O’Clocks in one of her flowerbeds around the little house in Guthrie Center. I should start planting these cheerful easy-to-grow flowers again.

Treadle Sewing Machines

Leora Goff attended Mrs. Connrardy Sewing School in Exira, Iowa, in 1910, hiring out to sew for local families almost four years before she married Clabe Wilson. She made her own wedding gown. Leora’s mother, Laura Goff, likely owned a Singer treadle sewing machine. The treadle is the part at the bottom powered by rocking it back and forth by foot. It spins a flywheel which is connected to the hand wheel at the upper right by a belt. 

Model 27 Singer, Wikipedia

Leora Wilson had half a dozen children before she bought her own Singer sewing machine, driving a horse and wagon to town to get it after the postman sent a note that her package was too large to bring on the rural route. She kept the treadle busy with new clothes and making repairs.

The machine traveled with them from house to house during the Great Depression, even hiding items their pet squirrel Rusty squirreled away. Did her machine travel all the way to Guthrie Center after WWII? I don’t remember it. But Grandma Leora patched regularly at the Guthrie County Hospital with her Rebekahs group. She was the only one by then who knew how to use their treadle machine.

Right after the war, Dad rented a farm between Redfield and Dexter. Mom enjoyed sewing on a treadle machine for her daughters. I still have a pinafore she made one of us. Pinafore. What a winsome word. This one has lambs outlined with a chain stitch standing in a field of lazy daisy stitch flowers. Mom did the embroidery as well. The fabric has been starched and ironed, maybe with a sadiron. I remember when we got electricity at that house because Mom got an iron that had a cord, about 1950.

The back of the pinafore is open, with a generous bow. It was to be worn over a dress. Little girls in those days always wore dresses. Oh, I wish I had a photo with one of us wearing a pinafore!

I started out on a treadle sewing machine, but when you’re in 4-H, any project entered in the county fair would be judged. That meant that the tension between the upper thread and lower thread had to be perfect so the stitches themselves would be even. They weren’t, and Mom had trouble adjusting the tension. That led to her first electric sewing machine, a White, sold by Sears.

We have an old sewing machine case, without the machine, just because.

Charity’s Fire by Craig Matthews, Launch Day! The Perfect Storm meets The Screwtape Letters

For the two couples on the boat it felt like a vacation. It looked like a vacation. Heck, it even smelled like a vacation- but it was an elaborate trap.

To tip the scales in an ancient war, the plan demanded that at least one of the humans be sacrificed. If successful, this operation would reach through time, alter children, and alienate grandchildren-forever. They were betting everything to change the unrealized destiny of this family- by destroying their hope.

Is destruction, chaos, hatred, and hopelessness always the byproduct of the fog of war? The enemy is counting on it. When worlds collide, surviving the havoc depends on connection, guidance, resilience, and adaptability. Is it too late to wake up and change once the battle is underway?

The fate of millions depends on the answer.

The Perfect Storm Meets The Screwtape Letters

My thoughts: Two couples enjoy an outing on a boat, when they encounter a ferocious storm. But it’s much more than a storm. Unseen entities are at war over the humans, who encounter such devastation. Not only that, but other humans plot their own mayhem. All of these collide on an island in a terrifying story ending with a portentous scene. That eleven second countdown! Charity’s Fire is full of caution, but also hope. 

Craig Matthews

Craig Matthews is: A son of two parents. Sibling to three. Husband to one. Father of three. Grandfather of seven. Author of four books. Herder of nine chickens and a barn cat named Moo. One creative soul.

Craig Matthews loves: Jesus. Connie. Six kids. Seven grandkids. His big family. A good story. People in general. Pizza in particular. Nature. History. Adventure of all kinds. Sunsets. Detroit sports teams. Living at the end of a dead end road. Islands. Laughter, and a particular historical document dated 9-17-1787.

Please check out Craig’s website.

His Immigrant Patriot was my favorite book from 2003!

Charity’s Fire by Craig Matthews, Launch Day!

For the two couples on the boat it felt like a vacation. It looked like a vacation. Heck, it even smelled like a vacation- but it was an elaborate trap.

To tip the scales in an ancient war, the plan demanded that at least one of the humans be sacrificed. If successful, this operation would reach through time, alter children, and alienate grandchildren-forever. They were betting everything to change the unrealized destiny of this family- by destroying their hope.

Is destruction, chaos, hatred, and hopelessness always the byproduct of the fog of war? The enemy is counting on it. When worlds collide, surviving the havoc depends on connection, guidance, resilience, and adaptability. Is it too late to wake up and change once the battle is underway?

The fate of millions depends on the answer.

The Perfect Storm Meets The Screwtape Letters

My thoughts: Two couples enjoy an outing on a boat, when they encounter a ferocious storm. But it’s much more than a storm. Unseen entities are at war over the humans, who encounter such devastation. Not only that, but other humans plot their own mayhem. All of these collide on an island in a terrifying story ending with a portentous scene. That eleven second countdown! Charity’s Fire is full of caution, but also hope. 

Craig Matthews

Craig Matthews is: A son of two parents. Sibling to three. Husband to one. Father of three. Grandfather of seven. Author of four books. Herder of nine chickens and a barn cat named Moo. One creative soul.

Craig Matthews loves: Jesus. Connie. Six kids. Seven grandkids. His big family. A good story. People in general. Pizza in particular. Nature. History. Adventure of all kinds. Sunsets. Detroit sports teams. Living at the end of a dead end road. Islands. Laughter, and a particular historical document dated 9-17-1787.

Please check out Craig’s website.

His Immigrant Patriot was my favorite book from 2003!