Hania grew up in a southwest Detroit neighborhood where most people understood English well enough to follow radio broadcasts of Joe Louis fights and fireside chats. But they were far more comfortable conversing in Polish. It was the language of… Continue Reading
Second Lieutenant Edwin Elston led the remaining boys in his platoon to a small clearing within twenty yards of a concrete bunker along the northern edge of the Siegfried line. Elston didn’t need to order them to take any cover… Continue Reading
The mournful wailing froze Conn O’Neill’s blood, as it always did. People said the sound the stuka dive-bombers made came from sirens the Germans fitted to their planes. Well, maybe. But Conn, fighting for Allied forces in northern France, knew… Continue Reading
The bombers were coming again, the sirens screaming. Rita pulled away from the crowd exiting the nightclub and started toward the coat check station. She could bear the cold but not what would happen if she didn’t make it back… Continue Reading
“One hundred days,” I say as the prime minister leafs through the contract I’d given him. He scans the pages through a pair of black rimmed spectacles held in front of his nose with a chubby white fist. He looked… Continue Reading
“Hey, I think we broke something,” he said, shaking me awake. Ann’s dad always looks like the snapshot she’d had of him, taken on the Burma Road: bare-chested, center-parted hair, broad smile, burly. The clock said 2:45. Ann’s side of… Continue Reading
Elliot Kane lived in a harmless fantasy world — or so he thought. “Guten morgen!” he said to his wife, leaping out of bed the day before the anniversary of D-Day. “Good morning,” Mrs Kane replied in English. She refused… Continue Reading
On hearing of the Japanese invasion at Simanggang in 1941, and remembering the scrabble for metal in the last war, Mathie hid every tool he owned behind panels in the roof of his home. This way he calculated he’d have… Continue Reading