World at War: First-Hand Accounts of America's Greatest Generation

By Nick Reed

Self-Published, $20

BY PAUL DE SESSA

Special to The Pilot

This mesmerizing collection of World War II veterans' stories was written by a freshman history major from UNC-Chapel Hill.

The personal details are chilling and take the reader to the battlefields, seas and skies of 1941. Each of these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines distilled a wartime of experiences into these pages.

Reed, a Pinecrest High School graduate, collected an extremely personal portrait of our fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers: the men and women of "America's Greatest Generation."

Moore County is home to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. It's not uncommon for highly acclaimed authors to call it home.

It is unusual when they are only 17 years old. Unlike the myriad of World War II documentaries, biographies, novels and docudramas, this book is strictly first-person accounts of GI Joes and Janes.

No generals, no commanders, no nuclear physicists, just the men and women who stood face to face with the enemy, the wounded and the dying.

The stories are unabridged. Reading them is like looking through more than 30 different lenses in several concurrent movies.

It's like getting your grandfather to finally open up about what he did in the air over Germany, or what your grandmother did in that field hospital in Guam.

Somehow, Reed got these generally reserved people to spill their guts about a part of their lives that defined them. It's also defined postwar America. They are our progenitors. They defined us as well. They are leaving us now.

This is one of our last chances to read their stories, not about them, but from them.

To purchase the book, email reedj007@yahoo.com or visit the website http://worldatwarbook.weebly.com/buy-a-book.html.

Paul De Sessa lives in Fayetteville.