I've been planning to look at some individual soldiers stories for some time, the first was going to be the story of a Green Howard who fought through from D-Day until the end of the war. As his story is similar to my great uncles everyone in my family was interested and the book has gone on it's travels passed from my mother to my sister to my brother… As of typing I haven't got it back...
In the meantime when I was given the opportunity to talk to Frank Lavin about his father's war time experience I jumped at the chance.
Frank has gathered together and organised his father letters he posted home during the war. Carl Lavin was a high school senior in Canton, Ohio, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native was eighteen when he enlisted, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge and through to the occupation of Germany.
The book is Homefront to Battlefront: An Ohio Teenage in World War II there is a link on the website.