About this Book

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Historians
acknowledge that World War II touched every man, woman, and child in the
United States. In Small Town America in World War II, Ronald E. Marcello uses
oral history interviews with civilians and veterans to explore how the
citizens of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, responded to the war effort. Located
along the western shore of the Susquehanna River in York County, Wrightsville
was a transportation hub with various shops, stores, and services as well as
industrial plants.  Interviews with
citizens and veterans are organized in sections on the home front; the North
African-Italian, European, and Pacific theatres; stateside military service;
and occupation in Germany. Throughout Marcello provides introductions and
contextual narrative on World War II as well as annotations for events and
military terms.  Overseas the citizens
of Wrightsville turned into soldiers. An infantryman in the Italian campaign,
Alfred Forry, explained, “I was forty-five days on the line wearing the same
clothes, but everybody was in the same situation, so you didn’t mind the
stench and body odors.” A veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, Edward
Reisinger, remembered, “Replacements had little chance of surviving. They
were sent to the front one day, and the next day they were coming back with
mattress covers over them. The sergeants never knew the names of these
people.” Mortar man Donald Peters described the death of a buddy who was hit
by artillery shrapnel: “His arm was just hanging on by the skin, and his
intestines were hanging out.”  In the
conclusion Marcello examines how the war affected Wrightsville. Did the war
bring a return to prosperity? What effects did it have on women? How did
wartime trauma affect the returning veterans? In short, did World War II
transform Wrightsville and its citizens, or was it the same town after the
war?