Experiences of a World War II Veteran: Before, During and After the War [Hardcover]

James Woodall Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2005

This is the story of a country boy who grew up on a two horse, hilly, subsistence Tennessee farm during the Depression of the late Nineteen Twenties and Thirties. It tells of the events shaping his life, giving him a value system that helped him live what he considers a happy, fulfilled, reasonably successful life. It tells of his successes and failures and lessons learned from both of these. These stories were written primarily for his family but others may benefit from understanding some of the experiences of one who is a member of what has been called "The Greatest Generation".

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About the Author

The author has been interested in writing since four years' study in high school and an English major in college. He has enjoyed telling stories of his early life to his children and grandchildren. At their urging to record some of his stories for posterity so they would not be lost, he decided to expand his efforts into a little book. As he had published a few articles, co-authored a successful textbook, and written a few published poems, he has hopes that his efforts here will be worthwhile. Thus he presents this little book to you. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse (August 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1420832646
• ISBN-13: 978-1420832648
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,126,884 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Complete Man, January 19, 2006

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A.M. Books - See all my reviews

This review is from: Experiences of a World War II Veteran: Before, During and After the War (Hardcover)

In Experiences of a World War II Veteran, a memoir by James
Woodall Taylor, the reader meets a complete man, representative in many
ways of the men and women of "the greatest generation," those who fought
in World War II. I use the word complete to mean that the man we see in
Experiences of a World War II Veteran has not only accumulated
experiences that have exposed him to the world at large, but also he has
transformed those experiences into a meaningful wholeness. Perhaps
unknowingly, and clearly modestly, the author has provided readers with
the portrait of a man who has lived a full life and made sense of life
by grappling with physical, emotional, and spiritual issues with which
virtually everyone can identify.

Professor Taylor was a most unlikely candidate for being a
complete man, and, indeed, his beginning "from the poorer level of
society" was inauspicious. But the genesis of being a complete man
often begins in meager circumstances, depending on the values that
attend those circumstances. In Professor Taylor's case, being a country
boy in Tennessee, living on subsistence farming during the Depression
taught him to work hard and to value simplicity. Because hard work
required plying skills to succeed at a variety of tasks, Professor
Taylor became adept at all kinds of manual labor, and never shied away
from hard work. The theme of taking on a task that required significant
effort dominates his memoir, whether that task was working as a "pull
out man" in a cellophane plant, traveling West to work in the wheat
harvest, learning how to drive a tractor to earn a living on a farm in
the Oklahoma panhandle, mastering various duties as a noncom in the
military (including cooking), or earning graduate degrees. In every
case, the drive and determination to make something of his life without
complaining about his circumstances is a motivating factor in Professor
Taylor's life-long endeavors. Certainly, the hovering specter of
poverty that dominated his early years and the wraith of unemployment
that attended the Depression are never far away from Professor Taylor's
drive to DO something with his life. That drive is keenly apparent in
his decision to study geography, because as he was told, "there wasn't a
professional Geographer in America who was unemployed." Professor
Taylor's response? "Having lived through the period of such high
unemployment in the early 1930's, up to 25%, this sounded especially
good to me." Even when reflecting on his life when he was approaching
his nineties, after a successful career as an academician, Professor
Taylor notes that his value system included this lesson about economics:
"Good debt is for things of lasting value, such as a home, bad debt for
things of transient value, such as consumer good or entertainment."

Horatio Alger also hovers over Professor Taylor's memoir because
Professor Taylor literally lived a life that is marked by inauspicious
beginnings to success of all sorts: Intellectual achievements enriched
by travel experiences, many years of health, enduring marriage to a
woman he deeply loved (and loves), the pleasure of home life with a son
and daughter, independence wrought by working with his hands throughout
his life, ease in retirement because of prudent investment, and
spiritual solace. In reading Professor Taylor's memoir, one is left
with the indelible impression that his was a complete life, enriched by
variegated experiences, which, in turn, was enriching to others.

I have noted that the theme of overcoming adversity by gritty
determination is interwoven throughout the memoir, but the role of what
Professor Taylor would call providence also figures into his
achievements. This is particularly noteworthy when he recounts his
early schooling and says that his teacher, when helping him learn to
read, considered him dumb intellectually. The problem, as Professor
Taylor soon learned, was that he needed reading glasses. Here's how he
tells the story.

It was near the end of the fifth grade that we learned that I
was visually impaired. One day my mother went to have her eyes tested
to change her glasses. I was "bugging" the doctor as he was writing
mom's prescription, so to get me to quit bothering him, he said, "OK
young man, hop up in the chair and let's see you read the chart." I did
as instructed and started reading. When I reached the third line, I
stopped reading. He said, "OK young man, go on." I said, "I can't. I
can't see it." He replied, "See here young fellow, you need glasses."

The summer between the fifth and sixth grades, with mom's help,
I learned to read. I became a voracious reader.

My response? Hurray for the underdog! Shame on the teacher.
And I think readers, too, would agree. They would also find pleasure in
Professor Taylor's initial experience in graduate school. For those who
cherish Austin Peay State University, the school from which Professor
Taylor received his undergraduate degree, his recounting of his
remarkable success at Syracuse will be uplifting. Again, Professor
Taylor recounts his experience:

Because my B.S. Degree was from a new college which had not been
accredited I was admitted [to Syracuse] on probation. Another factor in
the probation was that I didn't even have a minor in geography. I had
already earned my B.S., they couldn't take that from me, so I decided to
give it a try and see if I could prove myself in graduate school. So I
enrolled in June for the summer term of 1947.

Even though I had a meager background in geography, I did well
enough my first semester that I was offered an assistantship for my
second semester. . . .

An incident happened my second semester that I still remember
with pleasure. As I was walking down the hall one day, one of my
professors whom I respected highly said to me, "You did all right on
that word analogy test last week." "How did I do?" "I can't tell you
your score, but you did all right!" This pleased me greatly, for I knew
that the well known schools in the northeast looked down on the school
of the south. So evidently it had been a pleasant surprise to him for
me to make a good score, perhaps better than some of my colleagues from
some of the well known schools up there.

The complete man becomes complete by accepting challenges to show that
he has the ability to succeed, and neither the negative opinions of
grade-school teachers, nor the cultural biases of professors keeps the
complete man from achieving excellence: become a voracious reader and
an outstanding student. Hurray for the underdog!

Completeness requires attention to a person's spiritual nature,
and Professor Taylor notes early on in his memoir that he was awakened
to Christianity. He explains his commitment to Christianity in his
mid-teens when he attended a revival, but, for some, such an experience
would be ephemeral. Professor Taylor demonstrates throughout his memoir
that Christian faith was no passing encounter but a deeply held
commitment. In later life, he served as a deacon in the Baptist church
and sang in the choir, but those activities are not what convince the
reader of Professor Taylor's enduring engagement with Christianity.
Primarily his war experiences are the proving ground for his struggles
with God in the midst of unspeakable carnage.

Like much of his memoir, Professor Taylor's recounting of his
military service is propelled by the places to which he traveled and the
events that accompanied those travels. Although he made many stops
along the journey that comprised his military career, the heart of that
experience is in Tinian, a jungle area where an airfield serviced
airplanes that bombed the Japanese. In one instance, Sergeant Taylor
was given photographs that depicted a bombing raid on Tokyo.

The devastation which I saw [reported Sergeant Taylor] was horrible.
There had been a fire raid on the home industry section of Tokyo the
night before. I find it difficult to imagine a more horrible fate than
those poor people faced. That night more people were killed than lived
in the city of Nashville and more people made homeless than lived in the
state of Tennessee. Even this is not adequate to tell the personal
horror that the individuals faced. The picture which told it best to me
was one taken after it was all over, one taken from the side of a
street. It showed a bicycle rider, hunkered over the handlebars riding
for dear life-literally! The bicycle was balanced, standing in the
street. All that was left of the person was charcoal, just a human
shaped chunk of charcoal.

Worse devastation followed because the Enola Gay, loaded with an
atomic bomb, left the airfield at Tinian to deliver its horrific
projectile to Hiroshima. The war is all but over at this point in the
memoir. But the horrors of war do not end easily, and Sergeant Taylor,
now a civilian studying at Austin Peay, wrote a short story, "The
Question," for a creative writing course. In "The Question," Professor
Taylor addresses the haunting question of how a God of love can allow
the... Read more ›