The Project's Reach

Our project has been the subject of two newspaper stories, in the Doylestown Intelligencer earlier this winter and more recently in Lancaster's newspaper. That article might still be available at this site on Lancaster Online. Jen Kopf, the reporter, did a very nice job summarizing what Lauren has learned and included a lot of images we've found so far in our work.

The article included one of the neatest artifacts we've found. There was a picture of five generations taken in the late 1940s. The boy in the photo is Patrick Duckworth, son of 1st Lt. Edmund (Bill) Duckworth. The man holding Patrick is Jim Duckworth, who still lives in Arizona. Lauren spoke with him last week.

In just a few days (the article ran Friday) Kopf's story led two people to reach out to me. Today I heard from one of Bill's relatives who still lives in Lancaster. She was thrilled to see the story in the paper, had hoped we knew of Bill's brother (yes), and requested that we record Lauren's eulogy and send it to the family.

Earlier, someone reached out to me who identified himself as a genealogist, but I suspect he might be a military historian. I don't know of any connection he has to Bill's family. He was bothered that, in his opinion, Lauren and I had the details of Bill's death all wrong. I had the chance to tell him that there are conflicting reports of the precise nature of Bill's death, though it's not in doubt that he died as a result of enemy fire on Omaha Beach.

The Institute makes it a point to put out press releases to the hometowns of our soldiers, and I can see why they do. History matters. There is an audience of people who crave to learn from the work of others for reasons that are obvious (family) and not really that obvious (the mysterious figure who questioned our historiography). Lauren's work won't just happen in a vacuum, and it won't simply get shelved never to be seen again.

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Some Thoughts on Liberation

One of the markers placed by the French and Belgian governments to mark the path of the liberators. My greatest takeaway from this most recent trip involves some refined feelings about liberation. I'm writing this post in a time of high cynicism. And the were matters of which one could be cynical back in 1944, the year in which Charlie fought and died. This trip, however, left me with renewed appreciation for what our country did back in that war, helping me refocus on what I've had the chance to see and do the past few years. Christopher is the military historian who accompanied us on this voyage. In one of our webinars this spring, he made an offhand reference to a piece of scholarship about the Holocaust he said was worth reading. It's entitled Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It's heavy. I can't say I read every chapter. But I read most of it on our bus rides this summer. And I'm glad I did. My unassigned reading. Saying that Bloo...

Day of Days

It's the seventy-third anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day. That means it is also the seventy-third anniversary of Bill's death. Bill, of course, is 1st Lt. Edmund William Duckworth. A map Lauren uncovered in her research. To learn about the circumstances of Bill's death, I have done a lot of reading to better understand what led up to and took place on D-Day. I saw a post today on Facebook that discussed, quite well, the anxiety, unease, apprehension, and even frivolity that characterized the soldiers on the night before the invasion. D-Day was months in the making, and the soldiers who landed on those five beaches on June 6 had been preparing for the invasion for weeks or even months. In the immediate week before the invasion, they were queued up in embarkation areas and on ships, awaiting their chance to go. They were penned up for days. Knowing this adds more weight to the very difficult call General Eisenhower had to make, whether or not to go on June 6...

Normandy American Cemetery: Our Students' Eulogies

Bill's name is visible on the First Infantry Division Memorial found between the Normandy American Cemetery and Omaha Beach. The culmination of our Normandy Institute experience took place on Tuesday with the students’ eulogies. Each of our students had the task of offering appropriate words of remembrance at their soldier’s grave. Typically these eulogies lasted approximately five minutes. We worked through the cemetery from back to front, which means Lauren offered her words second. Altogether fifteen students spoke. I didn’t once feel tempted to look at my phone or check the time. It was the most meaningful day I’ve spent with students in a long time. Our procedure at each grave followed the same pattern. Lynne and Amanda would scout out where the grave was and the rest of the group would find them there. At each grave, Frank would assist the student in putting sand on the soldier’s name, rank, unit, and state so that the information would stand out. The studen...

Mr. Johnson in Normandy

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