"Tragedy at Graignes" tells the story of Captain Bud Sophian, the only US Army officer who did not flee Graignes, France, as the Waffen SS overran the American positions and stormed the village. Sophian was a surgeon, and he refused to abandon the fourteen wounded paratroopers in his care. He surrendered by waving a white flag at the door of the badly shelled Norman church where his aid station was located. He hoped for fair prisoner treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1929. The German troops instead committed unspeakable atrocities, leaving many of the American prisoners mutilated in grotesque heaps. All of the American prisoners, including Sophian, were killed.

Captain Sophian's judgment and actions in the US Army were the culmination of the rich and challenging life he led prior to the Second World War. Bud's correspondence with his sister and other Sophian archival materials tell the story of this compelling life. These letters are reproduced verbatim in "Tragedy at Graignes: The Bud Sophian Story" so that Bud and other authors may speak directly to you and to the historical record.

This is the true story of the 1928 Wohelo camp experience of fourteen-year-old Emily Sophian (1913-1994) of Kansas City, Missouri.

The story is told in part through letters to her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Abraham Sophian, and to her schoolteachers, M re Emmanuel and M re Irene of the Roman Catholic Notre Dame de Sion School in Kansas City.

Luther and Charlotte Gulick founded Wohelo in 1907 as the first American summer camp dedicated exclusively to girls. Both founders came from American Protestant missionary families.

Clad in middy, bloomers, over-the-knee stockings, and tennis shoes, Emily chronicled with compassion and insight her struggles, triumphs, and observations of camp life on the shores of Sebago Lake in the backwoods of Maine.

"Tragedy at Graignes" tells the story of Captain Bud Sophian, the only US Army officer who did not flee Graignes, France, as the Waffen SS overran the American positions and stormed the village. Sophian was a surgeon, and he refused to abandon the fourteen wounded paratroopers in his care. He surrendered by waving a white flag at the door of the badly shelled Norman church where his aid station was located. He hoped for fair prisoner treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1929. The German troops instead committed unspeakable atrocities, leaving many of the American prisoners mutilated in grotesque heaps. All of the American prisoners, including Sophian, were killed.

Captain Sophian's judgment and actions in the US Army were the culmination of the rich and challenging life he led prior to the Second World War. Bud's correspondence with his sister and other Sophian archival materials tell the story of this compelling life. These letters are reproduced verbatim in "Tragedy at Graignes: The Bud Sophian Story" so that Bud and other authors may speak directly to you and to the historical record.