Never Will We Forget deals with the most enduring and moving side of World War II - the personal side. These are the stories of some 400 men and women, who, though they experienced the war in many different ways, were all profoundly affected by it. Gleaned from interviews and oral histories, the book reflects the experiences of male and female veterans, civilians on the home front, conscientious objectors, survivors from the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which was sunk in the Pacific in the worst disaster in U.S. naval history, participants in the Normandy Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.Some stories tug at the heart, some foster the shock of surprise; still others reflect the long-held pride in the American war effort at home and abroad. From the first dark stirrings of war to its dusty aftermath, Never Will We Forget captures how Americans lived and felt, and what they believed during the twentieth century's most brutal conflict.

Presented here are excerpts from diaries and letters written by Southern women from different walks of life, and areas of the country. Mary White, a fifteen-year-old girl, attempted to get through the blockade in Wilmington, North Carolina; Nancy Jones lived in fear amid the violence that rocked Missouri and saw her close friends and family murdered and her young son taken prisoner by the Yankees; Sarah Dandridge Duval and her family were refugees living near Richmond, Virginia. The book includes personal reminiscences from Union and Confederate women living in Winchester, Virginia, a town that reportedly changed hands 76 times during the war, and the reactions of Southern women to the surrender at Appomattox.

Few readers of Margaret Mitchells Gone with the Wind remained unmoved by how the strong-willed Scarlett OHara tried to rebuild Tara after the Civil War ended. This book examines the problems that Southern women faced during the Reconstruction Era, in Part I as mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of men burdened with financial difficulties and the radical Republican regime, and in Part II with specific illustrations of their tribulations through the letters and diaries of five different women. A lonely widow with young children, Sally Randle Perry is struggling to get her life back together, following the death of her husband in the war. Virginia Caroline Smith Aiken, a wife and mother, born into affluence and security, struggles to emerge from the financial and psychological problems of the postwar world. Susan Darden, also a wife and mother, details the uncertainties and frustrations of her life in Fayette, Mississippi. Jo Gillis tells the sad tale of a young mother straining to cope with the depressed circumstances enveloping most ministers in the aftermath of the war. As the wife of a Methodist Episcopal minister in the Alabama Conference she self-sacrifices herself into an early grave in an attempt to further her husbands career. Inability to collect a debt three times that of the $10,000 debt her father owed brought Anna Clayton Logan, her eleven brothers and sisters, and her parents face-to-face with starvation.

Never Will We Forget deals with the most enduring and moving side of World War II, the personal side. These are the stories of some 400 men and women, who, though they experienced the war in wildly different ways, were all profoundly affected by it. Gleaned from interviews and oral histories, the book reflects the experiences of male and female veterans, civilians on the home front, conscientious objectors, survivors of the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis and of typhoons, participants in the Normandy Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Some stories tug at the heart, some foster the shock of surprise, still others reflect the long-held pride in the American war effort at home and abroad. From the first dark stirrings of war through its dusty aftermath, Never Will We Forget captures how Americans lived, felt, and believed during the twentieth century's most brutal conflict.