Ntpa Reunion Analysis

The Healing Power of Stories
Cover Photo – NTPA Reunion 2015. Caption: The National Timberwolf Pups Association Reunion 2015. Photo courtesy of author.
At the end of August, I traveled to New Orleans to give a World War II research seminar at the 104th National Timberwolf Pups Association World War II Reunion. The 104th Infantry Division fought in Europe during World War II. About two weeks prior to the trip, I was asked to fill in for a speaker who was unable to attend the Saturday morning General Meeting at the reunion. I was asked to speak on the importance of researching World War II service for about 15-20 minutes. The speech I wrote ended up combining research and storytelling. When I finished writing the speech, I felt many people

should be exposed to the ideas presented. This article allows those interested in World War II to have a new perspective, through a summary of my talk.
Stories Have the Power To Heal
Photo image: Sat Speaking 2. Caption: Jennifer Holik presents at the General Meeting. Photo courtesy of the author.
My job title reads, Jennifer Holik WWII researcher, speaker, and author. This title is accurate but I like to think of myself as a storyteller. I tell the stories of those who can no longer speak. Through those stories, the writing imparts life lessons and opens space for closure, forgiveness, and heals both the writer and reader.
World War II research leads people down the path to writing the soldier’s story. The story, I feel, is the most important part of the process. Through writing, we learn not only about our soldier, but also ourselves and those we love.
Military research can be compared to a navigating a spider web. We walk backward in time from the edge of the web, along silk threads which follow the research. No matter which thread we walk, they all eventually connect in the middle as a story.
The soldiers, sailors, and Marines I research for the programs and books I write, and my clients, are individuals. The focus is on what happened to an individual, rather than an entire unit, during World War II. This does not mean I only put a timeline of service together for a soldier and call it done. I place the soldier into historical context. Historical context means examining all the other pieces of his story in the time and place he was, as it relates to the larger story of World War II.
I describe the training, theater of war, battles fought, wounds received, and in many cases, how a soldier died and what came next. All of these details create puzzle pieces which are constantly moved within a gigantic frame to create a colorful masterpiece depicting the soldier’s service.
The living and the dead have stories to tell and seek and offer, forgiveness, closure, and healing. The stories pass lessons to the reader. Investigating the life of our soldier has the potential to open up old wounds we thought were healed, issues we forgot about or safely tucked into a box we stored in the back of a closet for years. The stories also provide the opportunity to create a space for issues and hurts we didn’t realize we had, to be brought from the darkness into the light.
What do I mean by hurts, wounds, and issues on which we seek or need to extend forgiveness, find closure, and heal?
A happy veteran who held his story close only until it was the right time and place to tell it to family.
A child whose father was killed in the war and grew up a war orphan may carry anger toward the father, the enemy or war in general.
A soldier who survived the war may carry guilt because his buddies were killed or unrecovered and he survived.
Soldiers battling with nightmares and memories, suffering in what appears to be a family or community which does not understand him.
A widow who lost the love of her life and had to make new decisions and move on.
A soldier carrying anger toward the enemy who treated people as subhuman experiments with an end goal of extermination.
A granddaughter raised hearing stories about her crazy grandfather, while not knowing what he suffered in the war and how that contributed to his diagnosis. Not understanding how it affected the entire family. And not seeing until she was an adult, how her life paralleled that of her grandmother in some ways.
Photo image: Joseph Holik. Caption: Joseph J. Holik, USNAG. Courtesy of the author. (NOTE: YOU CAN PUT THIS PHOTO WITH ANY OF THE BULLET POINTS – he is my grandpa.)
These are just a few examples of things our soldiers and families carry, sometimes subconsciously through several generations.
Can you turn back the clock? Redefine the past and uncreate the horrors of war? No. We can however understand the context in which everything occurred. It does not mean we have to like it, just that we must understand, forgive, let go, and heal.
When we allow ourselves to be open to the process of writing, we may also uncover parallels between the lives of our soldier or family members to our own lives. In essence, we find ourselves IN the story. As we write, we learn we are not alone in our experiences, anger, guilt, happiness, loneliness, fear, and love. Sometimes the lessons are not visible until time passes and we read the story again.
Saving the Stories
Now, we cannot write the story without first doing the research. The research begins with writing down everything we know about our soldier’s service. If the soldier is still with us, asking questions and pouring over old documents and photographs and war memorabilia is important. Through the recording of information in the first part of research process, we are able to then move forward into individual records and unit records to more fully tell the story.
It is important we begin today. Our veterans are fewer every day and their absence leaves behind holes in our collective memories. Holes which cannot be filled entirely because their voices and stories are now gone. There are also holes in our own stories because to more fully understand our lives, we must understand theirs. The question becomes, what can we do in this moment to capture those stories?
We can begin by talking to our veterans, researching their service and the service of those who have already passed. We can collaborate with other researchers and families to share information, therefore allowing a place for more understanding and healing. And, we can share our stories with the next generation. Together, we can preserve the history of these incredible men and women who helped shape the families and world in which we live today.
Combining the Research with a Story
I would like leave you with an example of how we can tell a story, work through grief, and heal. This is the beginning to Virginia Brouk’s story in my book, The Tiger’s Widow.
Photo image: Brouk weds…. Caption: Newspaper clipping of the wedding of Robert Brouk and Virginia Scharer. Courtesy of Author.
Five Hearts Joined Together
Love knows no boundaries of time and space or life and death.

It exists forever in our hearts as we remember and honor those who have gone before us. Through those memories we pass life lessons on to the next generation. We teach others there is light after darkness, hope after despair, and love is the glue that puts shattered hearts back together. This is a story of five hearts separated by time and space; hearts which would meet in the perfect moment. It is a story about never ending love that lived on even after death.
A famous pilot met a young beauty and the two fell in love, Robert and Ginny. Their love soared with the eagles. Their time together was brief but they lived so fully in love in the moment, it is as if nothing but death could have broken them apart. Then death knocked on their door and a plane fell from the sky in a fiery ball. One heart silenced on earth but lived forever in death. One heart shattered into a million pieces.
A year later on another continent, two brothers fought a war, Harvey and Fred. The boys grew up as orphans and wanted a heart to come home to. Fred flew a bombing mission over Austria and was lost, listed as missing for a year. Harvey feared the worst and waited for word which came a year after Fred went missing. A brother’s love lived on after

death.
Less than a year after Fred went missing, Ginny found Harvey. A chance meeting and two hearts became one. Pieces of Ginny’s shattered heart started to glue back together, slowly at first and then more quickly. Harvey’s heart had finally found its home with Ginny. He was no longer an orphan or alone. They found each other during a time of war when the world around them collapsed in chaos. Together they created a new world filled with joy, love, and the memories of those lost before their time.
Almost 65 years later, another heart emerged. A young woman trying to start a new life after her heart was shattered. She and Ginny, now a widow for the second time, connected. Little did they know the impact that meeting would have.
Five hearts separated by time and space that met in perfect time, would change the lives of all they touched. Their love would span decades. Their life lessons would provide hope to others in the future.
Five hearts joined forever.