John T. Varano

My story covers almost three years of my life when I was an artilleryman in the European Theater. The news of the day was so important and ghastly, so far-reaching and complex, so uncommon and courageous, that there can never be enough history books written to describe and explain the events of WWII. This is a personal history, however, and I was a young soldier, one who wrote letters and kept journals and planned to write about it. But then, after the war, it became too difficult, and I rarely even spoke of it. Half a century later, as a father, husband, and grandfather, I finally retired from running my own business, and realized now I had the time and must use it. With books, maps, and random notes scattered around me, I proved to be a most disorganized writer. One evening, in the midst of the media coverage of the 50th Anniversary of World War II, my daughter, Norma, called me. She was crying. She had just watched a television documentary about the war and it included footage of my Division, the 90th Infantry, Pattons Third Army.