Harps upon the Willows: Johnston Family of the Old Northwest Book

This is an intense story by James Megellas, a paratrooper in the storied 82nd Airborne, 504 Parachute Infantry, about he and his brother paratroopers in World War II. They fought in Italy, Holland, Germany, they landed on the beaches of Anzio, jumped into Holland as part of Operation Market Garden, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and on to Berlin. It's a difficult but inspiring journal of the will of courageous men and their leaders on the front line.

Many years later, my son and I met James Magellas at Ft. Bragg where Megellas was signing his book. I had gone down to see my son, who was in Megellas' old company, before he deployed to Afghanistan. My son was wearing a Ripon College T-shirt. Megellas asked my son if he had gone to Ripon College, a small liberal arts college in Ripon, Wisconsin. When my son answered in the affirmative we discovered that "Maggie", as Megellas was know, had graduated a year before my mother, 1942. He knew my mother and autographed a book for her also.

After my son deployed he was sitting at his desk in Afghanistan when in walked Megellas. He asked my son how his grandmother was doing. It seems that Maggie was looking up those in his old platoon and spreading cheer. Now you have to realize that the US Army doesn't provide transportation to a war zone for 80 something civilians, no matter how much a hero they may be.

However, to the Dutch he will always be a hero, so he hitched a ride on a Dutch plane and showed up in Afghanistan to cheer his old platoon. My mother maintained a correspondence with him for many years. A sorority sister of my mother's (class of '43) said that after reading this book she understood why her husband (a WWII veteran) always refused to go on a picnic.

Read this book. It's a good one.