"Army Brat: WWII" Book Provides A Reflection of What Americans Must Consider Doing to Save The Republic From Marxism in 2024
By Capt Joseph R. John, June 26, 2024, Op Ed # 673
For 11 years, Dr. Laura Gutman, MD, a self-described life-long Army Brat, has been a longtime strong supporter of the Combat Veterans For Congress PAC. Her father, Col Benjamin Thurston, USA (Ret) was a 1926 West Point Class graduate and was selected to be a Battalion Commander in General George Patton’s Third Army. He saw very heavy combat and his combat awards include the Silver Star Medal, 3 Bronze Stars Medals, 3 Purple Heart Medals, the French Legion of Honor, the Combat Infantry Badge, Parachutist Badge, and multiple Service and Campaign Medals. Col Thurston is listed among other Honorable Heroic Combat Veterans on the Endorsee of PAC page of the Combat Veterans For Congress PAC Website.
Dr. Gutman discussed her interest in developing a book about her experience as a child, witnessing the onset and during WWII. I strongly encouraged Dr. Gutman to go forward with her important and historic manuscript. She requested that I review her completed manuscript, and following my review, she requested an endorsement of the book, published by Gatekeeper Press. My strong endorsement of Dr. Gutman’s excellent historic book, “Army Brat: WWII” that was provided to the publisher, was included in the promotion. The book is the story of a young Laura Thurston, an Army dependent, born in the West Point Station Hospital while her father was a professor at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY teaching English, Civil War Strategy, and Chess to the West Point Cadets.
When Laura Thurston’s father was stationed at the Schofield Barracks, Laura’s family lived on the US Army Base located in the Wahiawa District of Oahu, Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, Laura watched Japanese aircraft attack Pearl Harbor, from the second floor back porch of her home, which was adjacent to Wheeler Airfield. Laura Thurston lived in multiple early US Army training camps and observed the transformation of a pre-war 500,000 US Army that grew to a massive 12 million WWII, US Army. She lived in multiple remote Army Recruit Training Bases where her father ensured that the newly drafted young soldiers were trained, equipping them with the necessary skills to prevail in combat on foreign fields of combat. She also related her subsequent experiences as a young child who watched her father leave her mother and his family to go off to war, something no other child in WWII had written about.
During the war, Laura lived deeply embedded within the US Armed Forces in the intense awareness of the dangers her father was enduring and of the courage her mother displayed, including when they received three telegrams on separate occasions reporting that her father was wounded in combat. Laura’s formal education was extremely chaotic. Before she graduated from high school, Laura traveled coast to coast and moved to 20 different locations, often adjacent to the site of historic battlefields. Following the war, the family was assigned to duty in Germany with the US Army of Occupation. While living in Heidelberg in 1947, Laura observed the rumble created during wartime, the utter destruction of German towns, the extreme hardship of the German people, and the earliest resumption of the German civilian efforts to emerge from the rubble. She experienced the onset of the Cold War leading to the Berlin Airlift. The beautiful portrait of Laura on the front of the book was painted when she was 10 years of age, and the family was living in a truly dreary suburb of demolished Frankfurt in 1948.
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