WWII Essays

About the Book

This book presents fifteen essays that address a variety of subjects large and small pertaining to WWII. Short and to the point, each essay covers the subject in two minutes, making them a refreshingly quick read as history lessons go. While the gist of these brief stories is quite obvious even to a casual reader, there are references made to subject matter that many may have never encountered in their formal education nor informally gleaned from websites, books, TV, or movies. A more curious reader can easily delve into these using the subjects as key words for website browsing, and the author encourages that initiative. The writing style is non-technical, conversational, and presents lucid interpretations of data (on war deaths, for instance) in lieu of tables or graphs. Some chapters are obviously autobiographical, others derive from research, and all have concluding remarks or observations that underscore the subject matter.

About the Author

William T. (Bill) Beran was at the impressionable age of almost seven years when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred. The visible anxiety and voiced concerns exhibited by his parents while they listened to radio accounts of that historic event struck a chord. His fascination with those exciting and deadly World War II years changed little over the following decades, yielding a lifelong interest in that period of history. Beran hails from a small Wisconsin farming community, and his boyhood ambition during the war was to become a fighter pilot. This goal eventually faded as the war ended and eyesight shortcomings intervened. Instead, he obtained an engineering degree at the University of Wisconsin and, after two years active duty in the US Army, he embarked on a mechanical/marine engineering career, which was his passion and livelihood for over forty years. One outcome of that endeavor was his induction into the Offshore Energy Center’s prestigious Technology Hall of Fame. He and his wife, Luana, have been married for nearly fifty years and are blessed with four beautiful daughters and four delightful grandchildren. They are currently enjoying their retirement years in Montgomery, Texas.