by FORD TURNER
A tribute to fighting Pennsylvanians
They were journeys.
Incredible journeys, really.
They culminated a little more than 80 years ago, when war had transformed the world into an ever-shifting patchwork of killing zones. Pennsylvanians – young men, most not much removed from boyhood – were transported by the thousands into those killing zones by World War II.
Many came from big cities with familiar names. For many others, though, home was a little-known small town, one of those scattered about Pennsylvania’s lovely spread of mountains, farms, rivers, and forests. Places made vibrant by children and grandchildren of immigrants; places that knew, as much as anywhere, the meaning of “United States of America.” From peace, family, jobs, and girlfriends, the young men were thrust into the chaos of brutal fighting in lonely, far-off places.
Some came home. Some did not.
Ford Turner is researching a narrative focused on several of these Pennsylvania young men to whom we owe so much. Their names are etched in stone at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery and National Cemetery of the Alleghenies.
Ford is a longtime journalist who has won the Pennsylvania Distinguished Writing Award and more than 40 other awards. Outside of newspapering, his articles have appeared in several magazines. His father, the late Cal Turner, was a U.S. Navy signalman and frogman in World War II and later became one of central Pennsylvania’s most-recognized newspaper writers.