Can you imagine seeing the city of Paris crowded with American GIs? Paris was liberated in August of 1944. Soldiers famously marched through Champs-Élysées in a victory parade. Immediately, vast numbers of American GIs and Jeeps filled the streets, bars, and historic places. Evening celebrations were filled with dining, dancing, and drinking some of the area’s finest wines and champagnes. Three times my mother visited Paris as described in Girls in a World at War. Each vis

Mesnières Castle, Northern France, January 1945 and May 2024 “Fifteenth century castles came with fifteenth century heating systems.” These are the words my mother used when describing her freezing cold stay in the ancient Mesnières Castle in France. The hospital staff had just completed a seven-day trip across the Atlantic, arriving at the port of Le Harve in January of 1945. It would be during the coldest winter on record in forty years. The Battle of the Bulge was un

Love it or hate it, nearly everyone has an opinion on SPAM. In 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation in Minnesota began producing blocks of a ready-to-eat meat, a combination of pork and ham. It was called “SPAM” from “Spiced Ham.” In a convenient can, this high-calorie, high-protein food was a valuable food for soldiers at war. The US military bought 75,000 tons of Spam during World War Two. Today SPAM is currently sold in over forty countries, with 15 different flavors. Over e