My Childhood: Military Reading

For about as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in World War II. I probably picked this up from my Grandfather Hoeffer, who was a prisoner in a Japanese prison camp during the war. Every time we visited him, he’d always fascinate me with horror stories about the Japanese.

One day, while my mother was shopping, I happened to look at the newsrack, and noticed a magazine. It had a picture of a plane on the front cover - a Stuka dive bomber, if memory serves. I had already built a model of a Stuka, so I knew what it was immediately.

I crawled under the newsrack, and opened the magazine. It was devoted from cover to cover to the Second World War. I soon realized it was part of a special series of one hundred magazines, to be published monthly. I had happened to stumble on the first issue.

Mom purchased that magazine for me, and many others after it. Eventually, she also purchased much of the series of $1 special books about World War II that the store also stocked. These were little digest sized books, each about one battle or weapon used in the war.

I found dad’s World War II series, and read it from cover to cover. I still have this series, and still enjoy reading parts of it occasionally.

One day I found an ad for the Military Book Club tucked inside a publication, and immediately sent away for four books, as the ad indicated. During the following months, I must have purchased a dozen books, all about World War II.

I eventually moved on to other subjects, but I’ve always returned back to this one. I continue to purchase books about World War II, and continue to find out new and interesting facts about how and why the war started.