Excerpt from my book

I have a book coming out soon: Rachel's Children: Surviving the Second World War. To give readers a glimpse of some of the entries I will provide a few blogs with samples in the hope that you will want to read the whole book when it comes out through All Things That Matter Press. Here is the first of several selections:

The year 1939 marked the beginning of a war eventually affecting the entire world in one way or another for the next six years. Although the United States would not enter until 1941, in England and continental Europe, life began to change dramatically following the German military's invasion of Poland September 1, 1939. Hitler's armies showed little mercy for the inhabitants of countries considered for German expansion, its lebensraum.

Children began to hear their elders speak of impending war and then its beginning, without a full understanding of such consequences. Parents tried to reassure their children by saying that war was not good, but that little ones would be all right. Two days after Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, and Warsaw fell to the German Army by the end of September. In the beginning, France was spared from invasion, and children there believed assurances that they would be safe. Fathers in France and elsewhere, however, soon began to be drafted into the armed services.

A duck flies out of the pond. A rooster crows.
The field begins to wear brown. Grasshoppers
lose their summer green; the music fades
from their wings. Cannon boom like drums
of war over the hill, as dark-clad troops follow
the commands of death. A baby shrieks,
a summons comes to a home in France.
Poland is lost.