Glen's World War II Site

Introduction and disclaimer:

Because this is a free service, there are some limitations and common irritations that come with it.

One is that I have no control over the sponsor ads that pay for this service, with which I may or may not agree.

Secondly, the lack of features. There is no spell checker.

Thirdly, after I create a page, I am unable to reorganize that page in any other order. Therefore, some pages may not seem to fit the continuity. If there is another free service that has better features, please let me know, and I will consider changing everything over.

I like trivia, and not-so-common facts. This is one reason why I started this site. I want to share interesting, generally not well known facts about World War II. I am also, as you might guess, a fanatic about World War II, and greatly admire those who endured and served in it.

For several years, as a volunteer chaplain, I enjoyed going to nursing homes to have a "church" service; but I tried to make sure that they were not ordinary, boring services. I would bring my World War II object lessons and spend some time helping the senior residents and veterans relive some of the memories of the war. This warmed their hearts and prepared them to more readily hear the Word of God. I also enjoyed asking the veterans what branch of service they were in and where they served during the war. The vets would open their hearts and appreciate that a Baby Boomer (someone who was born after the war) is interested in and appreciates their contribution and sacrifice in defending the freedoms we take for granted.

If you know of any World War II trivia tid-bit, this is the place to add it. Where ever you find the factoid, even if it was your own experience, please document your source. If it is a book, please include the title, publisher, author and copywrite date. I will not list any pictures from a book unless it is considered in the public domain. The same is with any documentary film. As of right now, I do not plan on embedding any videos.

If you have any personal pictures that either you have taken, or are in the family, please scan them and e-mail them to me with a detailed description of the picture. If you mail any pictures to me, be sure they are copies and not the originals, unless you want to donate them to me with a note that you have released these pictures to me. I will assume that any pictures that are mailed to me are for me to keep, so be careful. Mail any pictures, etc. to: Glen Morris; 218 N. Woodlawn Ave.; Griffith, Indiana 46319 USA.

Because of spam experts who send us unwanted e-mails, I have had to modify my e-mail address below so the "spam bots" don't copy them.

My e-mail address is: glen6490"at"yahoo.com. Replace the "at" with the @ symbol. Be sure to leave out the quotation marks. Some day this will be a perfect world where everyone will be trusted; but we have not arrived yet, so we have to play these little games to fool the spammers.

This site's editor and creator, Glen Morris, picture taken around 2005.

We in the Morris family are pack rats. In other words, we like to collect stuff. We like to go to rummage/garage/yard sales, resale stores, and antique shops. I can buy almost new Florsheim shoes for two to six dollars, or a suit for less than ten dollars, and make people think I spend a lot of money on clothes! My wife buys Kasper (not Casper the Friendly Ghost) suits for less than ten dollars; sometimes they still have the original tags on them from the fancy downtown department store, like Carson, Pirie, Scott, on them which, originally, would have cost around two hundred dollars!

Several years ago, I paid a visit to a Salvation Army store in Gary, Indiana (now gone and replaced with a grocery store). I was fortunate to come across a World War II gunner's manual for a B-29 bomber. I paid only four dollars for it. In the manual are instructions on how to operate the remote control turret guns in the plane. This is one of the first introductions of the word computer to our society. This computer brain would be able to compensate wind speed and distance so the gunner could hit his target (usually a Japanese "Zero"). Although the B-29 Superfortress (or Superfort) was introduced in late 1944, less than a year before the war's end, it had a great impact on helping to end the war with Japan, especially the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the gunner's manual, I found some personal notes from one of the crew members, the names of other crew members, and have been able to track down and correspond with one of them. This crew member gave me some helpful information about the plane's missions in the China, Burma, India (CBI) theater of operations, and that she was finally retired as "war weary." This plane, I found out, was named Belle Ringer, tail number 42-63464.

In the manual was a CONFIDENTIAL memo from General Curtis LeMay, dated November 1944. Thus began my love affair with World War II.

Since then, I have amassed a large library of World War II documentary videos and books. I have also enjoyed meeting several veterans, some in nursing homes, at my church, or in public.

Any time I see a man who looks like he may be around 80 years old I ask him if he was in the war, and I try to strike up a conversation with them. I always thank them for risking their lives for our country and freedom.

Some vets proudly display their participation in the war by wearing caps or are wearing tee shirts with something on them which describes where they served so you will take notice.

Without a question, this is my favorite, number one World War II hero, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., trainer of the Tuskegee Airmen.