Papa Lynch's World War 2 Book

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I apologize but I've fallen deep into the Lynch family past. I've been doing the family tree. I've been looking up old photos. I'm typing out a copy of the family history a cousin wrote in Newfoundland back in 1976. It needs a little updating and needs to be typed out.

to that end, I stumbled across the journal my grandfather kept during World War 2. He was in the Army Air Corp fighting across Africa and up through Italy. He was the company censor in charge of confiscating all the media the troops had. He also kept the company journal.

I've never read it. Something my father gave me, but I put on the shelf. Today I flipped it open. On the first page I perused, he talks about The Great Escape and talking to Mr. X

Um err. I think I have some reading to do.

[Drunk Monk]

My grandfather's name pops up in the occasional WWII history book when the topic is the 100th or 442nd (the 2 all-Japanese battalions that fought for the U.S. Army). He was a colonel of the 100th.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I have taken it upon myself to retype and clean up the whole book. It is about 400 pages, all in capital letters and not the best rules of punctuation. The sad part about the book is that it used to have a bunch of pictures to highlight the prose. The pictures have all been lost. My father who saw them and still curses their loss, says they are what made the book.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

My Grandfather is not a story teller.

In one of the latest entries he says he sat down with a buddy from the 2 South Africa Squadron who had been at El Alamein during the big battle. As my grandfather relates " He was on his way back to his squadron having escaped the Germans. Told some good stories"

And that was it for the entry. Way to leave a fella hanging, Papa.

[cranefly]

Are you actually retyping it all?
If so, any possibility of scanning it into the computer and then using OCR (optical character recognition) to convert it to text?
Here's one of countless ways to do it:
http://www.wikihow.com/Turn-a-Scanned-Do...d-Document

I realize it's all upper case. But once it is converted to text, a few replaces can bring it very close to proper upper-lower case for sentences, etc.

My first computer only allowed caps, no lower case. I had to do a lot of conversions of all upper to upper-lower chars in my early stories. If you need help, I'd be willing to try.

This all presumes that you have a good enough copy of the book for clear scanning, and that you can separate the pages, or whatever is necessary to use the scanner.

--cranefly

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Ah, the lure of the OCR method.

I contemplated it. It would probably be easier.

But I'm finding by typing it in slowly, oh so slowly, I'm really getting to know the story. I'm about a quarter of the way through at the moment.

Smart money would have been on the OCR route, since I am such a horrific and dyslexic typist.

Now back to the desert where we are chasing Rommel through Libya.

[Drunk Monk]

One of my many backburner projects is to get our old sold-out issues online. Unfortunately, a lot of the digital files are lost in the great crash of 05 (or whenever the f that was) or they are stored on ancient syquest files, or just lost for various other reasons (damn ninjas mt027). Unfortunately, our layout has always been graphic heavy so there's often textured backgrounds. I've not tried to work with OCR in a long time. Back when I did, it was pretty much useless, but I'm sure it's improved.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Makes me want to punch my grandfather.

"Colonel Art Salisbury told the officers tonight about his most interesting visit with General Montgomery" End of story.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I almost rescinded the punch. I turned the page and there was a full description from the date in question when the Montgomery talked occurred. The entry even started with the intelligence officer who gave the talk.

Unfortunately, it wasn't about Montgomery. It was a story of a stolen car. Sure, it was the intelligence officer's car that was stolen and it was amusing about the man who stole it so he could see some girl in town. But it wasn't about freaking General Montgomery.

The longest entry so far.

Double punch.

[Drunk Monk]

mt062

Sorry, sometimes I just gotta yell "Falcon punch!" It's a side effect of my war wound.

[cranefly]

I've been quiet a while because I'm in Indiana visiting my mom, and the WiFi at the place is absolutely rejecting me. I only have short spells online when I'm at my sister's place, where I spend nights.

I was thinking that typing it all in would give you a deeper feel for the material, which seems to be your take on it. Sounds very interesting.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

"Boys are out on an early morning mission but had to return due to the fact that they ran into some bad weather. They were given the rest of the day of. They all took off and went to Taranto and Bari and had quite a time for themselves.

When they arrived back after their day in the big cities they all seemed to be driving cars and motorcycles and some of the stories that were told on how they obtained them would make for some good reading. "

Yes, Papa, those stories might have made for good reading.. . . . .

[Greg]

How about an update on this a little under 8 year old zombie thread? I know you've been dying to know buy were just too polite to ask. Here goes. I did finish typing out the whole book. Then I think life got in the way and I move onto other things. Whenever I would get together with my cousins, one cousin particular, Chris would always ask about Papa's Book. I would always have no answer for him. There is a file somewhere it lives.

A little backstory. My father and my father's brother, Uncle Jimmy always would talk about Papa's Book. The best thing about the book were the pictures. As I said when I started this thread, my grandfather was the company censor. He confiscated everyone's pictures. Which he kept. Supposedly the book was full of great historical pictures. Unfortunately at some point all the pictures were lost. They still had the text of the book, but the supporting photos went missing. My father at one point believed the whole package, pictures and text, went to a publisher and the pictures never came back. The Case of the Missing Pictures is the big Lynch family mystery. A mystery I've been hearing about for almost fifty years. Probably one of the key photos I heard about was a picture of Mussolini. After the partisans hung and killed him, they put him in a coffin. An older woman came up to the coffin and put five bullets into Mussolini's head. The woman said five bullets for her five dead sons.. My grandfather had a picture of Mussolini from the immediate aftermath of that event. I've been hearing about that picture since my age was in single digits.

Last year, the wife of my Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Eileen passed away. My cousin Chris has been living in the Lynch family house for the last year while the rest of the kids determine what to do with the house. They've decided to sell. Chris and the rest of the family are clearing out the house. Chris, in case you remember my stories, is the cousin with the eight daughters. About a month ago, my cousin Linda mentioned she found some old WWII photos in a mislabeled envelope. Not the missing book, but still some photos from that time. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on that set of photos.

Which brings us to yesterday's text message. Cousin Chris, cleaning out the basement, found Papa's pictures. Yes, I was shocked. I thought that shipped had long sailed. Especially since that basement was completely flooded out ten years ago. But no. He has the book. He said he's going to send it to me. The unspoken condition is I have to finish Papa's book. Fine.

One of the photos he sent me was the Mussolini Coffin Photo.

The only tinge of sadness to this find was that the person who would be ecstatic about this and the person I would most like to talk about with would be my father.

[Greg]

These are the three sample photos Cousin Chris sent me.

[Drunk Monk]

Damn. That Mussolini pic is intense.