Sunshine Soldier

In 1944, 19 year old Harrison West was one of many "replacements" for the Allied soldiers lost at Normandy on D-Day. He wrote over 300 pages of letters to his family which have been preserved to this day. Like most soldiers, he rarely talked about his war experience while his children were growing up. They knew only from the Purple Heart medal displayed in their home, and the scar on his neck, that he'd been wounded. At age 65, when the Gulf War was televised, he began to have intense flashbacks. So he dug out his original letters and spent his retirement years writing this memoir. Before he passed away in 2015, he handed the manuscript to his wife, Nancy and said it was done. Harrison was a foot soldier in Baker Company of the 315th Regiment, 79th Division of the US Army, in the European Theater of Operations, WWII.

In 1944, 19 year old Harrison West was one of many "replacements" for the Allied soldiers lost at Normandy on D-Day. He wrote over 300 pages of letters to his family which have been preserved to this day. Like most soldiers, he rarely talked about his war experience while his six children were growing up. They knew only from the Purple Heart medal displayed in their home, and the scar on his neck, that he'd been wounded. After a long career as an aeronautical engineer with General Electric in Cincinnati, Ohio, at age 65, when the Gulf War was televised, he began to have intense flashbacks. So he dug out his original letters and spent his retirement years writing this memoir. Before he passed away in 2015 and age 89, he handed the manuscript to his wife, Nancy and said it was done. Harrison was a foot soldier in Baker Company of the 315th Regiment, 79th Division of the US Army, in the European Theater of Operations, WWII.

Harrison West grew up on the east coast of the United States, a budding engineer like his father and brother. He graduated high school early to get a few classes done at Purdue University before joining the fight against the Nazis. Like so many of the millions of soldiers deployed by the United States during WWII, he was still a teenager when he left for the front lines of battle in Northern France. A foot soldier in Baker Company of the 315th Regiment, 79th Division of the US Army, he diligently wrote home every step of his journey, up to and including the moment he was hit in the throat by a German sniper bullet. After a miraculous rescue and recovery he worked in documentation for the remainder of his service. He returned to finish his engineering degree at Purdue, marrying his college sweetheart, Nancy Winter. Together they raised a family of 6 children in the post-war baby boom. Years later his battle memories resurfaced as post traumatic shock disorder. To resolve the intense symptoms, he returned to France with his family to visit the villages he helped liberate - and he set out to write this book. Drawing from his original war letters carefully preserved by his family, he reflects on his experiences so that future generations will never forget the price of their freedom.