Veterans Legacy Preservation Project To Benefit Education And Veterans Groups
Imagine what would happen if all of our veterans photographs, film footage and written documents were digitized and shared online with education and veterans groups at no cost. That’s the ambitious goal of the Veterans Legacy Preservation Project, a program founded by the National Combat History Archive.
“Each day we lose over 1,600 hundred WWII veterans and with them typically goes their photographs, film and written memoirs” said Gary Mortensen, President of the National Combat History archive. “It’s hard to imagine, but these precious documents are typically sold at estate sales or on eBay or even worse simply thrown away".
The Veterans Legacy Preservation Project was launched not only to remedy the loss of this incredible history, but also to restore, aggregate, index and digitize the images with the purpose of sharing it online with veterans and educators at no cost. “It is important that future generations have access to these documents so that the deeds of our great veterans are never forgotten or misinterpreted” said Scot Laney, founder of the National Combat History Archive.
No one can argue that the US was prepared, some would even say willing, to fight the bloody war of attrition that became known as the Africa campaign of WWII. At once out gunned and out gutted, the collected forces had much to learn about conducting a war- and even more to learn about hatred for the enemy. It is said, and is true, that war cannot be successful without a keen sense of hatred.
Simply, the US was not ready to fight. The debacle that became known as Kasserine, where the Allies allowed Rommel to slip away even though the German was faced with severe shortages of fuel and ammunition, led the British Tommies to derisively sing “How Green Was My Ally” and to begin calling the American’s “our Italians.”
