-
Series Editor's Foreword
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD M. Hunter Hayes Since its inception in 1997 the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life has provided an array of textual images—snapshots, as it were—that capture and chronicle life in the East Texas region. To date we have published volumes on the cotton and cattle industries, outlaws and vigilantes, and other subjects that illuminate the diversity of life in the area. At the heart of these individual volumes and the series as a whole lie the stories of the men and women who have emerged from the region to effect lasting impacts on their communities and at times to build legacies that have created broader influences at the state and national levels. These stories and histories provide an engaging synthesis between personal life and public life. For these and other reasons, Rocky Miracle’s Mrs. Cordie’s Soldier Son: A World War II Saga makes a fine and an invaluable addition to the series. While firmly rooted in the East Texas region, Mrs. Cordie’s Soldier Son is an expansive narrative that moves from the small town of Chisholm, Texas, to France and the Ardennes and into Germany, describing along the way places such as Mineral Wells in northern Texas. Rather than interpreting for his readers many of the episodes in D.C. Caughran’s life as a civilian, soldier, and prisoner of war, Rocky Miracle allows his father-in-law to speak for himself. This inclusion of primary materials such as Caughran’s letters home to his family creates a vibrant , multifaceted narrative in which colloquial expressions, quotidian details, and objective commentary recapture the essence of Miracle ’s subject. The experiences of war have been passed down through a seemingly timeless legacy of oral narratives and literature. Historians, x Series Editor’s Foreword novelists, playwrights, poets, filmmakers, and others have long grappled with the difficulties of describing events that words are often inadequate at relating accurately, whether to those who experienced battle or those who would never have to face the inherent brutality of war. However , what the British First World War soldier-poet Wilfred Owen famously termed the “pity of war” becomes clear from personal accounts. In Caughran’s letters to his parents, for example, readers have the rare privilege of seeing one man protecting his family from the grim realities of warfare and his own dire predicament. These letters also grant readers the opportunity to encounter the unembellished human reality of war—from the mundane details of daily life to events of historical significance. As Lewis H. Carlson astutely observes in his foreword, in modern warfare individuals often become anonymous figures subjected to forces beyond their control and line of vision; with Mrs. Cordie’s Soldier Son, Rocky Miracle has preserved for future generations Caughran’s individuality. In doing so, Miracle has crafted a book that I am pleased and honored to include in the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life. ...