Calvin News

Students in an English 101 class at Calvin College are not only learning the basics of writing a research paper this semester, they're learning about a little-known chapter in American military history.

Calvin professor Jennifer Holberg's 20 students have all been paired with veterans of World War II and, this semester, will twice interview those veterans on videotape before then writing their life story.

But there's a twist. These veterans are all women.

Holberg says the added wrinkle this time around (two years ago she did a similar project with Calvin students and male veterans) is making for an interesting project.

"Women in the military has been controversial," says Holberg. "yet here we have women who were in the military 60 years ago. It's been very eye-opening for our students to hear about the experiences of these women and to learn how they were seen by society."

One of the surprises, Holberg says, is how most of the women felt supported in their quests, both by their families and society.

"This whole desire to serve their country sprang from very patriotic impulse," says Holberg. "The idea for many of these women, and for the country as a whole, was that their service, behind the lines, could free up a male soldier to fight at the front. This was seen by the women as a very noble calling."

Many of the 20 women paired with the Calvin students served as nurses and were very close to the fighting, even if they were not right on the front lines. Their experiences have been gripping for the Calvin students.

But, again breaking stereotypes, not all of the women were nurses. Some served in intelligence capacities such as cryptography. And two of the women in the project served together in the Marines.

When the video interviews are complete they will be sent to the Library of Congress for its massive veteran's project which seeks to record interviews with every living veteran of World War II.

And on December 11 the Calvin students and their veteran partners will celebrate together with a special luncheon on Calvin's campus that will include presentations to the veterans of both the tapes and the life stories written by the students. That lunch is being sponsored by the college's Student Life division, the office of the Dean for Social Sciences, Languages, Literature, and the Arts, the Calvin English department and the Gender Studies minor.

Holberg says Calvin also supported her this year with the purchase of new cameras that, after the project is completed, will be available to other Calvin classes that want to take on similar efforts. The new cameras, she says, also were much appreciated by the Library of Congress which seeks to have the highest-quality video possible for the interviews, recognizing that they will be used for many years by scholars, historians and others interested in World War II.