Showing WILL AND DENA: LOVE AND LIFE IN WORLD WAR II by Bob Rogers

Reading Will and Dena
Discover:
• Will, the woodsman and baseball star
• Dena, the brilliant and beautiful co-ed
• What happens when their love is forbidden
• The havoc introduced by the KKK
• Will, the American solider
• Will's and soldier-friends' reaction to General Almond:
o “…I don’t want you, I didn’t send for you…”
o “…I’ll see that you suffer your share of casualties.”
• WW II winter combat in Italy’s Tuscany
• Will's and friends' relationships with Italian Partisans
• If Will's and Dena’s dreams survive the KKK and WW II

Readers will find Will and Dena both a beautiful love story as well as a walk through the times of World War II. It is also a reminder of the prejudice that Afro-Americans have faced in our country, even when serving in our military. Will, the main character is a lumberjack and an amateur baseball player. Dena, the girl that he falls in love with, has struggles with her own mother, in that she doesn’t feel like Will is an appropriate choice in a boyfriend.

In the spring of 1943, Hitler and Mussolini were near the apex of their powers. While a world war rages, their dreams are threatened, first by classism when Will is declared “not good enough” to be a suitor for Dena’s hand. Meanwhile, a group of powerful businessmen have designs to exploit his extraordinary baseball skills for their financial gain until the Ku Klux Klan intervenes.

Will finds refuge in the US Army’s 366th Infantry Regiment and the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division fighting Hitler’s Wehrmacht in Italy. He bonds with three members of his infantry platoon. Their leader called them the Four Musketeers. Their generation has been called America’s greatest.

Together, the friends become a tight-knit family, at times fighting among themselves, and at other times, uniting to take on all-comers – other American servicemen, perverse use of courts-martial, and the Wehrmacht. They pool their skills to make the best of army life while continuously evolving their own unique reasons why they should fight the Germans. Then, they discover a second enemy – an American general. They meet and embrace Italian partisans in their homes and side by side on the battlefield against the Germans.

In the face of hardships and death, Will is challenged with finding purpose for his life. During Italy’s harsh Tuscany winter in the middle of a war, can Will find his path to the life he and Dena dreamed?