FOR RELEASE APRIL 2018

Contact: Jacqline Barnes, (410) 295-1028, jbarnes@usni.org

From Classrooms to Combat

An American war story told though the voices of a college community

At the beginning of World War II, professor

Lauren Post, San Diego State College, asked
his students entering military service to write to
him. Thousands of letters arrived from places
like Pearl Harbor, North Africa, and
Normandy, beginning with the salutation,
Dear Doc, and describing vivid accounts of
training, combat, and camaraderie. Pilots wrote
about seeing planes shot down. Men in POW
camps sent word about the location of other
prisoners and Dr. Post passed information on to
frantic families. Mothers, hoping for news
about missing sons, clutched at the details.
These intimate, first-person accounts capture
honest, in-the-moment reactions to war that
resound with heartache and gratitude.

Each month, Dr. Post excerpted the letters and

mailed the Aztec News Letter around the world.
Fraternities, typing classes, and families
donated time and money for printing and
postage. When the latest issue arrived,
servicemen and women read it cover-to-cover,
and then passed it to another Aztec in service.

Dr. Post produced and mailed a newsletter each month for four years. He sent pilots Aztec
stickers to put on their planes. Soldiers sent him Nazi flags and sand from Iwo Jima. He tallied
up the medals they earned and took time to call their mothers. He couldnt rest until he knew that
every student who had been taken prisoner was released.

For years afterward, men and women dropped by his small campus office to thank him for
helping them make it through the war. This is the story of the devotion of a remarkable college
professor who held his students, their campus, and an entire community together during World

A Book for Review

War II. These students fought for democracy and to preserve a cherished way of life that
included football, Coca-Cola, and Sadie Hawkins dances. Their correspondences to one beloved
professor describe an American perspective of war that shines with idealism, determination, raw
grief, and the power of friendship.

Praise for No Forgotten Fronts:

I could not put this book down! No Forgotten Fronts compellingly weaves history with
the actual words of San Diego State soldiers during World War II and Dr. Lauren C. Post,
their professor on the home front, in a way that demonstrates without question the role of
support each person played for all the others.
Dr. Susan Dersnah Fee, supporter of the American War Letters Project

Professor Shapiro captures the essence of Dr. Posts students grief, anxiety, loneliness,
and desire to locate their friends or know how they were able to survive during the war.
The book is a testament to the human spirit that never gives up amidst challenges. Letters
are messages from the heart, and the reader will be brought to the hearts and minds of
those heroic families who fought for our freedoms and the preservation of our values.
Raquel R. Ramsey, executive producer of Never Surrender: The Ed Ramsey
Story

A beautiful message of the power of one person to make a difference in the world, even
in time of war. This book is a reminder to all of us that simply bearing faithful witness to
the profound, the mundane, and the profane can be sacred work.
Rev. Jan Christian, author of Leave No Brother Behind: A Sisters War Memoir

Lisa K. Shapiro began teaching in 2003, and her community college classrooms have always
been filled with veterans. As a creative writing instructor, she encouraged the soldiers, sailors,
and Marines who were transitioning back to student life to put their stories on paper.

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS | Publication date: 15 April 2018

World War II
6 x 9 in | 43 B&W photos | 392 pp.
Hardcover & eBook
ISBN: 9781682472729 | $29.95

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