Never Give Up the Jump: Combat, Resilience, and the Legacy of World War II through the Eyes and Voices of the Paratroopers, Wives, and Families of the 508th PIR

Summary

Young Sue Gurwell had always known that her father had been a paratrooper. And then there was the special poem in his roll-top desk she sometimes snuck a peek at, written by a member of Dad's regiment. This poem was a premonition of the sergeant's death. "Yes," her dad told her, "He was right—he died on D-Day."

But it's not until 2016, after her parents had both passed away, that Susan Gurwell Talley and her husband Jack L. Talley begin to understand the true extent and significance of the wartime artifacts that had been staples of Sue's childhood. The Talleys discovered that Sue's father, Lt. George L. Gurwell, Executive Officer, HqHq, 508th PIR, had silently squirreled away thousands of wartime documents in the family home.

This precious resource could not have passed into better hands than those of Jack and Sue Talley. Jack, a PhD psychologist specializing in PTSD, was the first to understand that George had PTSD symptoms that still lingered from the war years when he and George were introduced on June 6, 2001. That evening, the fifty-seventh anniversary of D-Day, George first opened up about the war, and preceded to talk late into the night. In that conversation lies the genesis of this book.