Note: This is the first in a three-week series of columns based on World War II veterans who wrote books about their experiences.

-- Today: Bedford resident and Johnstown native Eugene Cowles’ letters home inspired “The War Years of a Teen-ager.”

-- Nov. 8: Johnstown woman helped guide Ligonier native Roland Glenn’s World War II book, “The Hawk and the Dove.”

-- Nov. 15: Author Glenn’s lifetime of dealing with combat memories sparks urge to reach Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers.



Eugene Cowles calls himself “a meticulous letter-writer.”

The Johnstown native has turned his penchant for storytelling into a new book about his experiences as a young soldier in Europe during World War II. His book – “The War Years of a Teenager” – was published in 2008 and now is available in hardback and paperback.

Cowles said he kept a journal of his experiences in combat, writing on any scraps of paper he could find – sometimes from the tenuous position of a foxhole.

Some time ago, his mother told Cowles she had kept all of his letters in a trunk in her attic.

Together they climbed the stairs to open that trunk, and another journey began.

“I kept my journal on scraps of paper, anything I could find to write on,” Cowles said from his home in Bedford. “I kept sending them home. My CO (commanding officer) let me send them. He said as long as they were about things that had already happened, it was OK.”

Many of those letters can be found in the book, along with narrative from the author describing the circumstances.

Cowles also added anecdotes throughout the book under the heading “Reflection.”

“My mother told me she had kept all of my letters, so one day we went up to the attic to look at these notes,” he said. “That was a real treat – seeing all of this stuff that was scribbled on the back of a piece of wallpaper, on the notes that the Germans had dropped from the sky.

“When I started reading them, it brought back so many memories.

“So I dragged all that stuff out here to the country and decided to do a book.”

Cowles grew up on Oak Street in Johnstown’s Hornerstown neighborhood. He graduated from Johnstown High School and was a classmate of future businessman and civic leader Frank Pasquerilla.

Cowles was drafted into the Army in 1944. His service soon took him to Germany and Belgium during the heaviest fighting of the war.

Cowles was there for the infamous Battle of the Bulge, fought in December 1944 and January 1945. Historians say nearly a million soldiers – Germans, British and Americans – fought in the battle and nearly 50,000 died, including some 20,000 U.S. soldiers.

“Some of us kept a running total of the people who got killed,” Cowles said. “I’m not sure we were supposed to do that. But I got away with it.

“You know that stuff ... You can’t just wipe it out of your mind,” he said. “I’m not sure if everyone’s as emotional about it as I am. I do have nightmares from time to time. It hasn’t hurt me, but I do get emotional about it. You can never throw it off completely, I don’t think.”

Cowles recalled receiving a package from home one time that contained a special surprise.

“My mother sent me a box of dirt from Hornerstown,” he said. “I opened it up and there was a worm in it.”

After returning from the war, he married the former Laverne Keiper of Coopersdale. She is the sister of well-known local baseball manager and pastor Ken Keiper.

Cowles worked at Pasquerilla’s Crown American Corp. before moving to Bedford in 1960 and purchasing a lumber company in Everett.

Now he can add author to his resume.

“It took me 10 years to finish (the book),” Cowles said. “I’d work on it awhile, then lay it aside, then do more with it, then lay it aside.

“My kids love it – and my grandchildren.”

For now, Cowles is selling his book from his home, and it can be ordered online. But he hopes “The War Years of a Teenager” will soon be available in book shops and other locations across the region.

“I’ve sold a couple of hundred books from here,” Cowles said. “My publisher wants to see it in the bookstores.”

He should get some publicity from a project now being finalized at the Bedford County Visitors Bureau, where Executive Director Dennis Tice has been recording interviews with area veterans.

The visitors bureau produced an iPod video to promote downtown Bedford, and Tice got the idea that something similar on local veterans would be appropriate.

But he has gathered so much information from veterans that his project has turned into a two-hour movie that will be released regionally in 2010. Tice hopes to hold a private screening in Bedford in December.

The movie will include interviews, pictures and footage from World War II.

“It’s not just these guys talking,” Tice said. “We’re also able to show some of the things these guys saw and experienced.”

You can preview the movie by visiting www.bedfordcounty.net/vets.

Cowles was among the first veterans interviewed.

The same voice readers will encounter in “The War Years of a Teenager” will be on screen in the veterans movie, Tice said.

“Gene brings a really honest element to his storytelling,” Tice said. “He was an 18-year-old kid during the war, and that shows.”

How to get the book

-- "The War Years of a Teenager."

-- Write to the author at 166 Woodland Ave., Bedford, Pa. 15522.

-- Cost: $23 for paperback, $30 for hardback.

-- Information: Call 623-9488.

-- Book also available through variousonlinesources, including flipkart.com, Amazon.com and eBay.



Chip Minemyer is the editor of The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at 532-5091.