Combat and New Life

A father's odyssey. A mother's strength. A son's story. 


 --- Combat and New Life is Book 2 of the trilogy, Wilber's War, which chronicles the story of two ordinary Americans, Wilber and Norma Bradt, during an extraordinary time, World War II. It offers fresh insight--deeply personal --into the historic conflict as it was fought by the U.S. Army in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and The Philippines and by a family on the home front. It is an epic tale of duty, heroism, love, and human frailty. The story is told in large part in Wilber's own words in a sensitive editing of his some 700 richly detailed wartime letters.  The work offers a detailed and nuanced view into the complexities faced by one family and by U.S. society as a whole when it ships soldiers to war and asks loved ones to forge new lives on the home front. The trilogy is the recipient of three Finalist Awards (Benjamin Franklin of the IBPA, IndieFAB of Foreword Reviews, and Indie Excellence).


 --- "Inherently fascinating read...deftly crafted...very highly recommended for both community and academic library…collections" [Midwest Book Review, June 2015]. "Hale Bradt relates a story that could resonate with the multitude of families who also sacrificed a father, a husband, or son [to war]" [Foreword Reviews, Fall 2015].


 --- Combat and New Life (384 pp., 14 maps, 106 photos/facsimiles, 2 charts) carries Wilber into direct combat in the Solomon Islands as an artillery battalion commander while Norma copes with an unexpected crisis in New York and adjustments in her relationships with her children and husband. Wilber's letters track his evolving relationship with Norma while creating a vivid inside view of jungle combat and life in New Zealand for American soldiers newly re-introduced into a western society. Two "Interludes" describe the author's visits to the Solomons and New Zealand.


 --- Author Hale Bradt, Wilber and Norma's son, shares his parents' stories with insight, compassion, and a wealth of carefully selected images that bring their experiences to life. Visiting in the 1980s the battlefields where his father fought, he adds another uniquely American voice to this rich story: that of a son seeking to unravel the tangled threads of his family's legacy.