Introduction: Bill Stigall's Shower of Frogs, a World War II memoir

Hello, folks. This is a simple blog about a book written by my father, William J Stigall, quite a few years ago (published in 2001 but written in the mid-1980s). It is about his World War II experience in Europe via the 82nd Airborne, and his time in a German POW camp. It's a rather caustic view of the war by someone who hated war but hated the Nazis more.

I've re-written this "Introduction" so it occurs out of order -- I've been adding the first page of various chapters, mostly sequentially, over the past several months. But sometimes I get out of order and since this is a blog rather than a website, I don't seem to be able to reorder the past blog posts.

A Shower of Frogs is available via Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Shower-Frogs-World-War-Memoir

I've reproduced a few paragraphs of the book , as well as some posts from his letters home that weren't published, and I will add additional pages as time passes.

I hope you find it interesting. Regards -- S P

Who was Bill Stigall?

Bill Stigall was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1911. He became interested in the theater and graduated from the University of Illinois before becoming a director in the Chicago Park District theater prior to World War II. He and his brother Jack enlisted together following Pearl Harbor -- Jack went to Navy and the Pacific as a pharmacists mate; Bill to the 82nd Airborne (as shown in the photo) ... the North Africa, Italy, and D-Day campaigns. He was captured by the Germans and was a POW until the end of the war in Europe.

After the war he moved to Lincoln College in Lincoln, Illinois where he taught theater and a self-develooped course on western civilization. That's also where he met my mother, who became his wife, and me. Later on they moved to Scarborough, New York where they lived until he died in 2001, shortly after celebrating his 90th birthday in Paris.

Besides "Shower of Frogs" there is also a compendium of his writings called "I Couldn't Be Better" and a genealogy.

The "Shower of Frogs" can be purchased from the maker of this blog via Amazon. 

Chapter 1: Embarkation: New York City

So here's how it began ... Chapter 1, page 1


Embarkation: New York City

In that desperate and graceless spring of 1943 late on a somber
afternoon, a long single file of soldiers labored up a gangplank,
crossed a battle gray deck, and descended into the stuffy hold of a
nameless ship. The anonymity of the ship fitted those dark and
secret times, as did the identical khaki-colored woolens of the men.
For me and all those men on the long-awaited day of embarkation
had finally come. We knew it could be a significant moment.
After months of continuous and mostly boring training, the
unwanted adventure of sailing to some foreign land, to take part in
a far-off and unwished-for war, of joining a multitude of men who
in times past had done the same thing-the moment was at last
upon us.

Whatever thoughts I had projected about the event, what emotions
I had atthe moment of boarding, whatever gestures of looking
back I may have wanted to make--all were submerged in the swift
act of embarkation. The overriding feeling was a pain in the shoulder,
a raw bruise from the unaccustomed full field pack and Ml rifle.
Corp. Jim Hurley of Asheville, North Carolina; ex-sergeant
now private Danny Moore of Pennsylvania; PFC Leonard Goldberg
of Chicago, I, and 15,000 other men of the Eighty-second Airborne
Division had boarded a train south of Plymouth Rock at Buzzard's
Bay in Massachusetts. We rode unheralded through numerous
small towns and underground, unseen and unseeing, through New
York City to within four hundred yards of a slate gray ship with
black spots. We unloaded, adjusted the pack and rifle, and, lugging
a heavy and as yet unfaded blue denim barracks bag, marched
unceremoniously to the gangplank, were checked off, and went
aboard.

What I do remember about the event is how "un-Hollywood"
it all seemed.