DMP2 Final Draft: Life on the Home Front

This is the link for my final draft of my DMP2 video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6stZs-GcjM&feature=youtu.be

Life on the Home Front is a short video which uses images and videos to tell a story from the point of view of the women who had to stay behind while their husbands were drafted to serve in World War II. Most of the images and all video clips were taken from the Texas A&M University-Commerce library, in the Historical ET Collection within the Northeast Texas Digital Collections. The images feature people from East Texas as well as some personal family photographs from my family's collection. The videos feature Ms. Jeannette Foust and Ms. Allene Hulen, two women whose husbands served in the U.S. military during World War II.

This video was created for the class to which this blog is dedicated, ENG 333, Advanced Writing: Non-Fiction. The class is led by Dr. Carter and intended to retell the story of some aspect of local history.

 Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

I chose to focus on World War II and what life must have been like for the women at home because I was strongly influenced by my great-grandmother, Naomi Webb. She was born in 1919 and passed away in 2008. She used to babysit my brother and I while my mother went to college, and she would talk about her family frequently, though she had already outlived most of them. She told us stories about the cotton-gin her father owned and how it burned down twice. She told us that during the Depression they were still doing well enough to not feel the pinch and how when her family bought a new living room suit for Christmas she was embarrassed that the teacher told her whole class. My great-grandmother also told us that she was married to Melbourn Webb, who was deployed in Europe during World War II. He was a mean drunk when he did drink, and he abused her and her two children (my grandfather and great-uncle). She was fortunate to be granted a divorce during the war, since he was a soldier, and she called him "that old devil" instead of Melbourn. 

Melbourn Webb was discharged--neither honorably nor dishonorably--for shooting his gun into the air while the troops were marching between posts. He had gotten angry about the orders he had been given and had nearly given away their position, so they sent him home. 

Because of the stories my great-grandmother told me, I find this era of American history very fascinating, and I wanted to share a piece of it through this video. I hope you enjoy.