Finding My Father's War: Revelations from the Red Cross Diary of an American POW in Nazi Germany

“This is the remarkable story of my father, Herbert Henry Miller, who was drafted into the army in August 1942.” So begins this book about an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances during World War II. The writer is Herbert Miller’s son, Robert, who discovered his father’s Red Cross war diary at the back of a drawer in the weeks following his 1994 death. Created by the YMCA, the diaries were distributed through the Red Cross to all American POWs as they entered prisoner of war camps. Herbert Miller’s diary was crammed full of his dreams for survival and of the death and destruction he had witnessed as a soldier and a POW. Finding his father’s diary became the catalyst for Robert Miller to learn more about his father’s war. The result is this gripping story that sheds needed light on issues that remain at the forefront of our public discourse today: the torture and treatment of POWS and the high psychological cost to individual soldiers of going to war.