{"id":3735,"date":"2009-02-18T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3735"},"modified":"2025-09-26T03:10:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:10:20","slug":"latest-read-my-private-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3735","title":{"rendered":"Latest Read: My Private War"},"content":{"rendered":"

About three months ago I was reading a small weekly local newspaper, the Express<\/strong>, that ends up every Thursday in my driveway – along with a bunch of ads. <\/p>\n

95% of the time I just immediately toss it into the recycling, but for some reason I decided to have a quick look, and came across an article about a local Hudson Valley resident who'd written a memoir. <\/p>\n

Norman Bussel had been a nineteen year old on a B-17 over Germany in 1944, when his plane was shot down. He was a POW for about 13 months. The memoir is about his wartime experiences and his subsequent decades-long battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). <\/p>\n

It sounded very interesting, so I ordered his book from amazon, and promptly mis-placed it. I'm glad I found it, because it was an absorbing and emotional tale.<\/p>\n

In the first chapter, Mr. Bussel describes being shot down; he parachuted out through the bomb bay, and was the last crewman to get off the plane alive. Four of his fellow ten man crew died.<\/p>\n

The first two-thirds of this 300 page memoir describes his joining the Army Air Force, his training, and then his experiences as a POW. I found it really quite riveting. <\/p>\n

There are 25 short chapters, and chapter nine, describing his bailing out and capture in Germany is aptly entitled "Germany: A Descent into Hell". As he was in his parachute descending he wisely tossed away his dogtag, which had the letter "H" for his religion. He is Jewish. Bussel was then nearly lynched by German farmers, before being picked up by soldiers. <\/p>\n

The treatment of POW's in Germany was beyond brutal. Denied medical care, denied food, denied warm clothes, along with witnessing the murder of some prisoners. And a few beatings thrown in for good measure. Bussel lost 65 pounds during his imprisonment, weighing only a bit more then 100 pounds when the camp was finally liberated by the American army. <\/p>\n

The last one third of the book deals with Bussel's post-war career and struggle with PTSD. His alcohol problem, quickness to anger, claustrophobia, a failed first marriage. Mr. Bussel seems to have turned a corner in 1980 when he, without counseling, gave up alcohol and stopped smoking, and shortly afterwards began to go to counseling sessions at the Montrose NY, VA hospital. <\/p>\n

Chapter 21 is entitled "POW's Healing POWs" as Bussel discusses what a revelation it was for him to meet other POW's who shared many of his same problems. <\/p>\n

Norman Bussel had a career as a writer, and editor, but utimately working with POW organizations became his avocation. For example, he became president of the American Ex-Prisoners of War Service Foundation. <\/p>\n

It took Mr. Bussel years to write his memoir; it sat unfinished in his computer for years. After his granddaughter read the manuscript and urged him to complete it, "My Private War" was published last year. Norman Bussel is in his mid-eighties now.<\/p>\n

Thank you Mr. Bussel, for your riveting and thought-provoking book. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About three months ago I was reading a small weekly local newspaper, the Express, that ends up every Thursday in my driveway – along with a bunch of ads. 95% of the time I just immediately toss it into the recycling, but for some reason I decided to have a quick look, and came across an article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9178,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735\/revisions\/9178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}