Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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October: Pink Ribbon Month

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jean chemoLast year, at the beginning of October, this column included the first of a series of articles about Jean Hanna Davis and her struggle with breast cancer and chemotherapy for the second time in 10 years. Hoping to inspire other women in the same predicament, Jean invited me to sit with her while she received treatment. It was a fascinating insight into the process; a mixture of boredom, nausea and anxiety.

After that first column, we posted several more online. (You can read the series on my website.)  In November, Jean finished up her chemo and celebrated with her guitar, singing while sitting on her hospital bed. Three of the songs were posted to YouTube .

In December, Jean got word that she was, once again, cancer free. It was a fantastic Christmas present. The interviews and the columns soon became the basis for a book: Keep on, Keepin’ on. It was published last spring and is available through Amazon.

In the book, we included several essays Jean wrote about October and “Pink Ribbon Month”. The following is an excerpt from one—literally from her hospital bed.

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00053]“I’m not annoyed so much with the pink this year. We all do this life thing differently, and that there’s no wrong way to do it….but I do get frustrated with the so-called “pinkwashing” that has happened extensively these past 10 years. Buy a pen….buy a can of soup…..buy these sneakers……OK. If you usually do buy those things, please continue. If you’re buying them because they give a “portion of the proceeds to Breast Cancer Research.” Save your money. Make a donation to Komen…or BCRF…check out charitynavigator.org to compare these charities. Know how they use your money.

“If you have a friend who is going through chemo and you just don’t know what to do for that friend, here are some suggestions.

  • Buy paper plates, plastic cutlery, napkins, paper towels…..stuff to make daily life and meals a bit easier.
  • Send a card…and if you can, throw a gift card to a local restaurant in there. Or have a meal delivered.
  • Head over to the house and weed the flower beds (there’s no energy for this type of activity), or offer to decorate for holidays with the kids.
  • Make a phone call…but don’t be irritated if the person isn’t interested in talking at that moment. When there are kids in the house, those quiet moments are few and far between.
  • Buy a pack of sour hard candy or gum (dry mouth is a big problem with chemo & radiation, as well as the nasty taste they leave in your mouth. Sour candy helps with nausea. Seriously.)
  • Take their kids to church or school or scouts or whatever……

“The smallest things make the biggest differences. Keep on, keepin’ on…”

Note: Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. After a producer saw the videos of Jean singing, she received an invitation to appear on national television. Unless something has changed between when I wrote this and now, Jean will be a guest on the Meredith Vieira talk show in New York. (Check your local listings for the time.) The actual air date of the show is yet to be determined.

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Memories of D-Day from men who were there

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In the West Virginia Voices of War documentary, I interviewed two men who were present at Omaha and Utah beaches in June of 1944. Neither went in on the first wave, but both ended up crossing France and Germany with the Army and were there until the very end of the war.

Eugene Lusk

US Army. WWII. Technician 4.

I finished high school and my number come up and I was drafted. May 7, 1943. I had never been out of West Virginia. They took us to Huntington for examination and they sent us home for a week to get everything in order. A young buck like me, I didn’t have nothing to get in order.

Crossing, I was sick 10 days out of 12 going over. I lived on peanuts and Coca-Cola. Waves looked like they were 40 feet high. We went to Glasgow Scotland and then worked down to Plymouth England. We didn’t know what it was for, but we were loading for the invasion.

We had air raids every night while we were in England. We had air raid shelters. We would go, most of the time you had no clothes on, just in your underwear and grab your pants. People coming in there half dressed.

We just had enough to eat, to keep the hunger down. We went to chow one night; they asked “What do you want to eat?” It shocked us. We said “What do you mean?” We knew something was up but we didn’t know what. It lasted one day and then the next night we shipped out. We went inland to an old camp and then the next morning they got us up bright and early, there was a catholic chaplain and a protestant chaplain. One of them said, “Where we’re going some of you will make it and some of you won’t.” You heard some groans but that was about it. We were not told until we were on that ship getting ready to land what was going on. We knew something was up, but they kept it that quiet. Went in on D-Day.

They took us back to Plymouth and we boarded a ship, #226 on June 4. On #2 hold, it was stacked with 5 gallon jerry cans full of gas. And some of them were leaking. The whole company got on that ship. We were on the channel two full days. We were supposed to land on the fifth but a storm came up and we landed on June 6th. The channel was rough and I was sick.

On the morning of June 6th, we were in the tail of the convoy. We went up by Omaha Beach, but we were going on to Utah. We anchored at Utah Beach and those big battleships were broadside and firing on the beach. You would see the gun go off, and then hear it and then see the shell way back over yonder go off.

I don’t know what time, but an LCP pulled up beside our ship and that was our ride to the beach. It bottomed out and we waded in with water clear up under our armpits. We were in a single line. If there had been a machine gun there it could have mowed every one of us down. We were sitting ducks but the beach had done been taken at that time. We had to cross a flood wall. It was four to 12 feet tall. We crossed it was about 8 feet.

Utah Beach was cut into three beaches. We were supposed to land on Tarry Green and I don’t know where we landed. The captain said if you get lost; go to the IP, Initial Point. I don’t know where that initial point is to this day. But none of us got lost. We all stayed together.

The hedgerows were thick and the captain said we’ll dig in right here. So we did and that night the Germans tried to wipe us out. We had terrible air raids, every night. They hit some good licks. They would drop flares. The air would be full of them. They looked like they would last for 30 minutes, but they were only 10 minutes. We were taught; if they drop a flare, act like a fence post.

When I came back, I had problems, for a while and then finally it just went away. I’m a light sleeper. The boy I dug in with, he could sleep through anything, but I couldn’t. When I got back I met a young lady and we got married. Been married 65 years plus. Raised three children. I’ve got great grandchildren.

Church has been the biggest part of my life. It has been the biggest part of our lives down in Bud. That’s what kept me going.

Paul Harris

US Army. WWII. Corporal.

Paul HarrisI was a senior at Sherman High School and I was president of the senior class when I was drafted in 1942. It was in November so I it was about halfway through the term.

We landed on Utah Beach. It was high tide on the beach so we couldn’t get in. We had to wait there in the open. German airplanes would come over at tree top level spraying bullets everywhere.

We went five and a half miles inland to Sainte-Mère-Église, France to this big field. The next day, we started setting up tents. We had 57 tents to set up the next day. That included the tents we lived in and for the patients. On the next day, we started getting patients. We were a Neo-Psychiatric unit. I never will forget one soldier come in and he was there, but that was it. He was dirty and disheveled. I was admitting patients at the time. He said I think I know you. I checked his dog tags and I did know him. He was from right across the river. The doctors determined whether they were ready to go back or not. He went back to the front, but then a few weeks later he was back and that was it for him. I asked about him but never did find out what happened to him after the war.

It was 24 hours a day. No such thing as an eight hour day. Everybody done it. It got so that even I knew what was going on with them. They were shell shocked. You could read it. We treated all of them.

Up on the hill was a little church. Out from it was a graveyard. One day, I went up there. What I saw was…military personnel soaked with oil where they had fished them out of the surf. I didn’t stay long. It was heartbreaking. That was the only time I went up there.

It was a little bit difficult when I got home. I had been places and seen things that a normal country boy would not be familiar with. When I got back, I enrolled in the senior class and graduated with them. It was a little bit difficult to do. I was older and I knew it. I’ve seen a lot of things I was grateful for, too. I do flash back sometimes. It is something I can’t get away from. A lot of it is in my head, yet.

It was quite a while that I couldn’t watch movies about the war. It upset me so that I couldn’t sleep. My wife would tell me “You’re not gonna watch that.” She was right. It would go through my mind all night long.

A young man, I felt like it was my duty to be there. I did the best I could. There were many things that I remembered later on.

The West Virginia Voices of War documentary includes the voices of 46 West Virginia war veterans with their thoughts on war, trying to stay alive and get home. It includes men and women who served from World War II through Afghanistan.

You can watch the entire West Virginia Voices of War documentary here. The book Common Valor includes longer versions of each veteran’s personal story..

Sending ebooks to military personnel in Afghanistan

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Photo taken at the Matewan rally in the fall of 1990.

The last 13 years have been tough on the United States with troops overseas fighting and dying in two wars that most Americans barely understood. For most of that time, everyone continued to support the troops.

It is now 2014 and we are (mostly) out of Iraq, but there are still 60,000 Americans still in Afghanistan. There are still more than 200,000 American servicemen and women serving around the globe in 150 countries (and who knows how many more at sea).

I debated saying anything about this, because I didn’t want anyone to say that I did it just to talk about myself, but through a friend of a friend author connection, I learned about two nurses serving in Afghanistan that were looking for reading material in the form of ebooks. They were asking for donations. I just sent them ebook copies of Cayman Cowboys, Flooding Hollywood, Guardians’ Keep and Wreck of the Huron along with the veterans book Common Valor (I thought a few of them might be interested).

It is easy to forget in our daily lives that we still have troops serving away from home and family. There is nothing about that service that is easy, but as every one of the veterans I interviewed for Common Valor and the West Virginia Voices of War documentary told me, it is something they are called to do.

Take any opportunity to do a little something for them. My veteran friends, if you know of any way people can donate or support troops, let me know and I will add them to this post or just add them in the comments.

My fellow authors, if you want to donate, or know of other groups of reader that might be interested, drop me a line and let me know..

Mandela

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africa walkingI still remember the first time I heard about Nelson Mandela and Apartheid in South Africa. It was 1985 and I was a freshman at Marshall University at the time.

In my freshman speech class, I had to give a persuasive speech on a topic. It seemed like it was all of a three or five minute talk, and of course I was nervous. (Oh, how far I’ve come…) I remember sitting in my dorm room wondering what I was going to talk about and listening to music on my stereo. I put on an album (yes, vinyl) and stared out the window. I flipped the album cover over and immediately had my answer.

The album was Manfred Mann’s Earth Band “Somewhere in Afrika” and on the back cover Mann talked about Apartheid. He was born in South Africa and campaigned against the governmental system based on race and segregation. I remember being amazed that in 1985 there was a government system based on race. (It is possible I was a little naïve.) The album was ground breaking in that it included Afrikan rhythms, lyrics and musicians, predating Paul Simon’s Graceland. Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” also talks about the horrors of Apartheid, and was released earlier, but it was not the basis for the entire album.

Twenty years later (11 years after the end of Apartheid), I had the opportunity to visit Pretoria and Midrand, South Africa. I was eating dinner with a white South African friend and his family when I asked about Apartheid. I could tell it was something he would rather not have discussed, but he asked the manager of the restaurant, who was black, to come over. He told the man what I wanted to know about. The man looked at me for a few moments and said “Things are better now. Before, I would not have had this job and I would not have friends like your friend,” he said, gesturing to my host Dr. Cronje.

Mandela served 27 years in prison until international pressure secured his release after being convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government. When he was released, I’m sure the people of South Africa expected him to be angry and punitive against the white government that had held him in prison for so long. Mandela had a different idea.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela died today. In all of our fascination with “reality” and celebrity, his passing is significant. I’m sure there are other leaders out there who have changed the world as much as he did, but I can’t think of any right now. I hope someone rises in his place. He will be missed, but I pray his legacy lives on. To me the world seems more divided, over less important things, than it has been in years. I wager Mandela would have thought most of what we fight and argue about is trivial.

On another note, music has incredible power to change minds and influence thought. There is no doubt learning of Apartheid through music shaped my feelings years before the west thought much about it. Time to listen to “Somewhere in Afrika” again. It really is a great album.

And it seems like we still have a long way to go..

Celebrating the last Chemo session

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IMG_4674Resplendent in her Wonder Woman t-shirt (complete with cape) and her Wonder Woman necklace, Jean Hanna Davis was celebrating her last chemotherapy session yesterday by playing a few songs on her guitar.

Of course, this was just the last planned chemo session. The chemicals will be doing their job in her body for up to two weeks, continuing to kill the cancer cells that grew in her chest. After that, there will be tests and examinations. And if this series of relatively mild chemotherapy didn’t do its job, there will be more treatments.

The last treatment comes with its own share of doubts and worries.

“My gut tells me everything is okay. But I’m not sure I trust my gut. This is the part where it gets scary, when you’re done with treatment. You start thinking of all the things that could be wrong. What if this “mild” form of chemo wasn’t enough. That’s where you just have to trust your doctors, trust they know what they are doing, and have done the most they could do in the best possible manner. This is part where I start getting scared. You’re no longer actively treating.”

“When you get done with this; that is always the weird thing. You get done with this and you are done. You generally can’t get by to see them. You develop such a close relationship with these people, and they become your friends, and then you are done and you don’t see them anymore and they move on to their next patients.”

Later Jean had the chance to ask two of her oncology nurses about their perspective on their patients and they both said, while they are told not to get attached to their patients, they still do and their patients remain in their prayers for a long time afterward. They often get updates on patients from the doctors.

Jean sang Circle, a song she wrote for her grandmother Geraldine Loyola Hanna as she was dying. “Grandmom” fought breast cancer the year Jean was born and Jean was named for her.

The second song she sang has become something of an anthem for breast cancer survivors. Melissa Etheridge, a breast cancer survivor herself, wrote the song “I Run for Life” about running to raise money, awareness and support for breast cancer research.

She also did a bonus song, just to have fun.

Jean hopes her story, in the form of these blog posts, and a book this spring, will help to inspire, encourage and entertain people dealing with cancer. She wants them to know that they are not alone and cancer is not something you have to let beat you.

Jean gave me access to each of her chemotherapy treatments while she worked to rid her body of cancer for a second time. I wrote a series of six blog posts, five during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, about Jean’s experience and her thoughts on cancer.

You can see the entire series on the Breast Cancer Page in the non-fiction section of my website..

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