By Ignacio Laguarda
It was New Year's Eve in 1944 when Soldier First Class Juan Meza discovered Germans had occupied an abandoned college in France -- the same building where he and five other soldiers were resting.
"We were directing the artillery to shoot where we knew they were giving us more battles," Meza said.
He and the other soldiers were there for a week, five or 10 kilometers in front of battle, serving as observers.
By Rachel Gor
In Antonia Meza's day, girls had chaperones accompany them on dates and stayed home with their mothers to make tortillas. Today, Meza's own granddaughters spend entire weekends with their boyfriends, and even she buys tortillas from the grocery store.
These are only a couple of ways in which traditions have changed from the WWII generation to the present.
By Naomi Price
Joe Borunda Medina was fresh out of Wiley High School in Wiley, Colo., when he was inducted into the Army in June of 1943.
Initially drafted, Borunda says he received a notice several weeks later that he was no longer needed. He decided to join anyway, however, and was sent to Denver for basic training, then to Utah for additional training and testing.
By Sarah Kleiner
Jess Medina witnessed death for the first time as a little boy when he saw a man get run over by a streetcar.
Because of this experience, Medina says he had no fear when he had to piece together bodies of fellow seamen after a kamikaze crashed into his ship.
By Brian Goodman
During World War II, commissioned military officers would receive deployment orders by telegram, often believing they’d been called up for duty by their senator.
Little did they know that the assignments were actually issued at random by people like Betty Muñoz Medina, who got an entry-level job at the War Department (now the Department of the Army) when she was 20.
"I was filing 3- by 5-inch cards all day long," Muñoz Medina said.
By Emma Graves-Fitzsimmons
Nothing prepared Val Martinez for the icy winter night he landed in Marseilles, France, with the 103rd Infantry Division to prepare for combat in World War II. Martinez would spend more than nine months as a tank commander advancing across Central Europe, but says the first night was the coldest he can remember.
His unit and their German adversaries were both under constant fire as each tried to gain ground on the other, he recalls.
"Once we got going, we spent a lot of time chasing them," Martinez said. "Our outfit was a good outfit."
By Kimberly Wied
Elsie Martinez saw a lot of World War II, but she never left the country and can't talk about it.
"The things we saw, and the people that came back, it was horrible," said Martinez, recalling her work in a high-security photo lab that processed aerial photos taken by Army reconnaissance.
By Angela Macias
Augustinee Martinez knew little about being a solider when his 65th Infantry Division reached La Havre, France.
Though Martinez trained at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and then in France for more than a month before hitting the front lines in March of 1945, he wasn't prepared for the intense battle his division entered.
"Two, three days [in combat], you learn everything," Martinez said.
By Tara Wilcox-G.
Alberto Marquez remembers an autumn day in Houston in 1942 when he and a friend went out for hot dogs and, by the time they returned home, they’d decided to volunteer to fight in World War II.
While walking to lunch that day, the young men had spotted the now-famous promotion advertisement of Uncle Sam pointing his finger, saying "I WANT YOU." The two friends began to joke and argue about which one of them Uncle Sam really wanted.
By Katie Woody
Lorenza Terrones Lujano has battled prejudice, assumed a traditionally male role as an athlete and worked diligently to send all four of her children to college, an opportunity she never had.
