Melinda B Hipple

Home Front Melinda B Hipple

In January of 1944, the United States is fighting a war on two fronts-Europe and Asia-as eighteen-year-old Vee Hammontree bravely traveles from Missouri to Idaho where she intends to marry her high-school sweetheart. Both her fiance, Robert, and her older brother, Eugene, have enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Corps in the hopes of saving the world from tyranny. While the U. S. troops are fighting overseas, Vee resolves to contribute to the war effort by joining the workforce at Pratt& Whitney to build airplane engines-something that could help ensure the survival of both her husband and her brother. Like others on the home front, she becomes a woman laborer, works to boost morale for the ones who are serving, and makes the ultimate sacrifice-losing one of her own. Home Front weaves together two true stories of sacrifice-one gleaned from Vee's personal diaries of the 1940s, the other through letters home from the war.