World War II is a story told most often through the eyes of national leaders, generals and, occasionally, infantrymen. Warrior Priest underscores why that cauldron continues to stir imaginations and curiosity by conveying the wars global impact in ways rarely told. Here are woven together memorably the lives of a young priest turned airborne chaplain, a Cracow student turned Polish lancer, an aircraft carrier fireman, two young women partisans in Warsaw and a French village, and a small town girl who follows a volunteer flyer to England where she first treats the wounded in a London hospital and then joins the U.S. Army nurse corps.
Meticulously researched, Warrior Priests characters interact with real-life people in historically authentic locales and situations and in an accurate chronology from 1939 through 1946.
From a quiet, small town in 1930s Ohio to a Vatican-run seminary
From a Polish lancer charging German invaders to a U.S. airborne chaplain jumping into the night
From a London hospital during the Blitz to a church basement in battered Warsaw
From the harrowing streets of the ghetto to heroic river crossings
From the heaving deck of an imperiled aircraft carrier to a memorable walk down a church aisle
From invasion beaches to evacuation hospital tents
From an occupied French village to the Nazis only death camp in France
Warrior Priest pulls the reader into and through the cauldron of World War II by weaving together the lives of everyday people in unforgettable ways.
About the author
From the 1960s onward, first as a soldier, Mike Johnson combined strong interests in military history with extensive travel. He journeyed often to the Korean DMZ, visited Nazi death camps and walked the streets of towns and villages once occupied by the Wehrmacht. Johnson is an alumnus of Ohio University, Marshall Law at Cleveland State University and Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and has worked for three global companies. He is working on a second historical novel.