Norwich + Normandy
/So, graduation headaches aside, I'm working on my final project with a seminar class, Norwich University History. It's an interesting class, and I've had the professor before in other classes. In addition to learning about the school (and American Higher Education in general) we're required to do an intensive project on some aspect of the school's history. I selected one that Prof. Lord suggested, an examination of Norwich alumni who participated in the Invasion of Normandy in 1944 towards the end of World War II. Thus far, it's been an interesting project. Apparently, Norwich is sending a number of alumni to the battlefields this summer for a fundraising thing, and they wanted a companion history to go along with it. So, I've had a meeting with the president of the university, who was able to give me some connections that'll help.
So far, the project has been going well, and I've outlined it into three phases. The first phase is tracking down the names and units of Norwich alumni who were in the battle. So far, I've gotten a lot of hits for people in the area at the same time, but there's 23 that I've found thus far who were in the battle - 11 or so more than previously known about. (All they had before was a list of people who were in the battle and died afterwards) So far, my list stands at about 121, of people who I have the units and names, ranks, etc, but no word on whether they were actually in the battle or not. I send my list off to my contact earlier today, and hopefully, I'll get a better view on who was there, based on their unit histories.
The second phase will be research into each unit that was at D-Day that had a Norwich student in it. I'm hoping to get a map and plot their locations on it. Combined with various accounts that I've uncovered, and a couple of sources that I'm going to track down, hopefully, I'll get a good picture on what the Norwich alumni were up to.
The last phase is the report itself, which hopefully shouldn't take too long, after all the research has been done. It's an interesting project, and I'm very happy to be doing this sort of work - I've really been enjoying the process and looking things up. THIS is the sort of history that I've been wanting to do for a while now, and I'm thinking that it's what I want to be doing in the future.