From Anderson’s Holler – A World War II medical photographer’s story- available now

From Anderson’s Holler – A World War II medical photographer’s story- available now

A memoir of growing up in the hills of West Virginia and suddenly becoming a World War II medical photographer, with a clearance to go where others could not.

From Anderson’s Holler

By Melvin C. Shaffer

Dallas: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Price $30

ISBN 978-1-878516-16-9 (paper)

          978-1-878516-17-6 (cloth)

June 25, 2020 – Green Valley, Arizona

In his first memoir, pioneering medical educator and Army Sergeant (ret.) Melvin C. Shaffer recalls his upbringing in rural West Virginia, his efforts to escape the narrow life of his peers, and his service in World War II. Foreshadowing his global wanderings, Shaffer’s first memory is of his father receiving a telephone call on his family’s wall-mounted crank telephone, announcing Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight arriving in Paris. As a boy, he developed a dual love of travel and photography. When World War II called, these passions fueled his success as a photographer in the Army’s 3rd Medical Museum and Arts Detachment (MAMAS). Trained and equipped as a medic, he also carried a full photography kit on assignments given him by the Army Medical Museum in Washington to document medicine and surgery – both advances and problems. First sent to North Africa, his own resourcefulness got him to wide-flung duty stations: Sicily, Salerno, Naples, Anzio, Rome, Florence, Poltava, Southern France, Dachau, and Berlin. Shaffer finds himself pulling soldiers off the battlefield while under fire, as well as documenting the new wonder drug, penicillin. His post-war civilian duties took him to Nuremberg and Tokyo on assignments related to Hitler’s bunker suicide and the atomic bombing of Japan.

Shaffer, retired after long careers at the Medical College of Virginia (now Virginia Commonwealth University) and the World Health Organization, has a folksy way of telling his story. Readers of Shaffer’s book will feel as though they are sitting across from him at the dinner table, but his tales are true and not tall ones. He says, “I tried to write the book in such a way that readers could experience the war as I did, that they could see and feel the power of things as they came to me and, occasionally, find the humor of it all.”

Now in his 90s, Melvin Shaffer still travels as much as he can and has never satisfied his wanderlust. He is writing a sequel to From Anderson’s Holler, covering his post-war experiences in medical education.

He is available for interviews and can be reached via email at melvinshaffer@gmail.com.

The book may be purchased from Southern Methodist University (SMU) at https://bit.ly/3eqaSSW

Shaffer’s personal photos taken during the war have been donated to SMU and can be found at https://bit.ly/3etfBDd