Creative Response: an Example Often the encounter with literature and history changes our own thinking and writing. I include below an example of my creative response to one section of a lengthy interview with a World War II veteran. Major Richard Winters, 101st Airborne Division, discusses the final weeks of World War II. American troops, advancing through Germany, are far outnumbered by the still-armed, and surrendering, soldiers of the Third Reich. Major Winters describes the journey:- "We started down the Ruhr valley and after we left the Dusseldorf area where there was a mass surrender of [the German General] Model's army, 300,000, 350,000 in one clump. And then as we started down the towards Heidelberg, Ulm, Munich, then you had the big groups surrendering. Now you know it's over, and you just hope that there isn't some wild group that you get, a hard-headed group, that will cut you down because you're going through there with small units and there's thousands of men, all with weapons....you could see the troops lying on the banks. They all had weapons; they were far outnumbering us. Every mile there were more men that we had - in front of us, well there were none in front of us - or in back of us, and they all had weapons. And all it takes is one small group of hard heads and they could cut you down - boum - so you went with your fingers crossed." The Valley Only a helmet but the helmet swells into a man an old rifle but when I yawn the rifle wrests into a man and I say to the driver, watch... and a pine tree splits crown to root and out walks a man and when I turn my head a copse throws down its branches and sighs and walks as one man and in every ditch the weed parts and christens a man and I say to the fellas, be ready... and the face of the crocus is the face of a man and the arch of the April grass is the back of a man and one more and one more and I say, do not move quickly , do not slow down... every mile more pebbles shatter into men burnt timbers and cowsheds re-ignite into men splintered fence-posts shard into men and the banks breathe into men more men than we can count their eyes burned out by the sun their faces flattened by the wind their clothes bleached by the salt their feet ready their hands ready and I say, do not fire for we are a fragment and they are a host in front of us in back of us three hundred thousand guns     Lesley Smith

Please send questions or comments to Lesley Smith at lsmithg@gmu.edu