Book cover of Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Woman in World War II

Book description

Elizabeth Richardson was a Red Cross volunteer who worked as a Clubmobile hostess during World War II. Handing out free doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes, and gum to American soldiers in England and France, she and her colleagues provided a touch of home-American girls with whom the boys could talk, flirt, dance,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Full disclosure: James Madison, professor emeritus of history at Indiana University, is someone I not only know but have long admired for his many books on Hoosier history.

In this book, he focuses on Elizabeth Richardson, a Red Cross Clubmobile hostess from Mishawaka, Indiana, who shared coffee, doughnuts, and small talk with soldiers in England and France beginning in 1944. In July 1945, she died overseas in a plane crash, and her remains rest today in the American Cemetery in Normandy, one of only four women buried there among the nearly 9,400 men.

Madison supplies vital background information about Richardson…

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