Aaron Elson has been recording the stories of World War II veterans for more than 30 years. He is the author of numerous books, hosts the War As My Father’s Tank Battalion Knew It podcast, and his work has served as source material in more than a dozen documentaries and many popular books about the war.

A life lost in combat, Aaron says, has a ripple effect that grows and grows as it crosses the ocean until it crashes like a tsunami through the young man’s family. There are mothers, fathers, siblings, widows whose lives would never be the same, and children who would never see more than a snapshot of their father.

On Saturday, May 27, in honor of Memorial Day, at the Bushnell-Sage Library, Aaron will share the stories of some of those who didn’t come home, like Ed Forrest, who grew up in Monterey and Stockbridge and was killed in an explosion on April 3, 1945; and Johnny Daum, a young paratrooper who died on D-Day Plus One and who was called “the flower that never blossomed” by a Belgian photographer who was so moved by his photo that he  felt compelled to leave a letter at his grave; and Billy Wolfe, an 18 year old tanker who was killed in the village of Pfaffenheck, Germany, and whose then 16 year old twin sisters 45 years later recalled exactly what they were wearing when the telegram arrived (spoiler alert: saddle oxfords and poodle skirts).