For me, the story of “Taps” is a local story because I live close to where it was composed. I could easily drive to Berkeley Plantation in Virginia, where there is a monument marking the “birthplace” of Taps. Tour guides will tell you that the haunting 24-note bugle call is actually a revision of a French call to signal to the troops the end of the day and “lights out.” The story goes like this:

A couple of years ago, while I was writing my Civil War series, I was delighted to learn that Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur, was a Civil War general before writing the novel. But it was only a few days ago that I learned more about the amazing story of how it all came about.

No doubt you associate March 17th each year as St. Patrick’s Day, as I do. For as long as I can remember, the date set aside to celebrate St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, has been a day dedicated to the wearing of green, to decorating with leprechauns and shamrocks, and to holding parades in locations where many Irish have settled. But little did I know that March 17th is also a holiday because of a military victory.

The woman depicted in this “Rosie the Riveter” iconic wartime poster, Geraldine Hoff Doyle, died on December 26, 2010, in Michigan at the age of 86. Her obituary ran in newspapers across the U.S., catching my attention because of the familiarity of the poster in military memorabilia. Geraldine’s (Rosie is a fictitious name) bandana-wearing image was made famous by a United Press photographer at a Lansing, Michigan, factory where she worked for a brief time early in the war. Her picture was then used by an artist hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee in order to create posters for the war effort. She married Dr. Leo Doyle in 1943 and worked in his dental office, while raising their six children, until she was 75 years old. To me she represents many hard-working women who rallied behind their nation and their families to do what was needed during a difficult time in our history. Isn’t that what families do?

It was Christmas Eve in Thailand, 1972. Thanks to Armed Forces Radio “Silent Night” was playing in our room . . . but it was not really a “silent” night at all. I was a young Air Force wife visiting my husband serving that year in Southeast Asia—but even in my naïveté, I knew something big was imminent. Linebacker II was in progress—the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi—and the constant sound of take-offs (“please, Lord”) and landings (“thank you, Lord”) from the Air Base was surreal in dissonance with the sweet music I was hearing on the radio. A rescue was in the works, and the POWs, so long tortured and confined in Hanoi, heard and felt the thunderous aircraft noise with great hope and expectation for their eventual release from captivity.