VIDEO: Students Learn about World War Two

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TUPELO, Miss. ( WCBI) — This year marks the 70th year anniversary of the end of World War Two. Tupelo area students recently took part in a hands-on approach to learning about that great conflict.

During World War Two USO shows were instrumental in keeping up the morale of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen fighting in the far flung theaters of war.

And recently home school students got a chance to witness a re-enactment of a USO performance as part of a night of living history about the World War Two period. Parents and students dressed in vintage 1940’s outfits. The Program was put on the Excelsior Classical Community, which is a home school co-op group serving 85 Northeast Mississippi students. Laura McCoy was one of the organizers of event.

“We wanted to give our a kids a little big of living history and teach them about World War Two and about the culture in that time and why the USO was formed and how important it was to the troops during that time,” she said.

And the USO singers were brought to their performance in one of the vintage World War Two vehicles owned by Tony Lute, the curator of the Tupelo Veterans Museum. He had many vintage artifacts from the war on display which contributed to the students living history experience.

“I want them to know what gave them the freedom to be here and what all the soldiers did to give them that freedom,” Lute said. “They’re great kids. They have a little history of what went on because some of these here are actually wearing their grandparents uniforms, a couple of guys here actually have their grandparents uniforms on so people told them what their grandparents,” he points out.

14-year old 8th grader Ben McCallum found the night of living history an enlightening experience.

“Well one of things just out of here is that we have a lot of veterans here,” he notes. “I didn’t know we had a lot of veterans in Mississippi. And their stories and all that about the D-Day invasion, the amount of men that gave their lives for our freedom and others on D-Day is just truly amazing,” according to McCallum.

May 8th will mark the 70th anniversary of VE-Day, or Victory in Europe Day when Nazi Germany surrendered, and September 2, will mark the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Japan known as VJ-Day.

McCallum and his fellow students can now better appreciate the significance of those important dates.

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