Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Serve.
Van Lew
EARLY ON There were a lot of people active during the American Civil War aiding in the Union winning. In particular was a woman named Elizabeth Van Lew. She was born in Richmond, Virginia in the year 1818. Her father owned several slaves which were freed by her and her mother when he died. Some of the former slave help was kept and paid to work for the family. Van Lew even took inheritance money and purchased family members of the slaves they owned and freed them as well. When the war broke she began bringing food, and clothing to the Union prisoners, even helping some escape. There were safe houses for those escaped and she even went as far as to help get Union sympathizers roles as prison staff. One of the places that was held as a safe house was her mansion which held Union prisoners and those looking to desert from the Confederacy side.
By Faheem Jackson5 years ago in Serve
CHANUTE FIELD
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has flown. Lord to God I wish it was not true, but now I have to tell his story. After all, he left me $20,000. And a stamp collection, a Boy Scout Handbook from the 1930s, a metal-encased pocket bible from WWII, and a little black book that looks its age -- eighty years, if it was eighteen years younger than he.
By Lise Erdrich5 years ago in Serve
Nowak Bakery
Tarnow, Poland, May 1939 Toothbrushes were set to the cobblestone streets as lawyers, bankers, reporters, and the communities elite scrubbed each inch of their towns busiest street. Soldiers prevented the street cleaners from leaving their assigned task. A crowd gathers to watch men in suits scrubbing the street. Initially, there was silence. A German soldier, not more than nineteen years old, walks slowly to a store filled with many fruits and vegetables. He grabs an apple and throws it at an older man who has just stood and asked to use the restroom. The soldiers all start laughing and rushing to grab a fruit. The townspeople start cheering as the community's upper class are pelted with food and then furniture, and finally, the scene grows very dark. Wives try and protect their husbands, and then the soldiers take the wives.
By Robert Nicholson5 years ago in Serve
The Citizen Journalist
For Nour, technology was critical, but there was only power for a few hours a day at most, and online she was hunted and traceable. She frowned wondering how much they knew - she wasn’t a big fish, but she wasn’t small fry either, people had been killed for less. Right now the roads out were kill zones, bombed alleys of death, then there was Aleppo city, now home, being pummelled by the Syrian regime, with it’s Russia Hezbollah ‘Axis’, fighting rebel and religious factions, the civilians, forever in the crossfire, now huddled together at night, with the eerie advantage of understanding exactly what lingered in the skies above. Barrel bombs - oil drums and fuel tanks filled with explosives and metal fragments fell from helicopters with indiscriminate targets. Cluster munitions with their baby bomblet cargos and white phosphorous, rained down, targeted hits on hospitals and aid convoys, all apparently illegal internationally, it was 2016, after five years of war the whole world knew what was happening in Syria - Nour could never understand why nobody made it stop.
By Rebecca Smith5 years ago in Serve
Hamlin's Bakery
May 20, 1991 “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for Jeff and me, LT Jacobs,” Rebecca said with a hint of sadness, “Jeff really admired you and looked up to you more than you’ll know.” The funeral ceremony and then burial had ended over two hours earlier, but there were so many attendees and well-wishers that wanted to offer condolences to the wife of their fallen shipmate that LT Don Jacobs had just gotten a quiet moment with Rebecca.
By Richard Lane5 years ago in Serve
Papaw, the Devil Dog
My paternal grandfather, Linton Carl Fendley, was a giant of a man in my eyes - a lovable, affable, fun-loving giant. Papaw was usually the life of the party at family gatherings with his self-deprecating humor: “I have ears like open cab doors,” and his full gauge electric train, which occupied much of the basement. Going to visit Mamaw and Papaw was always an adventure. We counted on Papaw to provide fun and laughter, and even a mold for lead toy soldiers, which he and I used to crank out miniature fighting menk during visits. (This was the 50s. We didn’t know about lead poisoning back then.) Mamaw, on the other hand, was a gray horse of a different color. OCD to the max, melancholy, she was given to sitting in front of the radio listening to Billy Graham hour after hour. We kids learned very quickly to sit carefully on Mamaw’s plastic covered furniture, and to walk deftly on the plastic runner protecting the carpet. Serious consequences awaited if we happened to step off the plastic runners.
By Ken Fendley5 years ago in Serve
Memory of Something Almost Lost
The crooked smile of a crescent moon hung over the gutted skeleton of the place once called ‘Boston’. Even at this hour Rusty could hear the shrieks of the things that still lived here but they were far enough into the Commons now to safely make camp.
By Stan Toyne5 years ago in Serve
One Generation Enemies; Next Generation Friends
I was born in 1943 during World War II in New Zealand. During this war, New Zealand lost eleven thousand, six hundred and twenty men, killed in action. One of them was a third cousin of my father. His name was Lloyd Allan Trigg, a bomber pilot and was the only Allied serviceman to be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross based on the evidence of an enemy combatant in the second world war.
By Michael Trigg5 years ago in Serve
Answer Me
If anyone tries to tell you that money will buy you happiness, they’re wrong. It’s been one month and 27 days since we got the news, and it’s still hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. One month and 27 days that I've written down things to tell my father once he gets home from the war, only to remember that he won’t. The realization that I can’t ever see or talk to him again… that's the hardest pill to swallow.
By Savannah Patience5 years ago in Serve
Inside Leningrad, 1941
PROLOGUE 21ST, JULY, 1941. The overwhelming sense of air that had been thrown off of it’s course made itself far from silently known, as it passed by the once muffled eardrums of a courted soldier, lining his back up behind the substantial bags of sand that seemed to become their fortified blockages over time of what was genuine defense being used for the centric blockades around the city. Though, it seemed to be what he once mistook for the angers of Mother Nature, were the graces of lead that their rival formalities found so comforting in their times of need. With the quick motion that ducked his head behind the fortifications, he instinctively courted the rackety SVT-40 of a fallen comrade closer to his chest-- a quick breath in, and a longer one out-- bringing him back from the chastise of slowed fantasy, and into reality.
By Tyler Barry5 years ago in Serve
