1. The Friendship. My soul is literally green with envy, because of their love for each other. I love how they envy each other, but how that feeling gets squashed in the face of their love.
1a. The understanding of a platonic friendship. Close friends of mine stopped being my friends when we were seniors in college because they thought we would be perceived as lesbians because I loved them so much. What an epic fail. I have WORDS now, for why this hurt so bad, from what other people wrote about the theme of this book: through Maddie's eyes. [And I've since realized that we were the same ages then as Julie & Maddie were; my friends were 21, I was 23. How is that possible? It's like God dropped this book out of heaven into my hands.]
2. Military Women. Being one myself, it was SO NEAT to read about girls worrying about the same kinds of things that I worry about. Hair Touching My Collar. Falling Asleep On Duty. Getting the Uniform Right. Always Doing Things.
3. Everything I've said before... subtlety, intelligence, literary banter, descriptions, references, details, humor, etc.
4. WWII. I have always loved learning about WWII... not really sure why. Maybe because it was so very much a Good vs. Evil type of war. And I've ALWAYS loved military history. Learning about the SOE and the ATA was very cool.
5. I want to be a pilot. I'm not sure if my family believes me when I say I thought of this MONTHS BEFORE I read the book. I started the book and I couldn't believe the timing! All about airplanes and the euphoria of seeing the earth from above; very naturally defying gravity.
6. Things in common with Julie: her love of Germany. That one paragraph about never seeing it... and how she weeps over The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp... how Wagner's Tristan and Isolde makes her crumple on the floor. In 2003, I learned about the re-unification of Germany in English history class... and it sparked quite an interest... I read two books about it just for fun (A Mighty Fortress, The German Empire). And in 2011, I started learning German just for fun too. Picking majors: In fact, I majored in history for the SAME reason that she studied German; learning it because we love it. It's not really much USE. And her tom-boyishness: she grew up pretending to be David Balfour and William Wallace. I grew up pretending to be Zorro, Robin Hood, or Captain Parmenter from F Troop... although my older sisters usually made me be Sergent Garcia or the Sheriff of Nottingham when we played together.
Random coincidences: I know what it feels like to be burned with a soldering iron. I was repairing a small electronics fan. I thought I was going to lose a hunk of my finger; it was ashy-white instantly; the shock of it delayed the pain. Afterwords, the fear of soldering irons was practically paralyzing. It took a great deal of courage to pick one up again. And I was thinking about Lord Nelson when we sailed near Cape Trafalgar (didn't even realize that's where we were - and this was 5 months before I read CNV). On the way home, after I read it, we pulled into France. And I thought France! FRANCE! (just like her) as I skipped along the ship to my watch-station before we pulled in. The French memorial I photographed at the Town Hall in Nice turned out to honor the resistance fighters who were hung there in 1944. Bloody Nazis.
6a. Personality-wise I'm much more like Maddie. I can't even begin to say how much.
7. Suffering, and longing for home. I read this while I was stuck on a ship for nine months, half-way around the world, cut off from everything I knew and loved. And feeling VERY ALONE. I am pretty different from everyone else, being a university graduate (but enlisted) and a nerd about lots of random stuff, liking a lot of arcane and non-mainstream type things. I don't watch much TV, I don't listen to the radio, I don't use vulgar language, and I was home-schooled. They lovingly called me "Grandma" because I like classic movies and "Amish" because I can sew. (There's those nicknames! "Just like school.") So I felt for Julie, all alone, scared, but still fighting. I think it helped me not give up... my faith? The will to do my best, to get through deployment and still be myself? Who knows. I'm still figuring it out, what happened to me and who I am now.
8. Dream a Little Dream of Me is the song that my husband and I have shared from the beginning of our relationship (2009). It's our song. I love that it's also Maddie and Julie's.
9. The day that Maddie and Julie fly to France is my husband's birthday.
10. My mom's name is Jamie and my best friend's name is Julie.
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Looking over all these points, it seems rather improbable how much things tie into my own life... but I have told the truth. It blew my mind.
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What are the chances of reading an article about the Gestapo, the SOE and the occupation of Paris a month before picking up Code Name Verity? I had a "didn't I just read something about this?" kind of moment.
From the July/August 2014 issue of World War II magazine:
Yes, it happened. Purchased ashore at NSA Bahrain.
I would have loved doing the following things anyway, but... :)
First day back from deployment, And a month later... I took off...
on the backseat; it was my first time. (with an instructor, of course)
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