Chasing His Purple Heart

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Battling PTSD and survivor's guilt, Viet Nam vet Ed Schuman enlists his wife's help to find his father's grave, hoping for some measure of peace and closure. In 1999, newly-minted genealogist, Kathleen Belfiore Schuman believes she'll find the answer in the records of a cemetery somewhere in the United States.

What comes to light is a very-much alive Donald W. Schuman, son of German immigrants, born in South Dakota, shaped along the front lines of some of the most foundational events of American history--the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and D-Day. World War II took Donald full-circle to the land of his forefathers where he became a Prisoner of War, escaped but was recaptured by the Germans, because Allied troops who might have rescued him thought he was a German in a stolen US uniform.

Chasing His Purple Heart sheds important light on pressing issues of immigrant assimilation, multigenerational military, the increase of both woman in the military and of dual military families, and on varied expressions of intergenerational trauma.

Most importantly, it models a way forward--that making peace is possible, and closure involves a series of openings: of records, of secrets, of mistakes and of hearts.