I think the oral interview is a fabulous project that really brings history alive. Talking with my grandfather about WWII is what orginally got me interested in history. Below is an excerpt from one of his letters to my grandmother written while he was fighting in WWII.

"Some of my thoughts as the good old USA was fading away in the distance. Wonder if I will ever return. What do people want to fight for and if I do return will I be a well physical man or will I be minus an arm or a leg and what if I don't ever come back. Things like that keep running through my mind. We all stayed on deck until the last little speck of land faded in the distance."
Orville Charles Reeves

Excerpt from the book Brave Men by Ernie Pyle about my grandfather.

-----Another flight cheif was Sergeant Orville Reeves of Fittstown, Oklahoma. Sergeant Reeves was one of the few superstitious people I encountered in the Air Forces. Superstition was rare even among the pilots. The last war's phobia aginst three-on-a-match was almost unheard-of.
-----Sergeant Reeves normally had six planes in his charge, but sometimes he would have more. His idiosyncrasy was that he wouldn't accept seven. He didn't mind the work, and he would accept two extra planes, but not one. The reason was that on three different occassions after they had arrived overseas he had had an extra plane shoved onto him- making a total of seven- and each time his flight had lost a plane the following day. So he would have none of it after that, and you can't blame him.