湖北省黄冈市2014高考英语阅读理解冲刺课外自练（4）及答案
高考英语冲刺阅读理解专项
The 400 phone messages said it all. Veterans(老兵) wanted to talk, and Jeff Beers, a military history buff and the son of a retired Navy man, was ready to listen. Beers had volunteered for the Veterans History Project, a program at the Library of Congress dedicated to preserving the oral histories of American’s 19 million veterans. Local newspapers listed Beer’s number, and the response was tremendous. He’s videotaped 52 vets ever since.
“Most of them are shocked that anyone would be interested in their small story,” says Beers, 33, an assistant engineer for the city of Poway, Calif. “They ask, ‘Why now?’ But it has to be now, before it’s too late.” The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 1,847 veterans die each day.
Beers and the other volunteers are collecting the I-was-there detail. One of the most moving came from a World War II POW (prisoner of war): “He had to march 500 miles through the Black Forest in winter. They ate bark soup and slept at local farm.”
The WW II generation comprises(包含) most of the 700 histories gathered since the program began in 2001. But, says director Ellen Lovell, they want to hear from vets of every war. “I interviewed my brother-in-law, an army surgeon in Vietnam,” she says. “He said he shared things with me that he’s never told anyone.”
