Meet our Writer
Beverly D. Eddy
Beverley Driver Eddy, now a professor emerita in German at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, grew up in Western Massachusetts, where she eagerly absorbed local history about King Philip's War, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. After a summer studying in Vienna, her interests turned to Germanic literatures and cultures. She studied for two years at the Freie Universität, Berlin, studied Norwegian in Oslo, pursued dissertation research in Copenhagen and Vienna, and went on to get a doctor's degree in Germanic literature at Bloomington, Indiana. She spent a good deal of her career writing scholarly articles on topics of Scandinavian and German literature while, for pleasure, delving into folklore. For nine years, she and her husband wrote a weekly newspaper column on the social history of words.
In retirement, she turned back to her interest in history, and the manner in which the lives of individuals intersect with cataclysmic events. World War II became her focus, as she wrote biographies of Danish humanitarian Karin Michaëlis, Viennese Jewish novelist (and "Bambi" author) Felix Salten, and Thomas Mann's eldest children, Erika and Klaus Mann.
Living, as she did, on the outskirts of Gettysburg, Eddy became interested in the soldiers, many of them German and Austrian Jewish immigrants, who were trained there at a secret army camp and sent to Europe as specialists in psychological warfare. Once that work -- "Camp Sharpe's 'Psycho Boys' " -- was completed, she turned to a more detailed examination of the parent camp in Cascade, Maryland, a military intelligence training center that produced the specialists who have become known as "Ritchie Boys." This book describes their training and their service on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific.
Her book on the "Psycho Boys" has recently been republished by Stackpole Books.