I have always had a fascination with family history, I am lucky enough to have a well documented timeline of my family on my mothers side.  In World War II my great grandfather Sydney Williams joined the 10th Mountain Division.  In 1939-40 was the first discussion of creating a military division meant for fighting in the mountains.  After training in the Colorado mountains in preparation they fought their way through the Italian alps during the war.  While Sydney was at war he sent letters home to his wife, his children later created a book with all of these letters put together.  What I would like to do is create an interactive map that shows the route that he took through the alps during the war, while also digitalizing the letters.  With dates on all the letters, I would be able to show where the letters were written (generally) along the route.  

Because this is my family history, I find great interest in this.  I believe that it may be interesting to others as it would give an insight into a division in the war that is not well known for. This project could take different paths from here as well.  It could be more general and show all the different paths of the 10th mountain division, along with battle locations, critical events, and general information.  However, this would take a considerably longer time in research.  

On the technical side I would need to plot the routes on the map and create an interactive interface for the user to navigate.  To digitize any text from the book containing my great grandfathers letters, I found apps such as Finescanner that allow you to take photos of text and convert that into a document.  I believe the hardest part would be the programming to make the interface.  I will need to collect a copy of the book contains these letters from my grandfather, along with the maps he has (will just ask for photos of the maps).  

The technical support I will need is troubleshooting any problems and brainstorming ideas for the programming side of the project.  In addition, I would need to use a map API and utilize satellite as it shows a cool graphic of the alps and their vastness.

This project would create a tool that members of my family could use to interact with what my great grandfather experienced during WWII.  With only a finite number of copies of “Dear Mary: Letters Home from the 10th Mountain Division (1944–1945)” it would be an interesting digitalization of his experience that would allow easy access to his story.  That being said, this idea only just came to me and I would be happy to develop this idea into taking a different approach by digitalizing military routes of different divisions, or battalions, for a more general use by the public.  It could start off by following just one company through the war and portraying where they went and what they did through an interactive map.  Again, this might take more hands to complete as the research would have to be more extensive.