Each page below is a card — your words on top, the journal line they came from underneath. Press ✎ Edit the words to fix any page. Happy with it? Press Looks good. Want a different take? Re-draft below.
Page 1
Wayne Wilberg climbed up into the cab of his heavy truck before the sun was even up. He was a Marine — and he was a truck driver. "I hauled lots of dirt," he would say, plain and proud as anything.
From your journal · prints on the back pages
“I was a truck driver. I hauled lots of dirt.”
Page 2
Then the order came down — and it was a big one. "We have to build an airstrip," the sergeant said. "From nothing. In thirty-six hours." Wayne looked out across the field in front of them. It was nothing but mud.
From your journal · prints on the back pages
“We had to build an airstrip and we built it in 36 hours.”
Page 3
Thirty-six hours. Wayne looked at that field of mud, then looked at his truck. The truck bed was empty. He took a breath — and pulled forward.
Bridge text — written to connect the story; no single journal line behind this page
Page 4
The convoy of trucks roared to the hillside where the dirt was waiting. Shovels bit the earth. Engines growled. Load after load piled into the truck beds — heavy, heaping, packed to the top. Wayne's truck filled up, and he turned back toward the field.
From your journal
“I was a truck driver. I hauled lots of dirt.”
Page 5
Then the rain came. "It rained a lot," Wayne said later. "We would wear ponchos much of the time." The mud got worse. Wheels spun and sank. The field swallowed the dirt almost as fast as the trucks could dump it.
From your journal · prints on the back pages
“It rained a lot. We would wear ponchos much of the time.”
Page 6
Wayne dumped his load. Dirt crashed down onto the wet field with a heavy thud. The truck bed was empty again. He turned the wheel — and headed back for more.
From your journal
“I was a truck driver. I hauled lots of dirt.”
Page 7
Load after load after load. Wayne lost count. His hands knew the wheel, his foot knew the gas. The airstrip was rising — inch by inch — but the clock was still running.
From your journal
“We had to build an airstrip and we built it in 36 hours.”
Page 8
Between dirt loads, Wayne swung his truck down to the bay where the big transport ships sat low in the water. "I hauled lots of supplies from the LST transports to the men," he said. Then he turned back — and the dirt hauling began again.
From your journal · prints on the back pages
“I hauled lots of supplies from the LST transports to the men.”
Page 9
Night fell. Wayne didn't stop. His headlights cut two bright lines through the dark, and his tires crunched over the dirt that was slowly, surely becoming a runway. He gripped the wheel and kept going.
From your journal
“We had to build an airstrip and we built it in 36 hours.”
Page 10
Thirty-six hours were almost gone. Wayne had one more load. He backed up, lifted the truck bed, and watched the last dirt fall into place. Then the graders moved in and smoothed it flat and level.
From your journal
“We had to build an airstrip and we built it in 36 hours.”
Page 11
Then the engines cut. Silence. And then — from somewhere up in the sky — a drone. A plane circled low, dropped lower still, and landed. It rolled the whole length of the new runway and came to a stop. They had done it. "We had to build an airstrip," Wayne said, "and we built it in 36 hours."
From your journal
“We had to build an airstrip and we built it in 36 hours.”
Page 12
Wayne's truck sat empty. He leaned against the door and watched the plane. He didn't need any fancy words. He was a truck driver. He had hauled lots of dirt. And now — planes could land.
From your journal
“I was a truck driver. I hauled lots of dirt.”
From the sourceAdapted from sourceBridge text
Deepen this story
Your book tells this story in 12 pages. The journal may hold more from these same days — press the button and we’ll read around your story for small, true moments worth folding in. Nothing changes unless you pick it.
About this time and place — add historical context
Bring the world around this story to life with real, period-accurate details — the clothing, tools, food, and places of the time. This never changes the journal's own words: it's added only to the illustrations and a clearly-labelled "About this time and place" page, and you choose exactly what appears.
Behind the story
The journal lines shown under each page above also print in the back of the book — one card per page, paired with its illustration, updated automatically as your story changes. You'll see them laid out in the preview.
Prefer one continuous, hand-written “From the source” section instead?
Saving below replaces the per-page pairing with one written section you control — clean up OCR scars, set the page breaks. You can switch back any time with Revert to per-page.
Page 1 of 1IMG_0837.JPEG
Where this story came from
This note prints on the last page of every book in this collection, so a reader can trace it to its source — set once for the whole series. It shows in the 3D preview and the printed PDF.
This book was drawn from the journals, kept 1944-2013.