The American Spectator

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p> strong> em> a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585444308/theamericansp-20" target="BLANK">Soldiering For Freedom: br> A GI's Account of World War II /a> /em> br> By Herman J. Obermayer br> (Texas A&M University Press, 324 pages, $32.95) /strong> /p>

That war is terrible is often observed, and a search for "what it all means" makes its way to the battlefield. Clarity is obscured not simply because of the bullets flying, but because of a fog of war attributable to large bureaucracies and lumbering states seeking out self-interested gains. A long tradition of military memoirs, from Ulysses S. Grant to General Patton eschew such vanity, and instead pursue the narrative of battle, valuing experience over sentiment.

In Soldiering for Freedom, journalist Herman J. Obermayer provides letters he wrote to his family during his service in the European theater of World War II. The task provides a temptation to expand, over-state, over-glorify, which the older veteran persistently dodges. In that sense, Obermayer doesn't glorify the period. Every chapter is prefaced with an introduction summarizing the letters showing the war as far murkier than popular portrayals, the role of the French more insidious, and the Allied effort more muddled. Indeed, by showing his audience what they were not permitted to see over 50 years ago, and by tossing aside the caricature of untouchable, venerable WWII soldiers, the author more than clearly shows what made the war, and America, distinctive -- duty.

Notes Obermayer in his introduction, "American troops entered German cities as conquerors, not liberators," and accordingly, GI's were instructed not to believe "there are any good Germans ... people have the governments they want and deserve." He might as well add that this is why the Vichy government was acceptable to the French. He later describes French relations with Allied forces as troublesome.

That the French under Allied occupation looked straight through American soldiers is hardly a surprise. French ingratitude to American intervention has long been a popular anecdote. Yet little has been made of French detraction during the war itself, something Obermayer uses as a refrain in early chapters. The Germans had fitted French farms with new farming technologies and improved roads. By contrast the Allies provided "liberation" in the form of bothersome soldiers who took up space in important buildings, and bombs that destroyed important historical landmarks like the Rouen Cathedral. The French "admired the authoritarian system that made them more productive, better farmers. We Americans, on the other hand, ruined their fields with spilled gasoline." Freedom in and of itself was hardly a commodity to the French.

topics:
Military, Communism