When we were one : stories of World War II /

Heinz is a longtime sportswriter and author of The Professional as well as a coauthor of MASH. During World War II, he was a young correspondent for the New York Sun, and this collection of his war pieces begins with his personal observations aboard the USS Nevada. The battleship had been restored after the attack at Pearl Harbor and was now supporting the Allied invasion on D-Day. From D-Day, Heinz continues his war coverage with stories from the Siegfried line and Aachen. Heinz was one of the few reporters who witnessed the execution of three German spies captured after the Battle of the Bulge, an experience he writes about with clarity and controlled emotion. In his of-the-moment dispatches, Heinz does a good job of telling the story of the war and profiling its fighting men and scenes of horror. His narrative brings all the chaos of battle to the reader. In the newspaper dispatches, of course, there is little room for historical background. But the book also includes several longer magazine pieces, most memorably an account of returning years later to the Normandy beaches with a D-Day hero and his son. This book of wartime observations will be riveting for the interested reader. Recommended for all public libraries and academic libraries with historical collections. Mark Ellis, Albany State Univ. Lib., GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.