OUR ARMY AT WAR

This is a beautiful piece of book-making -- a photograph book, made up of official war department photographs, recording the first two years of war on all fronts, from Pearl Harbor on to the invasion of Italy. The photographs are grouped under campaign headings; the captions in large type provide virtually a running commentary of the progress of war, while captions in smaller type relate to the individual photographs, of which there are close to 500. They show not only battle action, but supply, recreation, rest quarters, human interest bits, etc. Few of them convey the sense of horror that some of the more recently released recordings of, for example, the Battle of France --particular the Normandy beaches -- have shown. The result is that the pictures look a bit too cleaned up and prettied up; the men look washed and shaved in most of them; the action pictures suggest manoeuvres rather than actual battle station. Doubtless this makes for a much more presentable book for purchase.