Funny, personal war stories told by a feisty old soldier.
Irreverent tales that breathe some lightheartedness into the vast, dusty annals of World War II.
Misled by a newspaper ad to enlist in the Army at age 19, Bittner quickly became disgruntled. He intentionally failed an IQ test used to sift prospective officers from enlisted riffraff and then doggedly studied to become a barracks lawyer, whimsically using Army regulations for his own ends. Jumping quickly from one Army camp to another, these memoirs chart fond memories and the author’s high jinks, which include learning how to ride a motorcycle, chasing women and getting in and out of trouble. In late 1944, as a military police officer assigned to guard the general of the Third Army Corps, the author hopped the pond, where he had fly-on-the-wall access to Generals Patton, Eisenhower and Bradley. Sure, these adventures might pale in comparison to Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, but they belong to the author, and he’s not reluctant to call a Frenchman a Frog or cite breaches in the Geneva Convention. Bittner plays a cranky court jester from France to the Battle of the Bulge and on through to the last push to drive the stake into the heart of Nazi Germany. He then heads home to prepare for what seemed to be the inevitable invasion of Japan. Fortunately for Bittner (and others) the U.S. dropped atom bombs Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, quickly bringing to last of the Axis powers to its knees. Clunky transitions and odd parenthetical notes-to-self probably should have been smoothed out or deleted, but these flaws help establish a soft, casual tone, conjuring images of Grandpa, glass of scotch in hand, rocking gently through a fireside chat, pausing only to stir up memories and to let his antique zingers breathe. Humor is the book’s strength. The author recounts moments of great surprise and terror–such as when he thinks a German soldier is hiding in the attic of his billet–and quips that he nearly “gave birth to little green apples” in fear. And the butts of jokes get bigger up the chain of command. When referring to the sacrosanct day that Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Bittner decries the resultant closing of girlie shows in Europe.
Funny, personal war stories told by a feisty old soldier.Pub Date: June 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9786-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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