An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw (Random House, 208 pp., $23.96)
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from America's Wars, by Andrew Carroll (Scribner, 464 pp., $22.40)
Heroism and Heartache
This month sees the release of Brokaw's An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation. With this effort, Brokaw is no doubt in search of a Greatest Generation-trifecta. But competition is stiff: May, 2001, also marks the release of Andrew Carroll's War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from America's Wars, the more sound effort in this year's letters-from-war battle (which will extend through this fall, when Walter Cronkite's collection is released).
While the sourcing of letters to and from persons involved in actual wartime events is standard operating procedure for historians, these letters have typically been used more for color — lending visualization and credibility to an author's broader content. But Brokaw and Carroll put the letters centerstage in their new offerings, with each tome consisting primarily of letters from American service personnel and their families.
Each compilation is filled with emotional expressions of heroism and heartache, and yet, these are drastically dissimilar efforts.
In 1990, Andrew Carroll's home burned — the sum of his family correspondence went up with the flames. He credits this unfortunate incident as the impetus for founding the Legacy Project, an attempt to collect and preserve America's war letters before they met a similar fate. His War Letters holds 175 of the reported 50,000 he received through the project; the letters span the Civil War to the current mop-up effort in the Balkans.
Letters as Orchestra
So, how does one present what is essentially 175 “chapters,” written by almost as many authors, in an interesting and coherent way? Carroll's solution is as simple as it is effective. Grouped by conflict — the Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc. — the correspondence within each section is presented chronologically, with a keen eye toward subject matter. For example, World War II opens with a letter written home in 1933 from an American Jew traveling in Germany, and ends with a young sergeant's impression of occupation duty in 1945 Japan. In between, the letters are engaging.
Here's a taste, courtesy of First Lieutenant Fritz Schnaittacher, who writes to his wife in Brooklyn:
My Dearest Dottylein,
Twelve years ago today I came to Munich — yesterday we took it — today we are in the heart of it — another coincidence. The past few days were some of the greatest and saddest in my life. Our regiment took Dachau or should I say liberated the human wreckage which was left there. This I consider one of the most glorious pages in the history of our regiment, not because the fighting was tough, it wasn't, but because it finally opened the gates of one of the world's most hellish places.
Carroll conducts the reader across the wars — and events both major and minor. The letters themselves are his orchestra. Carroll's short narratives between the letters puts the correspondence in a larger historical perspective, while highlighting the circumstances around the letter and, in many cases, the writer's eventual fate. This is a Stephen Ambrose tactic. Historical drama is weaved with first-hand account, and a catalogue of primary sources becomes a page-turner.
In his introduction, Carroll mentions how stunned he was by the deeply moving personal messages enclosed within each package of letters he received. Essentially, it is these cover letters that made their way into Brokaw's An Album of Memories.
Straight Up, No Ice
To say that Brokaw's Greatest Generation caused a sensation is an act of understatement. Since it's publication, Brokaw has received thousands of letters containing personal recollections, photographs, and memorabilia from WWII veterans and their families. Collected within five sections — the Depression, war in Europe, war in the Pacific, the home front, and reflections — are samples of these donations.
The first few pages of each section are devoted to whirlwind accounts of the war, designed to put the section's letters in perspective. The effort was unnecessary. The letters are, in the main, written in the present, addressed directly to Mr. Brokaw, and are less history then they are adulations.
Dear Mr. Brokaw:
I just finished reading The Greatest Generation and wanted to thank you for allowing me to see my father. Dad died twenty years ago. During his lifetime he didn't speak and I didn't ask about those experiences that made him the way he was. Through your book I know him better than I ever did — or could.
The book collects the recollections of WWII participants and their progeny who are only now coming to realize the enormity of this generation's accomplishment. This author, sorting through the personal papers of his own recently departed godfather, Michael Walsh, discovered the discharge papers, travel orders, and photographs of an impossibly young man in green khakis and parachute scarf. Having never once asked him about his experiences in the war stirred pangs of envy for the children and grandchildren who rediscovered their loved ones through the act of writing to Brokaw. For those with a connection to the WWII generation, this book will serve a purpose.
A word of advise to those planning to read An Album of Memories: this is not to be read left to right, start to finish. The letter writers are primarily from the same generation with similar experiences, and there is an unavoidable commonality from page to page. Instead, as the title suggests, An Album of Memories should be treated like a family photo album. Thumb through the pages, stop on a point of interest, and begin reading from there.
Letter collecting and disseminating is difficult work, and each letters collection adds to the larger history of war. But you may prefer your history the way Uncle Mike preferred his whiskey: straight up, no ice. Andrew Carroll's War Letters is such a cocktail. It deserves a place on the bookshelf next to Gilbert, Keegan, and Ambrose.
(This article courtesy of National Review Online.)
