Books: Writers on World War II (An Anthology)

A Lengthy Book, Scores of Excellent Contributors

It Surely Provides Piles of Happy Hunting!

I found my copy at Attics Books on Dundas Street, London ONT

Introduction:

A timely comment: I may currently be hindered in my travels by Covid-19 - i.e., the fourth wave in Sept. 2021 - but my stack of used and new books on a nearby shelf has been a lifesaver. It has regularly liberated my mind, at least.

The anthology Writers on World War II (700+ pages), with foreword by Mordecai Richler, guided me expertly to every major country on the globe involved in WW2, and returned me home safely, better educated than when I began.

Though the book does not deal directly with the Canadians in Combined Operations that sit at the heart of my website/archive, it provides context for so many aspects of the war that - to this very day - affects millions about the globe. And with so many informed, creative writers revealed between its covers, a thoughtful reader of our shared WW2 history will find hot buttons to push for years to come.

"Here, powerfully portrayed in the words of novelists, poets, and journalists who lived through it - and in memoirs, diaries and letters - is the full sweep of the Second World War, as it was experienced around the world by combatants and by civilians," says the first statement on the front flyleaf.

In the foreword, Richler provides hints concerning what lies ahead:

"1st September 1939"

 I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odor of death

Offends the September night.

W. H. Auden

Richler goes on:

For those who fought on the Allied side during World War II it was, in Herbert Mitgang's phrase, "The Good War," and for those who were too young to fight in it, but lived through it - my generation - it remains, quite simply, the war... 

It was the forces of darkness

that were being engaged, and that were,

furthermore, terrifyingly triumphant

for too long a time.

"Then came Dunkirk," writes Richard Hillary...

On June 14, 1940, Paris fell. 

The Germans, wrote George Kennan,

had in their embrace its pallid corpse.

A week later George Orwell wrote

a letter to the editor of Time and Tide.

"Sir," it began, "It is almost certain that England

will be invaded within the next few days or weeks,

and a large-scale invasion by seaborne troops is quite likely.

At such a time our slogan should be ARM THE PEOPLE."

The Battle of britain began in the autumn.

"The house about 30 yards from ours," 

wrote Virginia Woolfe in her diary on September 10,

"struck at one in the morning by a bomb. Completely

ruined. Another bomb in the square still unexploded."

Then, on December 7, 1941,

the United States was brought into the war...

wrote I. F. Stone in The War Years: 

"The ticker tape at the Press Club,

normally shut off on a Sunday,

carried the first flash telling of the

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

It was a beautiful late-autumn Sunday,

the sky clear and the air crisp..."

James Jones was at Pearl Harbour, of course, and 

wrote of that day in his novel From Here To Eternity:

"... a big tall thin red-headed boy who had not been

there before was running down the street toward them,

his red hair flapping in his self-induced breeze,

and his knees coming up to his chin with every step.

He looked like he was about to fall over backwards.

" 'Whats up, Red?' Warden hollered at him.

'Whats happening? Wait a minute! What's going on?'

"The red-headed boy went on running down the street

concentratedly, his eyes glaring whitely wildly at them.

" 'The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field!' he hollered over

his shoulder. 'The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field!

I seen the red circles on the wings!'

"The red-headed boy went on running... his eyes

glaring whitely wildly..." (Drawing by GH)

"He went on running down the middle of the street,

and quite suddenly right behind him came a big roaring,

getting bigger and bigger; behind the roaring came

an airplane, leaping out suddenly over the trees."

For poet George MacBeth,

author of A Child of the War,

there was the terror that came after darkness,

once German bombers began to patrol over England.

Excerpts from Foreword, pages xxi - xxiii

Richler writes a lengthy foreword and it continued as a good read just by itself. Two paragraphs on page xxv struck a nerve, the first because it referred to men known to Mr. Richler and reminded me of some of my 'first impressions' of my own father's WWII experience (1941 - 45):

"The Kugelmass boy (from Richler's neighbourhood),

one of the first to join up, was killed when his

Harvard Trainer crashed not far from Montreal.

A cousin of mine volunteered for the Commandos

but failed their intelligence test, venturing the original

notion that "A.D." stood for "After the Depression."

However, he did manage to get into the merchant marine.

He was torpedoed in the North Atlantic and survived

ten days in a lifeboat before being picked up."

My father pointed out to me, when I was a teen, an air strip west of Woodstock, Ontario (near our hometown of Norwich), home to sturdy yellow Harvard Trainers. They were linked in his mind to WWII. Also, my father trained with Commandos - beginning in 1942 - while learning all there was to know about LCAs and LCMs (Landing Craft Assault, and Mechanised, respectively) at HMS Quebec (No. 1 Combined Operations Training Camp) near Inveraray, Scotland, then later in the same year at RAF Dundonald and Camp Auchengate (Navy) near Irvine, Scotland. One early, lasting impression I had re Dad's WWII experiences was that he'd been a member of the Merchant Marine (MM) and I'd strongly felt, especially after reading U-Boat Wars, that anyone who had joined the MM made a big mistake. (I eventually learned my father had first volunteered for RCNVR in June, 1941, and Combined Operations about six months later). 

New RCNVR recruits in Hamilton (volunteers at Division 1), Aug. 1941.

After this parade they were sent to HMCS Stadacona for further training. 

Doug Harrison (left) and Buryl McIntyre, both of Norwich ONT

standing easy outside Nelson barracks (aka Wellington Barracks)

at HMCS Stadacona, Halifax, from Sept. - Dec. 1941

The Effingham Division "almost to a man" volunteered for Combined

Operations (Canada's first draft of volunteers to C.O.) in Dec. 1941

Three above photos from the collection of Doug Harrison

The first paragraph (to strike a nerve) ends with a merchant ship being torpedoed "in the North Atlantic" and my father bears witness to such an event - during his passage overseas in Jan. 1942 - in his memoirs:

The Dutch captain lined us all up and assured us we would arrive safely because the Volendam had already taken three torpedoes and lived to sail. This was very heartening news for those of us who had never been to sea except for a few hours in Halifax upon a mine-sweeper. Our first meal was sausage with lots of grease. Naturally, many were sick as it was very rough.

Late at night I was on watch at our stern and saw a red plume of an explosion on our starboard quarter. In the morning (a) four-stacker was not to be seen. The next evening I heard cries for help, presumably from a life-raft or life-boat. Although I informed the officer of the watch, we were unable to stop and place ourselves in jeopardy as we only had the Firedrake (HMS, destroyer) with ASDIC (sonar) to get us through safely.

After some days we spotted a light on our port stern quarter one night. It was the light of the conning tower of a German submarine. How she failed to detect us, or the Firedrake detect it, I will never know. I was gun layer and nearly fell off the gun (4.7 gauge). I informed the Bridge and the Captain said, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. It could be one of ours.” But as it quickly submerged we did fire one round to buck up our courage.

"Dad, Well Done" page 8

The second paragraph by M. Richler on page xxv struck a chord as well:

"In 1945, once victory seemed assured,

our magazines began to feature "thought-provoking" articles

by learned psychiatrists warning us that when the boys came home

they would be trained killers and would need time to adjust.

We were also instructed never to ask them

what things had been like over there.

When the boys did come home, however,

they adjusted to peacetime life in a jiffy

and were visibly upset only when we tried

to change the subject each time they started in

on a story about their adventures in the war."

As many readers will perhaps know, many men did not adjust "to peacetime life in a jiffy." The silence of our veterans was the norm in many households after the war was over, and the silence perhaps held depression, survival guilt and several other mental challenges in check for a time, but not forever.

Yes, good books like the aforementioned fill some gaps. But definitely not all, of course. The book, Writes On World War II), is recommended to all readers and some significant passages will be added at a later date on this site. [Check the following link from the A - Z Directory, side margin - passages from WW2 books]

Please link to an earlier entry related to rare books (filled with original stories) written by Canadian veterans of Combined Operations at Books: New Link to a Rare, Two-Volume Set.

Unattributed Photos GH