My War by Andy Rooney.

Andy Rooney served as a reporter for Stars and Stripes.

He did see action and see men die but he generally traveled as an unarmed war correspondent when he visited the front. He also flew combat missions with the 8th Air Force.

It's a fairly interesting read and has somewhat of a different perspective than someone that was a rifleman during the Battle of the Bulge or at Guadalcanal.

Most of the writing that has come out of WW2 is written about the various battles the writer was involved in. Not too much is written by people that didn't see action. It's a shame because some guy that served as, say, a payroll clerk in a Texas airfield has a very different perspective on what the war was all about than an infantryman on Saipan. To both of them the war was a very real experience.

For every GI that fired a weapon of any sort in combat there were quite a number of others behind him that also served making it possible for the line GI to be there and engage the enemy.

Their stories are probably just as interesting as the actual  combatants are.

Some years ago I met a guy that was stationed in Australia and got him to speak up. He was shy at first because he felt he hadn't contributed as much as his kid brother that drove a tank in Europe. 

Still, I pointed out that his war was just that. It was his war. 

Once I got him to talk he told me a pretty interesting story about how the idiot running his outfit was constantly raising hell with them over petty little things that meant nothing whatsoever as far as predicting the weather went. His war was pretty much with Army chicken$hit. I can relate to this.

Actually his war was pretty much a war against the drudgery of military life. In addition to busting his ass with his duties of doing weather station related things he also had to clean rifles, mess gear and other things, none of which he used. 

Still, the work he did was important because the war effort needed good weather information. It's interesting to note that after he got out of the army he seemed to always know if it was going to rain or snow so I guess he learned a few useful things there.

I also grew up with a Navy vet that was on some kind of supply vessel in the backwash of the Pacific. He never saw action and delivered supplies. His war was one against boredom being punctuated by days of backbreaking toil spent on unloading the vessel in places that had already been fought over and were now garrisoned by the army. He never saw a shot fired in anger and stated that he could relate to the movie 'Mister Roberts'.

Still, that was his war. 

Everybody that served had his won war to deal with and it is interesting to see the other side of things






To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY