WWII Books That Made You Change Outlook

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by Nick Pringle, Mar 7, 2012.

  1. Nick Pringle

    Nick Pringle Member

    Is there any WWII books that have made you stop and think or change your behaviour?

    I would say compiling The Unknown Warriors, certainly made me more aware of how comfortable we have it, compared to the WWII generation.

    However, there is a section of one WWII book that I think of so often. It's Whickers War. For those that don't know this is the autobiography of famous TV traveller, Alan Whicker. During WWII he was part of the Army Film Unit and was in Italy. He was right in the thick of it, filming events.

    He tell's a story of a man in his unit who had no desire to stay in the danger zone and a chance came up to go further back away from the front, and he could work from a hotel room in I think Bologna. So off he went to the 'safety' of his new job. All of Alan Whickers team came back alive from the filming, however, the man who had gone back to Bologna was killed after a lone Luftwaffe plane flew into the harbour and bombed or straffed, can't recall which, the hotel.

    So, I suppose you could say the moral of this story is 'fortune favours the brave' and despite reading this book a good number of years ago it is often something that I think of. I can't remember that much about the rest of the book, other than he was at Anzio.

    I think it has changed my outlook, and that if something did happen I would be less keen to go for the 'safe option'.

    Have any of you took inspiration or reconsidered how you do certain things after reading a WWII or even any type of book??
     
  2. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Nick,

    I cannot recall the title but I read a book authored by a former U.S. infantry officer in Normandy. He described a similar episode and one which profoundly changed his outlook on survival.
    Essentially, his unit was ordered to put in an attack where it was expected that casualties would be heavy. One of his men cracked and refused to leave his slit trench. The officer had no choice but to leave him and lead the remainder into battle. Upon his return and where the outfit had suffered only a few wounded, he found the man left behind had been hit by a single piece of shrapnel from an airburst and was quite dead in his slit trench.
    The officer recounted his conclusion from this incident being that there was no safe place and that death would find the unlucky ones, regardless. He became very fatalistic afterwards.
     
  3. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer Pearl Harbor Myth Buster

    When I was a lad I was assured by a trusted neighbor that FDR had "just let it happen" at Pearl Harbor. Reading the Hearings made me think that wasn't the case. But Prange's At Dawn We Slept put the last nail in the coffin for that mythology.
     
  4. Nick Pringle

    Nick Pringle Member

    Nick,

    I cannot recall the title but I read a book authored by a former U.S. infantry officer in Normandy. He described a similar episode and one which profoundly changed his outlook on survival.
    Essentially, his unit was ordered to put in an attack where it was expected that casualties would be heavy. One of his men cracked and refused to leave his slit trench. The officer had no choice but to leave him and lead the remainder into battle. Upon his return and where the outfit had suffered only a few wounded, he found the man left behind had been hit by a single piece of shrapnel from an airburst and was quite dead in his slit trench.
    The officer recounted his conclusion from this incident being that there was no safe place and that death would find the unlucky ones, regardless. He became very fatalistic afterwards.

    Very similar story Canuck!
     

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