My Odyssey through History: Memoirs of War and Academe, and: How I Earned the Ruptured Duck: From Brooklyn to Berchtesgaden in World War II (review)

It is a pleasure to review two such interesting books by two such distinguished gentlemen. Charles Roland's memoir is, perhaps, more important to readers of this journal, not only due to his involvement in ground warfare in the European theatre, but also because he became a distinguished military historian who doubtless is known personally by many members of the Society for Military History.

Roland was born in 1918, the son of a teacher-minister, and had a good growing up in west Tennessee. Judging from the things he did (and photographs), he was an intelligent, responsible, good-looking, versatile young man. In 1938 he graduated from Vanderbilt, where he was friendly with Dinah Shore. He was inducted into the Army in 1942, did his basic training at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, and moved smoothly into Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning. He received his commission later that year at age twenty-four. He and the other members of his class joined the 99th Infantry Division, a Selective Service or draftee division that was being formed at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi. After a year of intensive training, the division went overseas to join the great Allied offensive in Europe. Roland was battalion S-3, where he worked closely with the battalion commander in planning combat operations.

In November 1944 the division was deployed in a quiet sector in the Ardennes. On 16 December the main thrust of the German counterattack—the Battle of the Bulge—fell on this inexperienced Selective Service division, which bent but did not break. The division delayed the German advance sufficiently to throw the entire attack off schedule. Roland tells of his role in the battles that followed: the stand at the Elsenborn Ridge, the breakout from Remagen, the Ruhr Pocket. He describes vividly the effects of the winter war on the troops, many of them green replacements. When the war ended the 99th Division, which had been in the thick of things since entering combat, was dissolved. Roland was assigned to the First Infantry Division and served at the Nuremburg trials before returning home. Roland's book is a superior example of the building-block memoirs that collectively enable historians to reconstruct and evaluate the performance of the U.S. Army in World War II. The book is good humored and nonjudgmental, and includes many episodes that remind the reader that the war could at times be enjoyable. The rest of the book gives a straightforward account of Roland's distinguished career as a historian of the South and the Civil War.

Leo Bogart's memoir is comprised of letters he wrote during the war, linked by brief explanatory comments. The letters reveal a precocious, articulate, cocky young intellectual from Brooklyn College who records his amazement, indignation, and delight as he encounters the inanities of the U.S. Army, the terra incognita of provincial America, and a kaleidoscope of interesting people and experiences. After a stint in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) at Vanderbilt, Bogart ended up in the Signal Corps. His unit was sent to England and later the Continent, where it was attached to the 19th Tactical Air Command, whose fighter planes supported the operations of the U.S. Ninth Army. Its duties were to intercept the Luftwaffe's radio communications. This is a topic that would be of considerable interest to military historians, but, regrettably, Bogart's description of his unit's activities is brief.

The...