When We Were One: Stories of World War II

In "When We Were One" W.C. Heinz (who cowrote "M.A.S.H." under the pseudonym Richard Hooker) has amassed 21 of his short pieces about World War II (and its aftermath), many of them originally written for "The New York Sun" newspaper. Heinz includes dispatches from the battleship Nevada during the D-Day invasion and several that follow a company of infantrymen during the Battle of the Bulge. The collection is uneven. Heinz's prose suffers from Hemingway envy and too many of the stories suffer from a lack of context. They would have been greatly enhanced by the author's annotations and expansion. There are two notable exceptions: one the account of a post-battle emotional breakdown by one Capt. Joe Dawson in front of his men; the other a moment-by-moment portrait of the field execution, by firing squad, of three German spies. "--H. O'Billovich"