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When We Were One: Stories of World War II

When We Were One: Stories of World War II. W. C. Heinz. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002. 262 pp. $23 pbk. This is not just another anthology of war correspondence by a journeyman writer. If there is truly a collection of reporting that deserves the words, "a classic," this volume is it. William Charles Heinz has not, from our reading, been mentioned in the same sentence with the name Ernie Pyle, but there's no reason he should not be. His dispatches from the front in the campaign to liberate Europe are of the same caliber. Sparse prose. Emotional distance without loss of involvement. Outrage at human loss. Grief for the individual taken by the fortunes of war. Respect for the men waging the battles. Barely restrained fury for the atrocities committed. It's all there and more. And, to add to all that, it's an anthology with a difference. Heinz was one of the legions of reporters who followed American forces as World War II unfolded. In his case, he had graduated from Middlebury College (1937) and joined the staff of the New York Sun at $15 a week-as a messenger boy, not a writer. Eventually he climbed the newsroom ladder to the city beat, then to the sports department. The war gave him the chance to cover conflict beyond the boxing ring. This volume is a selection of stories written at the time the war was waged, as well as magazine pieces for Collier's and other magazines at later intervals. The book is divided into three sections: Dispatches from the New York Sun (1944), Dispatches from the New York Sun (1945), and "The Morning They Shot the Spies" and Other Features (After the War). Heinz witnessed the Normandy D-Day invasion from the bridge of the USS Nevada, a ship badly damaged by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. His account of the great ship's manuevering in the pre-dawn tells us of the tension. Mines. German shells falling nearby. Calmness as the captain and his staff work the ship close to the shore to open fire on German positions. It is somewhat safer than being on the beaches, but not that much. Shells fall nearby, hitting other assault ships. The crew stands on duty for several days, supporting the Army intent on liberating Europe. Heinz went ashore, moving across France and Belgium with armored columns that carried combat to the German divisions. The reporting is detached but not impersonal, as he observes American troops who were hailed as liberators at the outset but viewed as the enemy when they crossed the border into Stolberg, Germany, after a sharp fight with opposing armored forces. "The Heinies were really making a fight for it now here in the last redoubts of the Siegfried Line and it wasn't a parade any more, it was a long way." His writing seems to move to a new plane as the combat becomes more intense. An infantry captain is caught between compassion and duty as his company is asked to hold a ridgeline at all costs, and the cost is high. …