A NASTY, ROUGH WAR

William Broyles Jr., your reviewer of “Reporting World War II” (Nov. 12), has an enthusiasm for the wartime reporting which, as a veteran of Patton’s Army, I do not share.

Only Paul Fussell’s “Wartime” and a very few other books capture the true, hideous, dehumanizing nature of World War II. Yes, we read the beloved Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin and John Steinbeck, but as Steinbeck later admitted, they held back and were censored in their reporting. Most of the writings your reviewer alludes to were all approved of and censored by wartime censors. Wartime journalists had to kowtow to the Army brass or they would not receive gasoline, rations or the necessary credentials to get close to the front line.

Most of the enemy’s weapons were far superior to ours. The Sherman tank had weak guns and thin armor and burned quickly. Smoke rings from the turrets of the burning tanks hovered over the battlefield. British tanks were worse. The German machine gun had a fire power twice the rate of ours. Its hand-held anti-tank weapon had twice the range of ours.

The Germans had smokeless artillery and a far superior grenade. The Germans’ famous 88 was devastating and killed American soldiers. The Japanese torpedoes in the first year of the war were accurate and deadly, while ours were often duds.

Millions of men were placed in the [Air Corps] while the army ran desperately short of infantry and sent thousands of untrained typists, clerks, cooks and supply clerks to the front, where they quickly died. When one entered the U.S. Army, the soldier’s dependent allowance often took six months or a year to reach the wife or mother at home.

The truth is so slow to come out. Let’s face it; it was a nasty, rough war, and we’re lucky that two million of Hitler’s best soldiers had already been killed by the Russians before the Americans landed on D-Day.

Your reviewer mentions the horrors of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb and the slaughter of Chinese by the Japanese, but he fails to mention the needless killing of American soldiers, sailors and Marines due to inept and stupid American leaders.

JERRY BRES, formerly M/Sgt ASN 39565587, 1137th Engineer Combat Group, Patton’s Third Army, August 1944 to February 1946, COVINA