In the foreword to his book “There Once Was a War”, John Steinbeck finds himself looking back at his time as a war correspondent in Europe during WW2. He writes that these chronicles were something he wanted to do for the war effort. That despite the heavy censorship his work was subject to, he accepted the rationale behind it. And yet in hindsight he realized the folly of not this war in particular, but of war in general and the toll it takes on those who are sacrificed to it long after it ends. Even in these writings, we see Steinbeck grappling with what he saw on and off the battlefield and it clearly shook him:

“Now for many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear, faceless, stupid sarcomic terror.”

The war he describes has episodes of valor to be sure, but more than anything else, there is folly. Be it the preoccupation Americans have with collecting souvenirs, soldiers doing the absolute least they can possibly do in order to stay alive(the story of Big Train Mulligan and his quest to remain a private forever so he doesn’t have to order people around is particularly endearing), or the superstitions of the troops, the accepted propaganda of stoic soldiers on the march for freedom is well and truly blown apart here.
And yet by doing so, Steinbeck humanizes them in a way that no propaganda film ever could. By showing them as being brave, occasionally reckless, selfish, generous, lazy and heroic, we can see the complete spectrum of personalities that war seems to focus.
Steinbeck never blames the men for the untenable situation they have been dropped into. Rather, he acknowledges the troops misgivings and fives voice to them. Particularly about their being under no illusions as to why they are there:

“And the troops feel they are going to come home to one of two things, either a painless anarchy, or a system set up in their absence with the cards stacked against them…..
Common people have learned a great deal in the last twenty-five years, and the old magical words do not fool them any more. They do not believe the golden future made of words. They would like freedom from want. That means the little farm in Connecticut is safe from foreclosure. That means the job left when the soldier joined the Army is there waiting, and not only waiting but it will continue while the children grow up. That means there will be schools, and either savings to take care of illness in the family or medicine available without savings. Talking to many soldiers, it is the worry that comes out of them that is impressive. Is the country to be taken over by special interests through the medium of special pleaders? Is inflation to be permitted because a few people will grow rich through it? Are fortunes being made while these men get $50 a month? Will they go home to a country destroyed by greed?”

Perhaps the only jarring moment in Steinbeck’s chronicle is his time with the troops in Africa. It is perhaps important to acknowledge that attitudes toward Arabs during WW2 were starkly different than they are now. To criticize someone of a different time using the mores of the present can be slippery slope to head down. This is not to absolve Steinbeck of comments like:

“Time and time again we tried to catch them in what is called a natural pose, not of work, because that would be a contradiction in terms, but just relaxed and looking Arab...We had wanted to get them relaxed because I suppose Arabs have as few noble moments as anyone in the world. Bushmen may compete with them in this respect but I doubt it.”

To say nobody 70 years ago would have been appalled by these comments is to do those who had the courage to condemn such words a disservice. While Steinbeck, a tireless spokesman for workers and fierce critic of consumer capitalism, was a product of his time, these stereotypes are still a stain on what was otherwise a very well written and important book.

There are two factors for me to declare before this review - I adore John Steinbeck and, having grown up in a military family, I have a very complex attitude towards armed forces.

Compared to his other books, this one is less well known, and yet having read it for the first time I would rate it amongst his finest work - even when comparing with the more popular Travels With Charley. Like Grapes of Wrath, this really gets into the detail of humans in inhuman situations; his section regarding why soldiers are reticent to talk about battle comes from an angle that I had never heard before and was quite emotional to read.
Our modern world is already far removed from the warfare of the 1940's and I believe that the people Steinbeck met and describes simply do not, and indeed cannot, exist any more...we have moved too far down the road and is compounded by the fact that this was not the last of the wars in history. War has very little to do with the people actually fighting it and Steinbeck's most famous quote from this book is perfect in it's simplicity:
"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal"

I love John Steinbeck. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love him. Once there was a War did not disappoint. This one however, is not a novel but a collection of articles that he wrote for the New York Herald Tribune when he was garrisoned with American soldiers in the European theatre from Jun to Dec 1943.

Steinbeck had been keen to report on the war for some time before the government finally gave him clearance to do so. The US government was fearful of what the author of no less than The Grapes of Wrath (1939), an antiestablishment realist novel, might write in relation to the futility of war; How on earth would moral be maintained against the penmanship of such a social progressivist? Maybe that is why the articles weren’t released in book till 1959.

Because this is a bunch of different articles, some will appeal, and others won’t. As I read the first few, I thought that this was more important than All quiet on the western front or Slaughterhouse-Five. Steinbeck manages to get into the minds of soldiers as they board and sail on transport ships, as they prepare for battle, as they rest afterwards.

One of my favourite articles is ‘Symptoms’. Steinbeck proposes a theory of why men are almost incapable of relating stories of combat. It’s essentially a type of shellshock where the torment on the body and mind is so great that it elicits an amnesia in order to survive the memories of the gruesome realities of the ordeal.

Well may Steinbeck be an ‘old white man’, but his writing should be heard across gender, culture and generation.

I loved certain sections of this and found them very profound in the ways the discussed wars and the psyches of men. Most of the book was quite dull though and I didn’t feel like I got much out of the majority of the book. But when it was good, it was really good. Steinbeck definitely has a way with describing humanity.

3.5

Steinbeck has such a way of grabbing my attention with everything he writes. Love him. Favorite chapter was when he stopped talking about the war to complain about how the British hate vegetables

A well-written account of the experience of Allied combat soldiers in WW2 as well as London’s Blitz, etc. A solid nonfiction piece.

Steinbeck was on assignment with the NY Herald Tribune. This is excellent writing, pithy and clear cut. I enjoy Steinbeck’s style quite a bit in this regard. It reminds me of Hemingway who at one point wrote for The Toronto Star.

I was a big fan of Steinbeck during high school, disappointed only by his very late 'Travels with Charlie' because of his expressed dislike of anti-war hippies like myself. My favorite work by him was 'The Grapes of Wrath', a book published decades earlier when he was a pinko himself. This, a collection of his journalistic pieces from the war, is in the spirit of 'Grapes', egalitarian and compassionate.

The essays range from June of '43 to year's end, referencing experiences in England, North Africa, Sicily and Italy. A prefatory essay, apparently written in 1958, introduces the collection.

Steinbeck's war correspondence from the last half of 1943 covers a myriad of instances, from the mundanity of everyday soldier life to the suspense of battle, from the ubiquity of Bob Hope to the chicanery of a private Lothario. As Steinbeck was censored by the War Department, it's unlikely that historians will glean much, but social scientists and those interested in the culture of war will be enthralled at the various real caricatures unearthed in this volume.

war correspondent john "love of my life" steinbeck covering the second world war..... i can't think of anything better, except maybe steinbeck covering the first world war. too bad he was only 16 when that one ended :/

My grandfather fought in the Italian theater in WW2, but he never talked about it, so I was grateful for some possible insight into his experience. Steinbeck's beautiful writing wrings the humanity out of the war and places the reader there next to his subjects. The best stories in this deserve 5 stars, but they didn't all reach that level, so I went with 4 stars overall. Highly recommend to anyone who wants concrete imagery and details of life in a war. Highly recommend the introduction for anyone interested in censorship, military psyops, and what the War Effort meant. It provides important context.

II. Dünya Savaşı’nda cephe gerisinde, sevkiyatlarda, kışlalarda, tehlikenin olmadığı yerlerde yaşananları anlatıyor. Savaşın gerçekliğinden çok halkı yatıştırmak üzere yazılmış gazete yazıları, deneme bile sayılmazlar. Sabun köpüğü gibi yazılar. Yazarın ismi gibi güçlü değil.