My War

In the summer of 1941, a former Colgate University football player named Andy Rooney entered the U.S. Army. By his own account, he was an unlikely soldier. His sharp mouth won him the enmity of drill instructors and a steady supply of unpleasant duties, and it also cost him a place in officer candidate school. He nonetheless got through basic training and spent some time as an artilleryman before he was transferred to Stars and Stripes, the army's daily newspaper. That move proved fortunate. In 1942 his original unit was caught in fighting against Erwin Rommel in North Africa. Few of its men died, but Rooney believes he would otherwise have spent the years from 1943 to mid-1945 in a German prison camp.

The memoir follows what he experienced in place of that fate. Working as a war correspondent, he saw combat at close range and learned his trade beside fellow reporters Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin. Readers interested in World War II, particularly admirers of General George S. Patton, may find his account hard to accept. Rooney accuses Patton of improper conduct, injustice, and even war crimes in pursuit of personal glory. Although the book is a personal recollection, he tries to check his stories against the historical record, and he admits how often the documents differ from what he remembers. When they do, he says he assumes the documents are mistaken. The result is a candid, sometimes unsettling, and well-written look at the war by a writer who later became known as a 60 Minutes commentator.