Twenty-Five Yards of War

October 8, 2001
Drez (Voices of D-Day), a research associate at the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, interviewed numbers of WWII veterans, and here compiles 10 accounts of a soldier's 25 yards—the length and breadth of the war for him at any given moment. There are a few well-known stories here—Ensign George Gay's recollections of watching the Japanese aircraft carriers get bombed at Midway; the sad tale of one of the Indianapolis's survivors—but Drez has crafted several chapters that work popularly to overturn some of the "conventional wisdom" of WWII history. The tale of the Rangers who stormed Pointe du Hoc on D-Day is vastly different from that portrayed in the early '60s movie, The Longest Day. Marines who fought in the bloody battles of Tarawa and Iwo Jima bring the savage warfare of the Pacific theater into focus for readers who may not know many details about what it was like to fight an unseen enemy. An 18-man platoon of the 99th Division held up an entire German panzer column on the first day of the Ardennes Offensive, a feat not recognized until recently. Released to coincide with the Pearl Harbor attack's 60th anniversary, this is not a book of analysis or critique. Drez, a Vietnam veteran, is in sync with his interviewees, and his facile pen brings their stories to life. Stephen Ambrose provides a foreword. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.

November 15, 2001
In " Greatest Generation "vein, Drez refracts the personal war experiences of a dozen Americans, but Drez bests Brokaw in that he's been a soldier himself, and the camaraderie of experience infuses his accounts. To be sure, some of these veterans' stories have been previously published (that of USS " Indianapolis "survivor Harold Eck was incorporated into " In Harm's Way "by Doug Stanton [BKL Mr 15 01]), but Drez manages to present them with freshness and adequate context. The conflicts include the Doolittle attack, recalled by an airman; the Battle of Midway, witnessed from amidst the Japanese fleet by the sole survivor of a destroyed torpedo squadron; the ghastly battles of Tarawa and Iwo Jima, remembered by a surviving marine from each; and other clashes such as DDay. In a palpable, unfeigned way, Drez extols their heroism and valor through his focus on the individual combat experience. Resonant reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)