My War

April 3, 1995
Rooney (Not That You Asked), commentator on 60 Minutes, here with sardonic self-effacement relates how he became a notable combat journalist in WWII, a war he calls ``the ultimate experience for anyone in it.'' For the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, he covered the air war over Germany, the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the Allied drive into Germany. Rooney's simple, ruminative style--``The long slow death spiral of a bomber with its crew on board is a terrible thing to see''--grips the reader as he describes famous events of the war: the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, the stirring union of American and Russian troops at the German town of Torgau on the Elbe. The author states that ``This is a memoir, not a history book,'' and he goes on to say that though he checked his facts in writing it, he assumes that when they conflict with memory, the facts must be wrong. Photos. Author tour.