John Steinbeck: The Story of an American Writer — Vol II
World War II
Part 1 — Once There Was A War
Steinbeck’s Collected Second World War Dispatches
As a war correspondent in London, then North Africa and later Italy, John Steinbeck always found stories about individuals and small groups of people: kids and chewing gum, the work of Bob Hope, and the toils, blood and dangers of the ordinary soldier, with whom he felt a great affinity and love. A love Steinbeck used, through his syndicated newspaper dispatches, to create something of a bridge between the soldiers and their families, and to remind those in power back home that the soldiers now fighting were very different to those who had gone before (although no braver than any American soldier who had ever fought in any war before), they expected a better deal when they returned home.
In a July 1943 dispatch Steinbeck writes:
“ The soldiers fight and work under a load of worry. They know deeply that the destruction of the enemy is not the end of this war. And almost universally you find among the soldiers not a fear of the enemy but a fear of what is going to happen…
