A Soldier's Journal

the long version

This is the extraordinary memoir of the 22nd’ Infantry Regiment, a unit that Ernest Hemingway stayed with for five months from the drive across France to the bloody Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. Rothbart’s journal is intimate, eloquent, and compelling—told by a man who was a member of the “Greatest Generation.” It is a moving account of innocent men who enlisted to fight in a just cause, who learned about life, death, and survival in the army camps, on the battlefield, and in the villages they liberated and captured. It touches on the chaos of war and how atrocities—such as the use of poison gas by American artillery on November 15, 1944—were narrowly averted. In addition, it is a journal surprisingly rich with humor—from how men learn all about “the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way” to those incongruous moments of comedy that can occur even on the battlefield. The result is a memoir so rich in character, detail, and atmosphere that the reader will feel that he is shoulder-to-shoulder with men from the “Greatest Generation.”