My War

In 1939, Andrew A. Rooney was a pretty typical twenty-year-old college boy at Colgate University. He played football, was interested in philosophy, thought he wanted to be a writer (but has no idea how to go about becoming one), and felt the America Firsters made pretty good sense. When he read that Hitler had invaded Poland, his first thought was "Where is Brest-Litovsk?" followed quickly by "How can I get out of this?". But, like millions of other Americans in that remarkable time, Andy Rooney eventually found himself in basic training in North Carolina, learning to break down a rifle, launch an artillery round, and defend freedom and democracy. In short order, his unit, the 17th Field Artillery Regiment, was in England receiving further training and waiting for the Normandy invasion to begin. And that's where Andy Rooney's war really began. Andy, whose entire journalistic experience until then had consisted of working on the 17th Field Artillery Regiment's newsletter, applied for a transfer to become a correspondent for The Stars and Stripes. And he was accepted. My War is an account of what happened then. Like so many men of his generation, Andy was changed forever on the way from Hamilton, New York, to Berlin. As a correspondent covering the air war, D-Day, the drive across France and the low Countries, the discovery of Hitler's concentration camps, and later operations in the Far East, Andy saw life at the extremes of human experience, and wrote about what he observed, telling soldier-readers in Europe about the war they were fighting. But My War is also the story of a naive, inexperienced kid learning the craft of journalism from the masters of the trade. Reporting beside Ernie Pyle, Homer Bigart, Walter Cronkite, and hundreds of other seasoned professionals, Andy found his life's work in a way he could probably never have imagined when he was in college.