Once There Was a War

This collection reprints the dispatches Steinbeck wrote in 1943 as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, later gathered in book form in 1958. The pieces follow troopships, English billets and bomber stations, North Africa, and the Italian campaign. He writes about ordinary soldiers, dock work, minesweepers, a mixed anti-aircraft battery, a cinema hit during a children's show, and the liberation of a small Sicilian town, rather than about generals or grand strategy. The form is short reportage. The book is a wartime sketchbook of how men and women wait, work, and move through the European and Mediterranean theatres.

Bound in light blue buckram wrap-around printed with a photograph of Ground Crews of the 324th Bomb Squadron, 26 February 1944. Dark blue slipcase and endpapers.