|
Grub Street |
|
Wolfpack Warriors |
|
by Roger A. Freeman |
|
Reviewed By Robert Levine, #1795 |
|
|
|
MSRP: $37.95 USD Format: Hard Cover, Pages: 256 Including front matter If you like reading reminiscences, inside stories, and gossip, you will, in spite of its shortcomings, enjoy Wolfpack Warriors. The book consists of anecdotes drawn from the author’s interviews with 56th Fighter Group personnel, from CO Hub Zemke to the G.I.s who serviced the aircraft, kept the telephones operating, and worked behind the bar in the Officer’s club. These anecdotes are connected together with the author’s own commentary, briefly telling the story of the 56th from its formation in the early days of 1941 to the end of World War II, to its final demise as a fighter organization in the 1950s. Freeman has written extensively about the Eighth Air Force, the 56th Fighter Group, and its charismatic leader, Hub Zemke. And therein lays this book’s problems. It seems to me that Mr. Freeman had a bunch of material laying around from all those other books he’d done on the Eighth, the 56th, and Zemke, and decided that maybe he could, with little effort, squeeze another book out of it. So he lined up his interview material, dashed off his connecting pieces and, as the English say, “Bob’s your uncle.” Meanwhile (again, it seems to me), the people at Grub Street said to themselves, “this Freeman chap is an expert in this field, so we won’t even need to assign him an editor, we’ll just print up his stuff and shove it out the door.” Now I know Mr. Freeman can write. I have certainly read enough of his work to know that! But Wolfpack Warriors reads as if it had been written by a rank novice. The author’s connecting material is full of rambling, run on, and sometimes incomplete sentences. A number I had to read two or three times to make sense of. And occasionally, he makes what I call “technical” errors, such as consistently naming “Dummer Lake” “Drummer Lake.” And if Mr. Freeman’s manuscript was reviewed by an editor, that editor should be taken out and shot! (Or at the least, docked a month’s wages and sent to bed without supper.) Having got that off my chest, I have to say that I found this book to be quite entertaining, particularly if you are a fan of the 56th Fighter Group, the Eighth Fighter Command, or the air war in the ETO. It is not simply a rehash of Mr. Freeman’s earlier works. It puts the reader on the ground and in the air with the 56th, with personal views of “the way it really was.” Further readings on the 56th include Zemke’s Wolf Pack, Freeman, Roger A., Orion Books, 1988; 56th Fighter Group, Davis, Larry, Squadron/Signal, 1991; Zemke’s Wolf Pack, Hess, William N., Motorbooks International, 1992; Beware the Thunderbolt, McLaren, David R., Shiffer, 1994 (a daily combat diary); 56th Fighter Group, Freeman, Roger A., Osprey Aviation Elite, 2000. |
|
Information, images, and all
other items placed electronically on this site |
