One of the better recent World War II memoirs.
The vast majority of World War II veterans have died in recent decades, but at 98, Lambert, who earned a Silver Star and multiple Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, is still around to tell his story. Readers will be grateful.
Born in rural Alabama in 1920, Lambert joined the Army in 1939 because it offered a steady income. Learning that he had once assisted a veterinarian, the recruiter assigned him to the medical corps. Nearly three years passed before he saw action, and Lambert and co-author DeFelice (West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express, 2018, etc.) deliver a lively account of his training and maneuvers in America and then in wartime Britain. By this time, Lambert was a noncommissioned officer in charge of a unit. He landed with the first wave on North Africa in November 1942 and then again with the first wave attacking Sicily in July 1943. Medical units worked at the front, enduring as many casualties as infantry, and the narrative features plenty of action and suffering, including several of Lambert’s own nasty, if minor, injuries. After Sicily, everyone returned to Britain to train for the invasion of France. For the third time, his unit landed with the first wave, this time on Omaha Beach, an experience far worse than the others. Within hours, Lambert received life-threatening injuries—ironically, from the ramp of an American landing craft that crushed him as he was helping a soldier in the water. Thanks to outstanding American medical care, he survived and, despite not finishing high school, went on to a prosperous career and extremely long life. Veteran ghost writer DeFelice admits to a great deal of research filling in details of the training and fighting, and Lambert’s narrative flows smoothly throughout, clearly showing the author’s heroism.
One of the better recent World War II memoirs.Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-293748-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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