Customer Reviews

All at Sea: Coming of Age in World War II

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I read this book to learn what life was like for sailors during WWII. It's from an officer's perspective, but it did give me the "feel" for what the daily grind of being a sailor was like. I liked the author's style; it was straightforward and honest. The only negative I can think of was Harlan never revealed what happened to his Skipper (Cotton Clark) after the war, whom he must have thought a lot of since he wrote so respectfully of him. It would be a great book for any WWII buff to read, especially since it covers the Normandy Invasion in vivid detail.

World War Two memoirs are not exactly scarce, but the recollections of a Pulitzer Prize winning historian are bound to excite the interest of even the most jaded military history reader.
Alas, the anticipation surpasses the event. The writing is certainly competent, and occasionally moving, but Ensign Harlan emerges as a conventional young man serving on an unremarkable vessel, with little to distinguish his experiences from thousands of others'. To add irony, several unworthy errors got by the checkers. (The 179th Infantry, for example, is misassigned to the 1st Division).
Harlan's account is engaging, and is a useful view of life on an LCI, but, as the author advises in the Preface: "...the reader should remain on guard against my possible lapses".