Customer Reviews

Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary And Memoirs

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Edited by University of Tennessee-Knoxville teacher John B. Romeiser, Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary and Memoirs is the true story of two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Don Whitehead, who served the Associated Press in 1942 by covering the Allied drive against Erwin Rommel's tanks in North Africa, in Whitehead's own words. Collecting and organizing Whitehead's personal journal and unfinished memoir with the rare editor's note in brackets for clarity, Combat Reporter covers events that Whitehead witnessed from 1942-1943 in Cairo, Libya, Tunisia, and Sicily. Combat Reporter offers an evenhanded, front-lines view of the European Theater and an unforgettable self-portrait of a one-of-a-kind reporter. A foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Atkinson and an afterword by Whitehead's colleague Command Sergeant Major Benjamin Franklin (U.S. Army, Ret.) round out this highly recommended memoir.

I loved this book. Too many of us have forgotten or never knew what WWII was like. This helps to remind us. WWII was different from subsequent wars in that it spread so much farther over the globe. So many people lost so much.
This book also shows us the character development of a young man just beginning to cover the actual fighting, his growth and change into a first-rate combat reporter, his longing for his family and his fervent desire to be on the frontlines as much as possible so that his reports were honest and compelling.
These days we can sit in front of our television and watch people getting killed halfway around the world but in Don's time, the only way to know what was truly happening (as much as the censors would permit) was to send someone to the actual place.
I knew Don Whitehead as a person but not as a combat reporter. This book was excellent, very well written and made me want to read the rest of Mr. Romeiser's books.