The All Americans

I stumbled across this book when my grandfather suddenly started talking about his time in WWII about one year ago. Now age 87, he told me during one interview that he was an amphibious and compat engineer in the 149th Engineer & Combat Battalion. After learning that one of the star characters in this book, Henry Romanek, was a commander in the 149th Battalion, I purchased this book to learn more. Soon after, I noticed a name hand-written on my grandfather's military reunion mailing list -- Henry Romanek. To my amazement, the story that unfolded through Henry's eyes was very similar to the story my grandfather had been telling me in pieces throughout 2009. Once I received the book, I couldn't put it down. The first-hand accounts of the soldiers from football field to battlefield were very thorough and told in such a way that opened up my eyes even more to what these servicemen gave for their country. I felt like I got to know each and every one of the individuals, which can certainly be a hard thing to do when researching people with whom you don't know well or whom you have never met. The author did a nice job of telling the stories of the four gentleman through their eyes, through their own stories. Stories that may have never been told had he not interviewed them and wrote this book. I would highly recommend this book to others. It is full of life lessons in determination, relationship-building, teamwork, etc. I will forever view this period in history differently after spending over a year conducting my own research and by reading this book. It is something that many young people today should take time to reflect on and learn more about.

This is a marvelous book. Traditional in many respects as a well-deserved recognition of those who fought in World War II, the extra element of the All-American football hero perspective makes "The All-Americans" special. This book almost came too late. It was nice to have it published before several of these true heroes passed on to the final reward that too many of their team mates experienced sixty years too soon. Anderson, a Sports Illustrated staff writer, takes us from the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 back five years, to the arrival of Robin Olds, Henry Romanek, Hal Kauffman and Bill Busik at West Point and Annapolis. Anderson catalogs their years as plebes and burgeoning football stars, back in a time when Army and navy were true football powerhouses, tickets to the Army-Navy game cost $4.40 (a lot of money in those days, but nothing like the million dollar box seats sold for the 1945 game), radio was the primary live medium for transmission, and television was a nascent, close-circuit affair (some paid $2 for the broadcast to theaters in Philadelphia). The November 1941 Army-Navy game, eight days before the Pearl harbor attack, is the focal event, the last gasp of innocence before the all-too-expected war commenced. Anderson has elicited long-buried yet vivid memories of practices, plays and heroics, first at play and then at war. German pillboxes, Japanese fighter planes and bloodthirsty sharks made life miserable for these former football stars; they used their discipline, smarts and perseverance to carry them through some very rough times. Romanek survived a bullet wound on June 6, 1944 and Kauffman had perhaps the most harrowing experience: surviving sharks and three days of drifting after having his ship suck in the South Pacific. Busik and Olds, by comparison, got off pretty easy. F the twenty-two starters of the 1941 Army-Navy game, four died in the war and more than a dozen reserves died in the service in those four years following that apocalyptic game. Read it to recognize and honor a few more entries in the cast of the greatest generation.

The All Americans by Lars Anderson is the story of two cadets attending West Point, and two mid shipmen attending Annapolis right before and right after Pearl Harbor. The backdrop for the story is the yearly Army-Navy game and what that game meant to these young men and others like them who had attended the service academies before them. The juxtaposition of world events leading up to WWII and culminating with these four men's, and many of their classmates experiences during the war, makes this an interesting read for any WWII buff. These men had to finish their college careers in three years so that they could be rushed off to war and none of them shirked their responsibilities. The only shortcoming of the book is that there is no index which makes it very difficult if you want to go back and check something out. That aside, the book is an enjoyable, easy, quick read about members of the "Greatest Generation" and I highly recommend it.