Once There Was a War

This collection gathers the war dispatches Steinbeck wrote for the New York Herald Tribune in 1943. He begins among civilians, aircrews and American servicemen in wartime Britain, then travels by troopship to North Africa and accompanies a naval special-operations unit during raids connected with the invasion of Italy.

Steinbeck is less concerned with strategic command than with how war feels to people living inside it: waiting, exhaustion, fear, boredom, superstition, damaged equipment and moments of absurd humour. The pieces retain the immediacy and limitations of censored wartime journalism while preserving observations of the ordinary soldiers, sailors and civilians whom official histories can reduce to numbers.