Anchorage Daily News

Unknown Soldiers: Reliving World War II in Europe

By Joseph E. Garland (Protean Press, $29.95)

The blurb: Garland chronicles the path of the famed 45th Infantry Division in 1943-44 on its brave and bloody travelogue through Italy and France. It is history in memoir form, or more accurately many memoirs -- of Garland and his buddies in his platoon -- through hundreds of verbatim vignettes from the mouths of GIs he fought with.

Excerpt: "I didn't know I'd been hit, but when I got over there I looked down and saw my shirt was slit along my chest. I opened it up and saw a little cut in there and I thought, 'Boy, you lucky sonofabitch, a coupla weeks in the hospital, warm food, clean sheets, Purple Heart.' That shell got me in the face, the chest, the right upper thigh, and probably I had a small piece of shrapnel sticking in my belly like a thorn.

"The next one hit in back of me and tore my left foot pretty good and probably put a piece in my right arm." (Doug Studebaker of Anchorage quoted on p. 117.)

Amputated Lives: Coping with Chemical Sensitivity

Alison Johnson (Cumberland Press, www.alisonjohnsonmcs.com, $15)

The blurb: The condition of multiple chemical sensitivity has been rabidly growing with the proliferation of new, untested chemicals in our environment. In recent decades, people from many walks of life have developed a new intolerance for the chemicals found in cleaning products, new carpet, paint and other products. Their ranks include large numbers of Exxon Valdez cleanup workers and Gulf War veterans.

Excerpt: "On the beaches of Alaska ... personal protective equipment was in short supply and even though OSHA should have protected the workers in Prince William Sound ...that was not the case.

"Some workers survived their exposures in Prince William Sound with no apparent health effects; others were not so lucky, as is indicated by the stories of three brothers who cleaned the Alaska beaches and three scientists who traveled from California to study the cleanup process."

ADVERTISEMENT