When We Were One: Stories of World War II

Collected and restored to print at last: The great war pieces of W. C. Heinz, a writer that Stephen E. Ambrose ranks with Ernie Pyle as the finest of WWII. W. C. Heinz is one of the great sports writers of the past half-century, but few people know that before he began his sportswriting career he served as a war correspondent for the New York Sun. No less an authority than Stephen E. Ambrose has said of Heinz that both he and Ernie Pyle were the two best journalists to cover World War II. Now for the first time ever, Heinz's finest reporting both during and after the war is collected in one volume. From a first-person account of the scene aboard the US S. Nevada during D-Day (the very same ship that plied the waters at Pearl Harbor) to a six-part series on conducting a night attack to an account of the shooting of several German spies, we are given an up-close-and-personal chronicle of the action by a reporter who was in the thick of it all. Few writers conveyed as vividly as Heinz the heroic efforts of GI's in the face of battle; the sheer humanity, humor, and courage displayed by so many. When We Were All One is a superb collection of war reporting and commentary that ranks with the finest ever assembled on any war.