James Jones is perhaps best known for his trilogy of loosely autobiographical World War II novels: From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line and Whistle (published a year after his death, in 1978). His only work of nonfiction appeared as part of WWII, a coffee-table book about wartime art published in 1975. Despite initial success, a reprint was impossible due to issues with the images themselves, dooming Jones's remarkable text to obscurity. WWII: A Chronicle of Soldiering brings Jones's account and a handful of smaller works of art from the original book to a new generation of readers.
Jones began his war as an infantryman stationed on Oahu. After the attack on Pearl Harbor (to which he bore witness), Jones fought on Guadalcanal, where he earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart before being shipped back to the United States to recover from an injury. Jones interweaves his personal recollections with an exploration of the overall war effort and the experiences of American soldiers in other theaters of the war.
This account is brutally honest, scathingly critical and even funny at times. Jones's vivid, vulnerable memoir cuts through a veil of nostalgia that often surrounds the war. Instances of horror and levity punctuate his evolution as a soldier and the eventual begrudging acceptance of his own insignificant role in the American war machine. He also fiercely condemns the wasting of lives by careless or politically motivated strategists. Jones's insightful mix of memoir and military history is engrossing. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer