Sometimes God smiles on you, and when it happens you should show some gratitude. Yesterday I was in a local library checking their sale carts, as I'm sure many here do. I don't often find treasures, but this time I struck the main gold seam. To make a long story short, I found twenty (count 'em!) vintage WWII and WWI paperbacks, and I paid a mere $7 for the bunch. The highlights are: 1. Gavin Lyall, The War in the Air 2. Paul Carell, Scorched Earth 3. John Masters, The Road Past Mandalay 4. Martin Caidin, Fork-Tailed Devil: the P-38 5. Robert Leckie, Strong Men Armed 6. Frank Richards, Old Soldiers Never Die 7. John Steinbeck, Once There Was a War 8. William Wister Haines, Command Decision 9. Thomas Heggen, Mister Roberts 10. Richard Newcomb, Savo 11. Ralph Martin, WWII Photographic Record (2 vols.) I used to have some of these when I was young (back in the Grant administration) and I had been looking to find some of them again for years. Lyall is one of my favorites, truly a magnificent collection with contributions from Guy Gibson, Pierre Clostermann, Richard Hillary, Paul Brickhill, Gavin Ewart ('When a Beau Goes In'), and many others. Much as I delighted in this find, it made me think and made me a little sad. When I was a kid, I was able to pick up a good military history education for very little money and effort. There were more veterans around then, and even in the drugstores the bookracks held a lot of WWII paperbacks for only 50 or 60 cents. The volumes in the wonderful Ballantine series (Purnell in UK) cost only $1. Yet could a child do the same as I did today? Even pocket books cost as much as you'd spend for lunch, a trade paperback costs as much as dinner for one, and as to hardcovers forget it. WWII now is a 'special interest,' and thanks to the net etc many youngsters never get the reading habit at all. I wish these books and others like them could be re-issued in simple, cheap editions again. If something like that could happen, maybe the present generation could learn to appreciate the veterans before they're all gone.
