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NEWS & REVIEWS

Three Tales of War: IN THEIR OWN WORDS
from AudioBooksToday.com
By John Green - January 8, 2003

"In Their Own Words: D-Day," by various authors (First Person Productions Audio Books; unabridged nonfiction; four CDs; four hours and 15 minutes; $19.95; various narrators.)

"In Their Own Words: Race Across Europe," by various authors (First Person Productions Audio Books; unabridged nonfiction; four CDs; four hours and 15 minutes; $19.95; various narrators.)

"In Their Own Words: War in the Pacific," by various authors (First Person Productions Audio Books; unabridged nonfiction; four CDs; four hours and 15 minutes; $19.95; various narrators.)

All those World War II documentaries on the History Channel use the same stock footage, the same melodramatic background music and the same over-earnest voiceovers. Those documentaries are compulsively watchable only because of an always changing cast of old soldiers -- wrinkled men telling stories of their war-torn youths.

These audiobooks incorporate all the best parts of those TV war docudramas with none of the silly, repetitive visual aids. Instead, the voices take center stage: Southern verbosity, Midwestern candor and Yankee bravado. As historical artifact, this collection of diverse World War II voices is valuable, indeed. But it also makes for a fascinating listening experience.

These three productions tackle different areas of the war. "D-Day" comprises the stories of paratroopers, ground troops and glider pilots of the Normandy invasion. Contributors to "Race Across Europe" discuss their experiences of the post-invasion war in Europe, while "War in the Pacific" is, well, about the war in the Pacific. The latter includes harrowing accounts of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, two of the bloodiest and dirtiest battles in World War II.

Usually, the interviews are edited so that the recollections are truly in the words of the soldiers, but sometimes the narration takes the form of a conversation between a soldier and an interviewer. The former format is far more successful, partly because the interviewer's voice always seems intrusive and partly because uninterrupted narration from the veterans packs more emotional punch.

Throughout, the narrators show remarkable eloquence. The triumphs and the pride of war are plentiful here, and each veteran tells his story with a sense of honor, but it's the trials and tragedies that are most interesting (and, surprisingly enough, sometimes quite funny). From jammed guns at Normandy to freezing, underdressed infantrymen at the Battle of the Bulge, it's not always the gore that's gripping.

That said, the gore is plentiful, and plenty upsetting. Not for the faint of heart, for death fills this audiobook. Particularly in "War in the Pacific," the stench of death veritably wafts through the speakers. The almost-universal sense of survivor guilt permeates each audio. The interviewer asks several men if they can make sense out of why they lived, and even half a century later, there are no real answers to that question.

When grandpas throughout America talk about the War, there are plenty of disappointments. For one thing, old soldiers never seem to stay on subject. ("Enough with how cold the water was. Get to the scary parts.") And the stories are often left unfinished. Lieutenant So-and-So is mentioned, but then we never find out if he survived.

Listeners will sometimes experience the same frustrations here, but in a way, that adds to the conversational, intimate feel of the audio. It's as if you're listening to old men telling their darkest secrets, and most of these narrators tell their stories so well that it's hard to care when subplots don't get resolved. Nonetheless, even war buffs will get bored occasionally, particularly when interviewer and interviewee discuss the minutiae of military strategy. However, just as soon as the mind starts to wander, these soldiers bring listeners back to full attention. At one point in the D-Day collection, Jerry Markham rambles on about high tide at Normandy before snapping to a spellbinding memory of the first dead man he saw.

"Half his head was blown off," Markham says. "That's when I knew we were playing for keeps." The tough but desperate tone of Markham's voice captures D-Day as masterfully as the famous scene from “Saving Private Ryan.”

Nonetheless, the production quality sometimes disappoints. In interview-heavy sections, the listener is sometimes privy to utterly superfluous dialogue ("Can you look at me while you're talking?" "Would you like a drink of water?"). And background noise surfaces a few times. But again, the problematic production value makes for a historical document that is, in many ways, more realistic — and therefore more moving. They aren't professional narrators, certainly, but what's surprising is the quality of the storytelling here. These men have had more than 50 years to digest the war, and their descriptions of it often match the high drama and lyricism of quality war fiction.

Sure, the narrators go on tangents. You can hear them breathing and coughing and they pause for long periods to keep from crying. But from the glider pilots to the grunts at Iwo Jima, almost every single soldier describes riveting scenes listeners aren't likely to forget. The reality of it, the propinquity of the narration, bests anything you're likely to see on the History Channel and, in the process, shows the importance and power of first-person audio nonfiction.