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POPCORN ROAD TO PARIS... and Back
POPCORN ROAD TO PARIS...and Back is a collection of memories by Robert W. Thrasher, an Army Scout during WWII. The author's style is almost that of a comic entertainer. He pokes fun at Uncle Sam in "My First Job," saying he never got paid for any of the jobs he did until he became a soldier and received a dollar a day and room and board! He then became a scout. "...I soon got used to my job as a scout. I learned to concentrate really hard and be aware of everything all the time. I can tell you that it was a kid's job. An old man sure couldn't handle it. But before you knew it, the war was over and I was laid off. That damn Hitler again." Through the author's eyes you will laugh, and you will cry, but you will never forget these stories.
128 pages, Paperback
First published October 29, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 18, 2021
Quite cool
Read it at Shakespeare and Company
Read it at Shakespeare and Company
April 17, 2017
One of my students loaned me a copy that her friend had. The friend was a relative of Thrasher's. Thrasher himself lived (I assume he's passed) in my county. If he's alive, he lives only sixteen minutes away from me.
It's a sad, funny, irreverent and bitter account of Thrasher's experiences in the European Theater in the closing months of WWII. It's one of dozens of memoirs that have been written in recent decades by veterans of Thrasher's generation. These aren't always well written or interesting...though they often are. This is one of the latter.
Thrasher strips away all the notions of glamour and glory about WWII that my generation was fed when we grew up. This work doesn't portray the Hollywood ideal of combat, with dramatic death scenes sanitized of gore. Thrasher describes eating pork and beans while casually looking at the brains of a dead German soldier lying in the street.
"You developed an unhealthy attitude where you didn't respect death. It was everywhere. Babies, children, women and old men. They were just landfill material and sometimes that's what you did with the bodies. Dig a trench with a bulldozer and shove the bodies in and cover them up. I don't think you get over that. I don't know, but I think it taints you for the rest of your life."
It isn't clear, but here Thrasher might be referring to Holocaust victims.
A good book. Five stars.
It's a sad, funny, irreverent and bitter account of Thrasher's experiences in the European Theater in the closing months of WWII. It's one of dozens of memoirs that have been written in recent decades by veterans of Thrasher's generation. These aren't always well written or interesting...though they often are. This is one of the latter.
Thrasher strips away all the notions of glamour and glory about WWII that my generation was fed when we grew up. This work doesn't portray the Hollywood ideal of combat, with dramatic death scenes sanitized of gore. Thrasher describes eating pork and beans while casually looking at the brains of a dead German soldier lying in the street.
"You developed an unhealthy attitude where you didn't respect death. It was everywhere. Babies, children, women and old men. They were just landfill material and sometimes that's what you did with the bodies. Dig a trench with a bulldozer and shove the bodies in and cover them up. I don't think you get over that. I don't know, but I think it taints you for the rest of your life."
It isn't clear, but here Thrasher might be referring to Holocaust victims.
A good book. Five stars.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews