Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"I thought to myself, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm not happy at all, neither with myself nor my life. Since I have free time every day, I'm going to think on my past and make some sense out of it. Because I've had a strange life."
In many ways the title of the book is a little misleading because G.I. Alan Cope never actually saw any action as such in World War II, nor is the book wholly focused on his time in the army. Very often memoires are about the dramatic events that have unfolded around people or that they themselves have been involved in, but this book is very different to that, which is quite fitting as Alan Cope is clearly a different sort of person. This book is much more about Alan himself, his personality, his world view at the time and subsequently his life in Europe after leaving the army. As such this is actually a very charming read, and in the respect that the title refers to 'memories' it is absolutely correct for that is exactly what we are presented with without any unnecessary embellishment.
Whilst Alan could be said to be a very unremarkable person, clearly he's someone who hasn't always chosen the road most travelled given his early Christian background and subsequent renunciation of it, getting engaged to someone by letter he didn't even know during wartime and consequently having a disastrous marriage afterwards, and even his choice to leave his homeland of America for France shortly after the war finished and never return sets him apart from the norm.
This is one of those books that is very difficult to pin down exactly why it is compelling reading, but compelling it is, possibly for the simple honesty that is displayed in dissecting his life, for good or bad. Alan's naivety as a young man drafted into the army is very apparent to see. His training as a radio operator and subsequent eventual posting to Europe in 1944 actually provides what is probably a very typical war experience for those people who were fortunate enough not to be caught up in frontline fighting. And as such his story is more about the friends he made, the places he visited and the local civilians he encountered. Much of the post-war period of the book is him trying to maintain correspondence with people he met during wartime including the musician Gerhart Muench (briefly referenced by Henry Miller in his book Big Sur) and the Reverend Jim E.Post (who gets a mention in the Truman Capote book In Cold Blood), and finding out, sometimes belatedly, what happened to his wartime comrades. And in addition, by his own admission, gradually beginning to wake up politically and spiritually as a human being.
If you've enjoyed any of Guy Delisle's books, as I have, you may well enjoy this. It's very different in tone, but similarly compulsive autobiographical reading with a greater emotional depth of story, albeit simply because of the timescales involved in this memoir. Alan dictated everything to Emmanual Guibert and Guibert has done a wonderful job bringing Alan's story to life with his artwork.
