GOOD NIGHT IRENE (review)

Good Night Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea is the untold story of the Clubmobile women of  WWII.  Though their official assignment was to make coffee and donuts in their kitchen-outfitted clubmobile truck, they drove the front lines, from Normandy to Bastogne, Belgium (the Battle of the Bulge) to Germany itself. How did someplace so gorgeous come up with something as ugly as they did? They saw combat, brandished rifles and tommy guns, dodged bullets, and suffered injuries and loss like the men they stood beside, comforted and bandaged. Sometimes the dearest thing to a soldier is a hot cup of coffee  and a little friendly banter. 

These are your sisters and the GIs are your brothers and we expect you to treat them as such. Win this war with your decency. Because we are Americans. And this is what Americans do.

In contrast to the horrific scenes from Buchenwald when the allies first entered the town, (the stench was unrecognizable and visceral)  Urrea has composed the most beautifully written love scene between Irene and her pilot while in the south of France that I've ever read.  From here, can you  smell Africa? Spain?

Even if you've read accounts of the European theater and the brutality of the Nazi regime, Good Night Irene is a singular accomplishment that sings of the unsung female heroes who may not have received purple hearts but were as deeply wounded, physically and mentally, as any American GI.

This is my five-star read of 2023. On my bedside table now are INDIAN HORSE and THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE, and in the works is  LET EVENING COME, my breakout novel. 😊 Which I hope will soon be on yours.

Over and out and into the New Year wherein the idea of peace and prosperity beckons like a steaming  cup of coffee and a donut, or as mother called hers, friedcakes!

G.I. This and G.I. That

Now that our mother has died, almost exactly four months after father, it has fallen to me to stand in as the family archivist.  At first this seemed a daunting task. After all, they were married for seventy years, and after our grandparents died, mother became the keeper of their prized belongings, namely pictures and correspondence dating back to the turn of the century. So, here I was with over a hundred years of family history to sort through. Daunting. Yet....as I sat amoungst yellowed boxes of cards and letters, from airmail wartime correspondence to envelopes addressed only by name and town (as that was all that was necessary), the dots connected and the lines crossed. I sat in a living room emptied of their physical presence yet stacked to the ceiling with the lives they led and the people they touched, and the task became easy.

Following is a poem I found with dad's pictures from India and China and Tinian in the Mariana Islands from where the air assault on Japan was staged during WWII. I will continue to share their lives and accomplishments that this might be true:  "Not all of me will die".

Here I Am

Here I am, sitting on my G.I. bed,
My G.I. hat upon my head.
My G.I. pants, my G.I. shoes,
Everything free, nothing to lose.
G.I. razor, G.I. comb,
G.I. wish I were home.

They issue everything we need,
paper to write on books to read.
They issue food to make us grow,
G.I. want a long furlough.

Your coat, your shoes, your G.I. tie,
Everything free, nothing to buy.
You eat your food from a G.I. plate
buy your needs at a G.I. rate.

It's G.I. this, and G.I. that,
G.I. haircut, G.I. hat.
Everything here is government issue,
Gee, I wish that I could kiss you.