At Ease: Navy Men of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional!
Review: This is an excellent book and well worth the money. Each photo is a look back to a simpler time. I was a Photographer when I served in the Navy. The military has changed so much since these photos were taken. They would not pass muster in the military today. There is far too much of an atmosphere of political correctness.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully moving collection.
Review: Too often, when modern schoolchildren consider WW2, they see the parades of elderly veterans, stooped, wrinkled, bemedaled, but essentally OLD.

What the compiler of this book has managed to do is to collect a wide range of photo material, much of it of very high quality, which shows the young men who fought WW2 as they were then. That is, as young men. Slim, upright, happy, fit. Often little more than schoolboys themselves. In that regard, this book is reminiscent of Herbert List's book "Junge Manner".

I was so impressed with my book that I've ordered a second copy to be put into the library of the secondary school at which I'm a governor. WW2 seems to be popular in history lessons. Let the children of today see the youths of yesteday as they were at their prime.

Rating:
Summary: And this is how tender Maleness can be
Review: Without a doubt this book will touch the memories and hearts of everyone who pauses to slowly peruse these casual photographs of men at sea in World War II. Without the overtones of trying to make a statement about the camaraderie that accompanies men off at war, these photographs simply follow a healthy group of sailors resting on board ship, working at their tasks, bonding in the bunk rooms and in play on the decks and the foc'sle. There is an obvious physical relationship that is transmitted in the gentlest ways, further proof that men together find the emotional and physical support so needed in the time of isolation from the world.

It is to Evan Bachner's credit that he shares this truly sensitive body of work with the public at a time when we all need to understand not only the plight of the men away at war today, but of the common threads of pansexuality that have never been a threat but only a solace in a world infected with prejudice. Grady Harp, December 2004