Rating: 
Summary: A Not So Happy Ending After All
Review: "'Aid Man!' ... He ran up to me. He shouted in my face. 'Aid Man!' He grabbed my shoulders, his mouth agape, heaving air. 'A man got his leg blowed off. Let's go!'" This was Leo Litwak's first shot of many to come at saving a life. Leo was a young Jewish boy being trained as a medic in South Carolina. It was February of 1943, and, sooner than he would have preferred, Leo would be immersed in World War II. This is a true story and an excellent one as well. Leo Litwak does a wonderful job telling the truth in this book leaving no goury details out. His book shows all aspects of the war. He shows the soft side, dark side, romantic side, and even the surprising side. Gloria Emerson from the Los Angeles Times states, "[This is a] book that should be given to every schoolboy in the country at the age of thirteen." I must agree with this statement because all the reality and accuracy in this book will inform them that there's not always a happy ending and that war is nothing like Hollywood.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Writing; very personal memoir.
Review: "The Medic" by Leo Litwak. Sub-titled "Life and Death in the Last days of WWII. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2001.This is a well-written story of a young man who had just finished his first year at the University of Michigan and was drafted,in February 1943. Leo Litwak was assigned to the medical corps with initial training with a detachment in South Carolina. The book covers the time from this training to his arrival in European Theater of Operations (EOT) in November 1944, until the end of the war. At the very end of his time in Europe, he recounts how his unit had to turn over the village (made-up name of "Grossdorf") to the Russians as it was on Soviet side of the occupation line. Litwak had studied a little German, so he was able to communicate in "bare-bones German" (P. 137) with not only the people in the occupied towns but also with the survivors of nearby concentration camps. The author devotes a long chapter to his assignation , while on leave in Paris (1945) with the hooker, Marishka, but the writing is done in a sensitive and quiet way. Litwak's writing is generally excellent: Page 115, example " ...German Soldiers, whom we once considered awesome predators - well clad, well armed, well disciplined, red in tooth and claw". Now, as prisoners, the Germans were "... flock animals, indistinguishable from each other". The author has also done a good job of capturing the constant use of profanity in routine conversations in the military. There is profanity in the book, but not near as much as you would encounter in daily conversations. When I served in the U. S. Navy in the late 1950s, the sailors would answer affirmatively by saying, "F---ing `A'!", not just a simple "Yes!". My son served in the Marine Corps in the early 1990s, and he reports that the same amount of profanity was used. The author has included just enough profanity to capture the essence of routine military dialogue. Finally, Leo Litwak ends the book with a summary that many probably felt, (Page 225): " Now I wanted us to be scattered and never reassembled. No more armies or divisions or regiments or battalions ... No veterans' groups, no reunions, no visits to old battlefields ... Let that all be in the past, cleansed by recollection."
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Writing; very personal memoir.
Review: "The Medic" by Leo Litwak. Sub-titled "Life and Death in the Last days of WWII. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2001. This is a well-written story of a young man who had just finished his first year at the University of Michigan and was drafted,in February 1943. Leo Litwak was assigned to the medical corps with initial training with a detachment in South Carolina. The book covers the time from this training to his arrival in European Theater of Operations (EOT) in November 1944, until the end of the war. At the very end of his time in Europe, he recounts how his unit had to turn over the village (made-up name of "Grossdorf") to the Russians as it was on Soviet side of the occupation line. Litwak had studied a little German, so he was able to communicate in "bare-bones German" (P. 137) with not only the people in the occupied towns but also with the survivors of nearby concentration camps. The author devotes a long chapter to his assignation , while on leave in Paris (1945) with the hooker, Marishka, but the writing is done in a sensitive and quiet way. Litwak's writing is generally excellent: Page 115, example " ...German Soldiers, whom we once considered awesome predators - well clad, well armed, well disciplined, red in tooth and claw". Now, as prisoners, the Germans were "... flock animals, indistinguishable from each other". The author has also done a good job of capturing the constant use of profanity in routine conversations in the military. There is profanity in the book, but not near as much as you would encounter in daily conversations. When I served in the U. S. Navy in the late 1950s, the sailors would answer affirmatively by saying, "F---ing 'A'!", not just a simple "Yes!". My son served in the Marine Corps in the early 1990s, and he reports that the same amount of profanity was used. The author has included just enough profanity to capture the essence of routine military dialogue. Finally, Leo Litwak ends the book with a summary that many probably felt, (Page 225): " Now I wanted us to be scattered and never reassembled. No more armies or divisions or regiments or battalions ... No veterans' groups, no reunions, no visits to old battlefields ... Let that all be in the past, cleansed by recollection."
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: At age 19, the author was shipped as an army medic to the European theater. It was the beginning of 1945, the allied troops were poised to enter the German mainland, and the heavy fighting was just about over. The medic rolled all the way through Germany into Saxony, where his unit served as occupation force after May `45. As a result, Mr. Litwak cannot tell us much about combat. But he tells us a lot about the comrades in his platoon. Some of the tension stems from hate of Blacks and Jews. The amusement consists of reams of fraeuleins and mademoiselles. For further relaxations, a few German prisoners of war are shot and killed, and villages are plundered on the way through. Mr. Litwak writes that he did not condone these criminal acts. On the other hand, he never reported them. May his conscience be clear and untroubled now, 55 years later.
Rating: 
Summary: the medic: life and death in the last days of WWII
Review: I was disappointed in this book. Maybe I went into it with too high an expectation. I knew going in, it was a dramatized version of Mr. Litwak's experiences but I expected more insight into his job as a medic. there were relatively few scenes of his actually work. In that way, I would say the title is misleading. It really is a book of one man's army service in Europe during the later days of World War II. He seems to have disliked everyone he served with and Mr. Litwak has the right to be. there were more sex stories than medic stories. the Sgt. Lucca story I thought would help me gain more insight into the author. But it left me looking for more of an explanation of how Mr. Litwak really felt. Did he like the Sgt. or not? He seems to have been hurt by his death but I am not sure.
Thebook overall does help one experience WWII from a more realistic standpoint. But a non-fiction approach would have been more of a contribution.
Rating:
Summary: Not your usual combat medic
Review: I was expecting a more in-depth analysis into the combat and mental condition of a medic, but what I got was a long drawn out story of himself. There was no connection w/ his fellow men and if there was, it was just a misconception. Basically, he just want to forget about the war, the horror, and the cruelty behind it. If that is the case, then why write the book.
Rating:
Summary: Not your usual combat medic
Review: I was expecting a more in-depth analysis into the combat and mental condition of a medic, but what I got was a long drawn out story of himself. There was no connection w/ his fellow men and if there was, it was just a misconception. Basically, he just want to forget about the war, the horror, and the cruelty behind it. If that is the case, then why write the book.
Rating:
Summary: An honest look back ...
Review: Leo Litwak's recollections of his service in WWII as a combat medic is not what I had expected. I had anticipated a memoir - instead the book is essentially a collection of vignettes and impressions the author had during his service in Europe in the final year of the war. Litwak admits in his foreward that unit names and places had been changed, and that some individuals mentioned in the book were composites of personalities he knew. I appreciated his honesty. After reading the book, I also appreciated his honesty in presenting his perspective on the war. The graft and looting by "our boys." The whoring around. The detached neutrality of working on the wounded, and the non-chalance of seeing so much death so often. Not everyone who served in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) saw combat; and not everyone who saw combat in the ETO was there from the Normandy landing to V-E day. Litwak was honest about his service, his experiences, and his impressions. As a combat medic from a later war, I had anticipated experiences and recollections similar to my own. While we had some experiences in common, we had many more differences as we served in two very different times. Nonetheless, the honesty with which Litwak writes of his time in Europe is not a romanticized or sanitized version of WWII. And aside from the obvilious shortcomings of his composites, it is real at an emotional (if not strictly historical) level.
Rating:
Summary: An honest look back ...
Review: Leo Litwak's recollections of his service in WWII as a combat medic is not what I had expected. I had anticipated a memoir - instead the book is essentially a collection of vignettes and impressions the author had during his service in Europe in the final year of the war. Litwak admits in his foreward that unit names and places had been changed, and that some individuals mentioned in the book were composites of personalities he knew. I appreciated his honesty. After reading the book, I also appreciated his honesty in presenting his perspective on the war. The graft and looting by "our boys." The whoring around. The detached neutrality of working on the wounded, and the non-chalance of seeing so much death so often. Not everyone who served in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) saw combat; and not everyone who saw combat in the ETO was there from the Normandy landing to V-E day. Litwak was honest about his service, his experiences, and his impressions. As a combat medic from a later war, I had anticipated experiences and recollections similar to my own. While we had some experiences in common, we had many more differences as we served in two very different times. Nonetheless, the honesty with which Litwak writes of his time in Europe is not a romanticized or sanitized version of WWII. And aside from the obvilious shortcomings of his composites, it is real at an emotional (if not strictly historical) level.
Rating:
Summary: a man of letters among men of war, hoping to survive
Review: Memoirs of a Detroit born, Jewish 18 year old who enters the army for three years and sees action in Europe, Belgium, France and Germany in the last months of WWII as a medic. After finishing a year at University of Michigan, Leo is sent to South Carolina where, like most every other Jewish draftee and recruit, he is called a College Boy, Kike, and An Inside-Out Nigger by his welcoming bunkmates in basic training. Throughout his 13 chapters of memoirs, he shows that war is awful and evil on both sides. Horniness on both sides leads to stupid choices during leaves and the occupation of German towns. Litwak bonds with many in his platoon and puts up with the others who in a different world should be jailed. Like any WWII Hollywood film, his platoon consists of many diverse post adolescent men who must band together to stay alive. There are the southerners who are segregationists, there is the New Yorker Commie Red who served in The Lincoln Brigade against Spanish Fascists; there is the soldier who loots civilians and corpses, the extremely pragmatic teenage Dutch survivor who deals in the black market, and the farm boy who executes and butchers captured or surrendered German SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. One second, Leo is speaking with two friends, the next second screaming meemee's have ripped off their leg or intestines in his trench. They both die en route to a division hospital. When they liberate some Jewish women who served as comfort women to German soldiers, they hold a seder, and Litwak, who never attended a seder as a youth in Detroit is enlisted to help in the ceremony. I was a little irritated when I learned that some incidences were dramatized, since it detracts from knowing the truth, but on the whole, this is a great read and honest portrait of wartime.
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