The Medic

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.

Rating:
Summary: contemplative, unsentimental memoir of Jewish WWII medic
Review: Nearly half a century after he had served as a medic in the United States Army during World War II, Leo Litwak's "The Medic" attempts to place a sense of understanding and finality to his experiences tending the wounded and struggling for his own survival during the final days of that war. Direct, hard-hitting and uncompromising in its sober portrait of American men at war, "The Medic" should serve as a capable antidote to a false romanticization of our GI Joes who fought against Nazi atrocities. Ironically, the liberating American Army of Leo Litwak realistically is composed of amoral, conniving and bigoted soldiers who know how to fight and also how to enrich themselves from the people they supposedly are liberating and conquering.

Litwak's anticipation of fighting the Nazis, after all, was tinctured by the Holocaust; he deeply sensed the enormity of the scale of the destruction of European Jewry. His decent and left-leaning immigrant parents escaped history, and Leo's collegiate career proved apparent vindication of the open nature of American society. The collegiate Litwak appreciated philosophy and complexity; the seasoned veteran Litwak learned that simplicity is illusory. By war's end, Litwak "wanted to strip away any evidence of war...I wanted everything to be simple."

Perhaps the single most memorable character of Litwak's experience is the amoral Maurice, a talented, venal and brutal man, whose voracious appetite for violence, riches and women know no limits. Maurice's violence cuts a wide swath; as a victor, he genuinely believes in his own omnipotence. Quietly moral and bound to the medic's code of bearing no arms and tending to all (including the enemy) who may be injured, Litwak feels both a deep sense of repugnance and begrudged admiration at Maurice's example.

Almost immediately, Litwak develops a callousness towards death and an impersonal outlook on the afflicted as a survival technique. Despite a feigned imperviousness to disappointment, he encounters American soldiers so racist, so perverse as to warrant his silent reprobation. One such soldier is Roy, a cold-hearted killer whose blood thirst and drive for retribution to the Germans is so deep that even Litwak is repelled by him. A Southern farmer by occupation, Roy sense's Litwak's ambivalence. After Litwak balks at Roy's desire to inflict immediate revenge, Roy criticizes Leo's reticence: "You, Doc, a Jew, are too softhearted to operate in this world. You need coldhearted sons of bitches like me to keep things straight in this world."

A different sort of soldier, however, is Frank. Openly egalitarian and brazenly proud of his leftist politics, Frank challenges the Americans to live up to their professed war aims. He constantly reproaches Leo for failing to take stands for his beliefs. Litwak comments, "Frank was mistaken if he imagined most GIs were out to change the world...They wanted to the world to stay put...GIs wanted their service to pay off with gorgeous women, good jobs, more money, secure families, with nothing else changed."

Litwak knows that the world has changed. The sheer scope of the conflict, the unspeakable horrors engendered by the Holocaust and the necessary moral refocusing each soldier enacted in order to survive made the prewar world obsolete. "The Medic" reminds the contemporary reader that the so-called "greatest generation" paid far more than we may realize in defeating its enemies.

Rating:
Summary: contemplative, unsentimental memoir of Jewish WWII medic
Review: Nearly half a century after he had served as a medic in the United States Army during World War II, Leo Litwak's "The Medic" attempts to place a sense of understanding and finality to his experiences tending the wounded and struggling for his own survival during the final days of that war. Direct, hard-hitting and uncompromising in its sober portrait of American men at war, "The Medic" should serve as a capable antidote to a false romanticization of our GI Joes who fought against Nazi atrocities. Ironically, the liberating American Army of Leo Litwak realistically is composed of amoral, conniving and bigoted soldiers who know how to fight and also how to enrich themselves from the people they supposedly are liberating and conquering.

Litwak's anticipation of fighting the Nazis, after all, was tinctured by the Holocaust; he deeply sensed the enormity of the scale of the destruction of European Jewry. His decent and left-leaning immigrant parents escaped history, and Leo's collegiate career proved apparent vindication of the open nature of American society. The collegiate Litwak appreciated philosophy and complexity; the seasoned veteran Litwak learned that simplicity is illusory. By war's end, Litwak "wanted to strip away any evidence of war...I wanted everything to be simple."

Perhaps the single most memorable character of Litwak's experience is the amoral Maurice, a talented, venal and brutal man, whose voracious appetite for violence, riches and women know no limits. Maurice's violence cuts a wide swath; as a victor, he genuinely believes in his own omnipotence. Quietly moral and bound to the medic's code of bearing no arms and tending to all (including the enemy) who may be injured, Litwak feels both a deep sense of repugnance and begrudged admiration at Maurice's example.

Almost immediately, Litwak develops a callousness towards death and an impersonal outlook on the afflicted as a survival technique. Despite a feigned imperviousness to disappointment, he encounters American soldiers so racist, so perverse as to warrant his silent reprobation. One such soldier is Roy, a cold-hearted killer whose blood thirst and drive for retribution to the Germans is so deep that even Litwak is repelled by him. A Southern farmer by occupation, Roy sense's Litwak's ambivalence. After Litwak balks at Roy's desire to inflict immediate revenge, Roy criticizes Leo's reticence: "You, Doc, a Jew, are too softhearted to operate in this world. You need coldhearted sons of bitches like me to keep things straight in this world."

A different sort of soldier, however, is Frank. Openly egalitarian and brazenly proud of his leftist politics, Frank challenges the Americans to live up to their professed war aims. He constantly reproaches Leo for failing to take stands for his beliefs. Litwak comments, "Frank was mistaken if he imagined most GIs were out to change the world...They wanted to the world to stay put...GIs wanted their service to pay off with gorgeous women, good jobs, more money, secure families, with nothing else changed."

Litwak knows that the world has changed. The sheer scope of the conflict, the unspeakable horrors engendered by the Holocaust and the necessary moral refocusing each soldier enacted in order to survive made the prewar world obsolete. "The Medic" reminds the contemporary reader that the so-called "greatest generation" paid far more than we may realize in defeating its enemies.

Rating:
Summary: An Uncommon Look Back at WWII
Review: Perhaps it is the distance of a half century that allowed Mr. Litwak to avoid the heroic stereotypes that are common in many recollections of war.

For me, some of the most emotional moments of this book are the author's descriptions of wretching events told in the dispassionate voice of the combat medic. I felt I could understand the impact that the dangers and brutality of the war had upon the ordinary soldier.

In balance to the narrative of the young medic, there are the amazingly honest memories of the author looking back at the war: the deep comradeship of his unit; the loss of his platoon sergeant; the poignantly unreal romance in Paris.

Over the past couple of years, I have read numerous histories and biographies related to World War II. None of the others brought me as close to the lives of combat troops as Mr. Litwak's honest little memoir.

Rating:
Summary: The Medic Life and Death in the Last Days of WWII
Review: This book by Leo Litwak was extremely disappointing. While expecting a gripping tale of a medic operating under hazardous conditions, one instead gets the story of someone who only entered the ETO during the final days of the war, after most of the hard fighting was over...in essence a book by a "cherry."
The book is heavily laced with the words "I, me, my," and doesn't have the ring of authenticity, even to the point that he omits the names, units, and towns that he visited. He was more of a tourist than a medic.
His two main claims to fame that he brags about during the book were 1) being called over during training to ride with someone who's leg had been amputated and had already had a tourniquet applied, 2) going out to check on a dead soldier after several other medics refused to go out, by which time the enemy had long departed, and 3) hunkering down in a foxhole with two wounded members of his unit above him, neither of whom survived.
Most of his book was concerned with his getting sex with the locals, with his spin that he was "reluctant" at first.
He had rather strong contact with underground communist organizations.
He claims reluctance at proceeding with his sexual conquests, but when he is turned down by a local German woman with children ..., he uses his local black marketeer to convince her, then treats her shabbily, like a piece of meat. When her child is killed, he seems surprised that he is not exactly the person she looks to for comfort.
His name turns up on the military's list of black market connections, which he dismisses, even though he appears to be the protector of the local black market sleeze.
The book is quite short, taking about 2 hours to read.
The most telling thing I felt about this autobiography, was that he repeatedly mentions how disliked he was by the multiple units to which he was assigned, ascribing the dislike to his religion.
In battle, Medics are considered Golden no matter what their backgrounds are, and are usually treasured members of their units.
At the end of the book, one has learned pitifully little about the life of a combat soldier, or medic. If you want to read a gripping "you are there" book read "Seven Roads from Hell," "Band of Brothers," or "SS. Indianopolis", "Sniper," or "Boot." At the end of "Band of Brothers," you CARED about each and every man, you cried when they died, you cried when you heard about their PTSD. At the end of "The Medic," you cried that you paid for the book.

Rating:
Summary: Litwak's Memories of Love and War
Review: This book was recommended to me by my father, also a WWII medic. In fact, my father remembers being in combat medical training in South Carolina at the same time as Mr. Litwak. I have been told many stories by my father about the life of a medic as well as his capture during the Battle of the Bulge. Mr. Litwak's book left me somewhat empty as I was hoping for more insight into the life of these very special men, combat medics. I found his pursuit of a young French woman to be the romantic memories of a young man in a terrible situation. This is an enjoyable quick "read" but if you're hoping to learn more of the medic's life, I suggest you look elsewhere. A big "Thank You" to Mr. Litwak and WWII vets everywhere for their remarkable sacrifice.