REVIEWS of A REAL GOOD WAR
from New York Times Book Review In this autobiographical World War II novel, new recruits in the Army Air Force are told that fear is healthy. Completing 35 bombing missions over Nazi Germany will earn them a reassignment stateside, but the prospect of racking up so many missions also gives the notion of healthy fear a particularly nasty edge. The crews in "A Real Good War" are faced with daylight flights through barrages of deadly flak in skies swarming with enemy planes: closer to home base, they must try to avoid becoming instant fireballs as their lumbering B-17's almost collide in the pre-dawn murk above southern England. And then there are the dangers posed by officers like the fearlessly aggressive Captain Hartak, who has 49 missions under his belt and insists on returning for more, even though everyone tells him he is pushing his luck. Despite all these obstacles, the young airmen operate with an edgy heroism derived from raw fortitude and well-tested fellowship. What makes this book engrossing is its evocation of the fine line between a close call and a tragedy, not to mention the way guilt is detonated by war's deadly absurdity.
from Publishers Weekly Echoes of Memphis Belle and Catch-22 haunt Halpert's absorbing debut about WWII Air Force men. Sent to England in the summer of 1944, the 10 man crew of a B-17 flying fortress know they are replacements for the U.S. Eighth Air Force, which has suffered heavy casualties in the air war over Nazi Germany. Fearful and uncertain, these brash young aviators know they must complete 35 missions before they can go home, and the odds are not good. Booze, women, and gallows humor help them cope with the terror of flying massive, daylight bombing missions in bad weather, heavy anti-aircraft fire and clouds of swarming enemy fighters...Since Halpert was himself a B-17 navigator in Europe during WWII and his unnamed narrator tells the story in the first person, one can easily assume this to be a self-portrait. It is gripping fiction in any case.
from Kirkus Reviews Engrossing fictionalized WWII flyboy memoir, a first novel from former Air Force navigator Halpert (Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography, etc.) ... tale of naive, wide-eyed heroes up against fear, alienation, and unpredictable catastrophe. The story is set during the last winter of the war, as thousands of B-17s leave England regularly for bombing runs over Germany... compelling suspense as his unnamed and brooding narrator, the product of a broken home, wonders which of the members of his new surrogate family, if not himself, will be the next to die. Will it be the obnoxious gunner Skiles, whose annoying social tics mask a sincere desire to be accepted? The strong but vulnerable copilot Cavey? Or the swaggering, fearless squadron leader Hartak, whose obsessive passion to drop his bombs up Adolf's wazoo recalls Melville's mad Captain Ahab?.Flying high enough above platoon-movie cliches to give the battle scenes here a fresh and bracing realism, Halpert gives us a hero who wrestles with guilt and uncertainty as he finds himself spared the calamities, in the
air and on the ground, that indiscriminately befall the good, the bad, and the merely terrified, and who discovers, amid so much violence, episodes of humor, grace, and even the odd moment of fellowship. An inspiring debut: nostalgic, ironic, and respectful of a harrowing moment in America's history.
From the Miami Herald Halpert follows one crew from training in the States through deadly bombing missions against Hitler's war machine. He tells their story through the eyes of the crew's unnamed navigator, and through him we see the brash irreverence of civilian soldiers who confront military discipline for the first time. Awaiting orders, bored with the routine of drills and instruction, discussing rumors with the finesse of theologians, the navigator and his crewmates, a cross-section of types, try to relieve the tension of waiting. Alternation between bravado and anxiety, they drink and lie about picking up women. After one disastrous road trip they are suddenly ordered to join the bomber group in England. Once in England, they come up against bureaucratic officers who make the men wonder who is the enemy. Can the Germans be worse than the briefing officer or the ghoulish, maimed pilot who wakes them at 3 a.m.? Can their commanding officer really be so bloodthirsty? But the men's names go on the flight roster, and soon enough they get their initiation into combat. After their debut with death the men begin the grim countdown to 35, the magic number of missions they must complete in order to earn their ticket Stateside. Halpert, the author of an oral biography of Raymond Carver, is at his best describing the dangers of flight in World War II. The fury of aerial bombardment is on full display in these pages, the horror of watching your friends' planes explode in fireballs and the blood-freezing fear of seeing your crewmates wounded: Earl yells, I'm hit! We drop away from the formation. I feel immersed in the paralysis of fear, but I plug in an oxygen bottle and drag myself up to the passage where I can see Earl. Skiles and I reach him at the same time. Earl is holding the wheel in his left hand. His right arm droops loose from his shoulder where blood is spreading down a torn leather sleeve. Parsons is slumped over bent and twisted in a pool of blood coursing from an open gap of organs and shattered bone where his chest used to be. I go blank, lose complete track of what's going on, until I see Earl struggling to keep the ship level, flying with one arm. I snatch at the medical kit while the plane bobs and weaves all over the sky.
A Real Good War presents a harrowing portrait of the pitilessness of war. --- Christopher Furst
From the San Antonio Express-News In the fall of 1944, as Allied armies enlarged their grip on Fortress Europe and aimed their guns at the heartland of Nazi Germany, a different kind of war, called daylight bombardment was being waged by the Army Air Forces from British bases. "A Real Good War" is the story of that struggle and of the men who fought it, the aircrews whose biggest war is with themselves. Their fight is to find the courage to go back again and again, watching their comrades' B-17's explode, burn, or simply fall out of the air over German targets as they wonder if their own luck will run out before they can complete their 35 missions.
Throughout this gritty, realistic, and often profane story built around a B-17 squadron at Bassingbourne, England, the number 35 domi-nates the lives of these young Americans. Their goal is not to win the war, but to fly the 35 missions they must complete to "graduate" from being shot at almost daily and go back to the United States. Each one's "magic number" decreases by one each time his Flying Fortress returns to home base, and the magic number of zero is all that these men --- little more than boys chronologically, as few of them are old enough to vote --- want out of a life of freezing at 25000 feet, dodging enemy fighters and flak as they toggle their bombs on the impersonal targets below. Halpert builds his fast-moving plot around one crew, from their training days in Louisiana to the RAF base that becomes their home station. There is Earl, the pilot who considers his biggest job is to keep up his crew's morale; Mouse, the co-pilot with an inferiority complex bigger than his airplane, and Cavey, the boy bombardier from Wyoming. Then there is the nameless navigator who tells the story --- who is too shy to date and completes his 35th mission before his 21st birthday, but becomes a man long before that, amid the blood, flame, and death that surrounds him in the air. When they aren't risking their lives in their airplanes, they are are hunting Piccadilly Lillies on rare three-day passes to London, or drinking beer, whiskey, or whatever else is available, or simply logging sack time on their thin GI mattresses until the next time the Hangman --- a grounded pilot with severe mental problems --- pounds on their doors in the pre-dawn to alert them for the day's mission. One more mission toward their 35 and their ticket stateside.
"A Real Good War" had to have been written by someone who was there, as Halpert was... Inevitably, Halpert's spellbinding novel of men in aerial combat will be compared to "Twelve O'Clock High". "The War Lover" and "Memphis Belle." It will not suffer from the comparison.
from the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Halpert, a retired teacher and typesetter, relies on his experience as a U.S. Army Air Force navigator on B-17s, flying massive bombing runs over Germany, for this gritty, honest first novel. A decidedly late starter for an author, Halpert took up writing a decade ago. His initial inspiration came from the works of short-story-writer Raymond Carver, and his first two books were When We Talk About Raymond Carver and Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography.
Sent to England in the summer of 1944, the 10-man crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress know they are replacements for the U.S. Eighth Air Force which suffered heavy casualties in the air war over Germany. These fledgling aviators must complete 35 missions before they can go home. In the English base at Bassingbourne, they receive tough preparations for their hazardous expeditions, awakened at 3 a.m. by a badly disfigured, ghoulish ex-pilot for briefings. Most of the characters are a typical mix of young Americans drawn from all walks of life to fight in a war they don't understand. The narrator/ navigator remembers his youth, particularly his father, before the war:
"He told me to hop on, showed me how to hold the grip, and zowie away we went. If I live to be an old man, I'll never forget that ride. It was my first look at the New York skyline, and there it was spread out for me from high up on the Brooklyn Bridge. He drove up Broadway on the motorbike slowly weaving through the traffic before turning on to Fifth Avenue, following the double decker buses to the horse and buggies outside Central Park where we stopped to feed peanuts to the sheep in the meadow as he waved a leather-gloved salute to the women who smiled at him, and then up through Harlem and zipping across the brand new shiny George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. Oh man, was I one happy kid!"
This lovely recollection stands in stark contrast to his experience in battle:"We are in the heart of it now. The plane bounces as if riding over railroad tracks when it is lifted by nearby bursts. A large oily black one explodes five yards above us, and I see the orange core followed by the the harsh grating sound as the jagged steel rains down on us. A tall trail of smoke rises five miles north, where the preceding Groups went after the chemical plant."
And, of course, writing this sharp is its own justification.
From DR Ahead (Official publication of U.S. Air Force Navigators Observers Association) Sam Halpert is obviously a brave man. Not only did he navigate 35 B-17 missions against Germany with the 91st Bomb Group, 324th Bomb Squadron during World War II, he began his writing career at the age of 65 and published his first novel when he was 76Fiction it is, but it is fiction from a writer who lived the terror and tedium of the bombing campaign of late 1944 and early 1945. From its deeply ironic title to details from the navigator's log, it rings true.Told by the navigator, this is the story of a replacement crew (boys really, only two barely old enough to vote for president in the 1944 election) in England as the air war expands and the 8th Air Force's losses mount. Split up and sent out with more experienced crews for their first missions, death strikes them almost immediately. Death, and the prospect of it becomes their central reality as those left alive whittle down from 35 the number of missions left to fly and as they take on yet newer replacements and greater responsibilities.
Death rips in with flak at 25000 feet over targets where previous crews had died months or just weeks before ("helpless as geese over a blind"). Death blazes when B-17s collide trying to assemble. And death explodes when German fighters gun through the formation. But there is life; breakfast at 3:00, briefing at 4:00, start engines, oxygen checks at altitude, locate the I.P., bombs away, a diving left turn to escape, cigarettes as the masks come off below 10000 when relief is the primary emotion, and booze at debriefing and afterwards until a check of the alert roster leads to an attempt to get a few hours of sleep. Life is also bunk time during stand-downs, double helping at chow time and trips to London and into the English countryside in search of humanity and sex. In Halpert's driving prose, both the life and the deaths are compelling reading. The language is strong. The dialog is direct and believable. The action is harrowing
My number is down to seven now. Long overdue for the old fickle finger, and whoever or whatever is tailing me out there. You'd think I'd be able to handle this by now, but it's rougher these days than when I started. I was scared then, not knowing what I was up against. Now I know and I'm beyond scared. Somewhere between numb and dumb. Probably not even a word for it. 
