The Greatest Generation . . .

. . . of rapists. A new book by Mary Louise Roberts, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, claims that many civilians did not think American soliders were liberators but sex-mad rapists, thieves, and robbers.

Not all of them, of course, but the point is that WW2 soldiers were still soldiers. They were not some special breed of men immune from the usual immoral activities of soldiers. WW2 was not a “good war.” It was just like all of the other wars in history. But thank God we “won” or you would be reading this in German or Japanese.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance