No Ordinary Joes: The Extraordinary True Story of Four Submariners in War and Love and Life
This meticulously researched and thoroughly well-written book adds much to the literature of the WWII generation. The four men—Gordon Cox, Tim McCoy, Bob Palmer, and Chuck Vervalin—all survived growing up in the Depression. Joining the navy, they all survived the loss of the submarine Grenadier and two and a half years as POWs in Japanese hands. (Their experiences in the camps are told with great balance, if sometimes horrific detail.) Returning home, they lived out somewhat checkered lives, with as many failures as successes—divorces, financial reversals, and alienated or dead children among the latter. The author is frank about their personal quirks, too—all had drinking problems at one time or another—and pays tribute to the women whose support frequently stood between them and disaster. This is the greatest generation, but with warts, wives, wobbling, and all. --Roland Green