January-February - Air Defense Artillery

BOOK REnEWS
him the Presidency. E\'en so, it is hard to belieye that
man could be as infallible, as unselfish, and as farseeing
his biographer insists he was. This is hardly the last ,,"ord
bios!raphies of this undeniably great man, eyen though it is
:nc~ing to read an~ proba?ly correct f~ctually. Th~ a~t~or
too ob\'iously a SmIth partIsan to permIt of any obJectmty.
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Rails \Vest
S/l.l\"TEFE: THE !\AILROADTHATBUILT ANEMPIRE. By James
Marshall. New York: Random House, 1945. 339 Pages;
JIlustrated; Index. $3.75.
The Sante Fe started out as a visionary dream by Cyrus K.
oJlidav, who in 1857 thought of building a railroad between
opeb' and Atchison. By October 30, 1868 dirt was turned
construction of a bridge to connect with the Kansas Pacific
Railroad. Between 1857 and 1868, and between 1868 and the
~nt. the Santa Fe had many headaches, but little boredom.
State legislatures, the feder~l government, other railroads,
depressions, booms, acts of God, freaks of nature, foreign govments,
\Vall Street, property owners along the right-of-way,
and Indians were just a few of the diffIculties the road met and
anguished with varying degrees of success as it gradually
erolred into the continental rail system it is today. Practically
every mile of expansion meant a fight with somebody, either
with riRes, checkbooks, debate, or influence. The second half
F the last century was a rugged period, when shrinking violets
withered and brains and brawn were required to expand.
The Santa Fe created business for itself by creating towns
long its right-of-way, and by aiding farmers and industries to
~ablish themselves in Santa Fe territory. There was much
tial and error in its methods; the road went broke and re-
\cred. From a start with a $52,000 capital stock, of which
$5,200 was put up in cash, the road has developed to the point
here it owns 14,549 miles of main track, operates 15,105
iles, and has a par value stock capitalization of $638,250,300.
Colonel Holliday's dream has become a very concrete fact dur-
. 8Ig the past eighty-eight years.
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Beachhead to Death
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BEACH RED. By Peter Bowman. New York: Random House,
1945. 122 Pages. $2.50.
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95
There is something in this book for the railfan, the historically
inclined, the person interested in business and finance, or
for those who wish merely to read a good ad\'enture story based
and nourished on facts.
\Vritten in a form that looks, at first glance, like poetry but
is actually prose, this no\'e! attempts to portray the feelings and
thoughts of a soldier during a beach a'ssault and a subsequent
patrol, up to the moment of his death. The writing is intense;
"vivid" hardly describes the author's style. Bowen, according
to the book jacket, originally was in the Corps of Engineers,
and is now a correspondent for Air Force. The jacket docs not
mention whether he actually saw any action such as he describes
so tellingly in this book. but the reader will feel that
he was there. There is heavy emphasis on the mud, blood, and
heat of Pacific warfare; there is little of the flag.waving type of
patriotism; but the reader who knows soldiers will realize that
the novel is no sensational debunking, but an attempt to tell
an honest story of a very important period in the life of man.
\Var is not usually attractive; war in the Pacific was even less
so. The corporal who is the book's chief character did a necessary
job to the best of his ability, and without enjoying it.
Light Poetry
WHAT CHEER. Collected by David McCord. New York:
Coward-l\kCann, 1945. 477 Pages. $3.50.
The introduction, and what the compiler calls an "extraduction,"
appearing at the end of the anthology, are at least as
interesting, and probably more amusing, than much of the verse
collected here. The book is labeled, "An anthology of American
and British humorous and witty verse." There is so much here
that everyone will find much they find amusing, or witty, or
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