Preface For New Novel
I have been working on the preface for my latest novel, tentatively named Camel Beach Red, and thought I would share it.
This is my fifth novel, all written as part of the Tom O'Brien: OSS Agent series. All five are centered on America's involvement in World War II. I have considered writing historical fiction about other time periods, but keep coming back to the this war. I ask myself why, why do I have such a fascination with this particular period of history. Part of it is personal. I was born during the war, two years after Pearl Harbor and almost two years prior to Hiroshima. I had uncles and cousins who fought in the war, my father was killed in the war, my stepfather was a B-29 mechanic on the island of Tinian, and my wife's father was a tail gunner on a B-17 and a prisoner of war in Germany. But there is more to it than the personal element.
World War II marked a sea change in the history of this country. Before Pearl Harbor, America was isolationist, had a second rate military, and was a country with few colonial interests. We came out of the war as one of the world's two superpowers, economically as well as militarily. Roosevelt's "arsenal of democracy" began its evolution into President Eisenhower's "military industrial complex." The knowledge that he had the atomic bomb at his disposal came to Harry Truman only after his president died and left him in charge. Four months after Truman learned of the existence of this revolutionary weapon, he was faced with the morally excruciating decision as to how to use it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki radically changed the world and the perception of America, for better and for worse. President Truman also inherited the world's most powerful navy and air force, and powerful ground forces that had proved their mettle in battlefields from Wake Island to Morocco, as he faced a shift in focus from Germany and Japan to the Soviet Union as the greatest enemy of the Western democracies.
Psychologically we were moved from being dragged reluctantly into a war with Germany, to being dragged reluctantly into near war to save Germany after the war. We went from a country staunchly opposed to European colonialism to one supporting the grip of the British and French on their remaining colonial empires, including such problematic colonies as Algeria and Vietnam. We became the mainstay of a NATO that stood against our former Soviet allies and we got used to the concept of America being the "world's policeman." During the war, young Americans were sent to such diverse places as Tunisia, Iran, Burma, and China, and brought back a new awareness of exotic cultures. After the war, the GI Bill changed our system of university education. Little in America was ever the same again after V-J Day.
The end of the war marked the beginning of the Cold War and the prolonged and frightening nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. More significantly, it marked our acceptance that we could no longer sit in isolation behind two vast oceans that protected us, that we had to step forward and take a position of leadership in the world.
Why did I choose the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, as a vehicle for my fiction, one might ask? The OSS marked another sea change in American thought. It was the transition from a philosophy espoused by Henry Stimson as Secretary of State between the wars that, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," to a recognition that the collection of intelligence could make the difference between war or peace, between victory or defeat if war could not be avoided. The OSS also introduced the synthesis of intelligence gathering and special operations as epitomized in current CIA and JSOC doctrine.
I believe World War II was a transformative event for America and the world, and that significant lessons can still be drawn from it as America faces the challenges of the future. I will stick with it for a while, hoping to use fiction to shed light on some lesser known facts and to connect dots that have gotten little attention in the past. I just hope my stories are entertaining as well as educational.
This is my fifth novel, all written as part of the Tom O'Brien: OSS Agent series. All five are centered on America's involvement in World War II. I have considered writing historical fiction about other time periods, but keep coming back to the this war. I ask myself why, why do I have such a fascination with this particular period of history. Part of it is personal. I was born during the war, two years after Pearl Harbor and almost two years prior to Hiroshima. I had uncles and cousins who fought in the war, my father was killed in the war, my stepfather was a B-29 mechanic on the island of Tinian, and my wife's father was a tail gunner on a B-17 and a prisoner of war in Germany. But there is more to it than the personal element.
World War II marked a sea change in the history of this country. Before Pearl Harbor, America was isolationist, had a second rate military, and was a country with few colonial interests. We came out of the war as one of the world's two superpowers, economically as well as militarily. Roosevelt's "arsenal of democracy" began its evolution into President Eisenhower's "military industrial complex." The knowledge that he had the atomic bomb at his disposal came to Harry Truman only after his president died and left him in charge. Four months after Truman learned of the existence of this revolutionary weapon, he was faced with the morally excruciating decision as to how to use it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki radically changed the world and the perception of America, for better and for worse. President Truman also inherited the world's most powerful navy and air force, and powerful ground forces that had proved their mettle in battlefields from Wake Island to Morocco, as he faced a shift in focus from Germany and Japan to the Soviet Union as the greatest enemy of the Western democracies.
Psychologically we were moved from being dragged reluctantly into a war with Germany, to being dragged reluctantly into near war to save Germany after the war. We went from a country staunchly opposed to European colonialism to one supporting the grip of the British and French on their remaining colonial empires, including such problematic colonies as Algeria and Vietnam. We became the mainstay of a NATO that stood against our former Soviet allies and we got used to the concept of America being the "world's policeman." During the war, young Americans were sent to such diverse places as Tunisia, Iran, Burma, and China, and brought back a new awareness of exotic cultures. After the war, the GI Bill changed our system of university education. Little in America was ever the same again after V-J Day.
The end of the war marked the beginning of the Cold War and the prolonged and frightening nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. More significantly, it marked our acceptance that we could no longer sit in isolation behind two vast oceans that protected us, that we had to step forward and take a position of leadership in the world.
Why did I choose the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, as a vehicle for my fiction, one might ask? The OSS marked another sea change in American thought. It was the transition from a philosophy espoused by Henry Stimson as Secretary of State between the wars that, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," to a recognition that the collection of intelligence could make the difference between war or peace, between victory or defeat if war could not be avoided. The OSS also introduced the synthesis of intelligence gathering and special operations as epitomized in current CIA and JSOC doctrine.
I believe World War II was a transformative event for America and the world, and that significant lessons can still be drawn from it as America faces the challenges of the future. I will stick with it for a while, hoping to use fiction to shed light on some lesser known facts and to connect dots that have gotten little attention in the past. I just hope my stories are entertaining as well as educational.
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