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Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace
A chance encounter with an American WWII veteran leads John Gimlette on an astonishing journey through France, Germany and Austria.
In a journey that takes the author through the last months of the war, through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, and through cities that have risen from cinders, Panther Soup is a tale as rich, bleak and absurd as war itself.
There’s a colourful cast of survivors showing the way. But it’s the American veteran, Putnam Flint, who guides the author through the emotions of that time. Now 86, he had been one of nearly three million Americans moving across the face of the continent.
It had been a journey of unimaginable scale and complexity, an armoured migration, a wheeled city rolling through Europe. For most of his life, Flint has lived with the memories of a tank-mangled sludge (the “Panther Soup”) and finds himself once again speeding up the Rhone Valley, re-living the camps, visiting the villages he’d shelled, and meeting the children of the battlefield, now elderly themselves. They find the field where Flint mowed down the flak-crew, and the Austrian village where he dueled with a Nazi fanatic.
In a journey that takes the author through the last months of the war, through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, and through cities that have risen from cinders, Panther Soup is a tale as rich, bleak and absurd as war itself.
There’s a colourful cast of survivors showing the way. But it’s the American veteran, Putnam Flint, who guides the author through the emotions of that time. Now 86, he had been one of nearly three million Americans moving across the face of the continent.
It had been a journey of unimaginable scale and complexity, an armoured migration, a wheeled city rolling through Europe. For most of his life, Flint has lived with the memories of a tank-mangled sludge (the “Panther Soup”) and finds himself once again speeding up the Rhone Valley, re-living the camps, visiting the villages he’d shelled, and meeting the children of the battlefield, now elderly themselves. They find the field where Flint mowed down the flak-crew, and the Austrian village where he dueled with a Nazi fanatic.
384 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2008
3 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
John Gimlette
7 books36 followersJohn Gimlette was born in 1963. At seventeen, he crossed the Soviet Union by train and has since travelled to over 60 countries. In 1982, on the eve of the Falklands War, he was working on an estancia in Argentina. He returned to England via Paraguay and Bolivia to read law at Cambridge.
In 1997, he won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize with ‘Pink Pigs in Paraguay’, which was published in The Spectator in May of that year. The following year he won the Wanderlust Travel Writing competition.
He is a regular contributor to a number of British broadsheets, including The Daily Telegraph, Times and The Guardian travel sections. He also contributes to other travel titles, including the Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust. His travel photographs have appeared in the Telegraph, Wanderlust and Geographical.
His first book was At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, which is described as a 'vivid, riotous journey into the heart of South America' (see the Reviews page). His second book, Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005.
Both books were nominated by The New York Times as being among the ‘100 Notable Books of the Year’.
John Gimlette’s third book was Panther Soup, which followed a wartime journey through France, Germany and Austria, comparing the battlefields of 1944-45 with what can be found there today.
He lives in London where he practices as a barrister. He is married to TV presenter, Jayne Constantinis, and they have one daughter.
In 1997, he won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize with ‘Pink Pigs in Paraguay’, which was published in The Spectator in May of that year. The following year he won the Wanderlust Travel Writing competition.
He is a regular contributor to a number of British broadsheets, including The Daily Telegraph, Times and The Guardian travel sections. He also contributes to other travel titles, including the Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust. His travel photographs have appeared in the Telegraph, Wanderlust and Geographical.
His first book was At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, which is described as a 'vivid, riotous journey into the heart of South America' (see the Reviews page). His second book, Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005.
Both books were nominated by The New York Times as being among the ‘100 Notable Books of the Year’.
John Gimlette’s third book was Panther Soup, which followed a wartime journey through France, Germany and Austria, comparing the battlefields of 1944-45 with what can be found there today.
He lives in London where he practices as a barrister. He is married to TV presenter, Jayne Constantinis, and they have one daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 11, 2020
At some point I'll gather my thoughts sufficiently to write a review worthy of the book, but for now I'm content to just share one of the many wonderful lines, so representative of Gimlette's writing style, from a drive through France:
============================
Shortly after this, I learned of a pitched battle between the combined French and American forces vs. the Nazis at a town called Bitche. Looking Bitche up in Wikipedia yielded the following:
Yes, I'm immature, but I am jealous of females now because I'd really like to say I belong to the Bitchoises.
================================
After this change of driver, the horizon steadied. For a while, it glowed with wheat but then the land began to swell and bulge into slopes of meadowland and oak. Everything seemed bigger up here: big cattle, giant dogs, enormous children weaned on beef, hydrangeas the size of trees, and villages carved out of bright red rock. Even the names sounded mildly outlandish, like search engines or bizarre diseases suffered by rabbits: Darney, Vannexy, Nomex and Dombrot.
============================
Shortly after this, I learned of a pitched battle between the combined French and American forces vs. the Nazis at a town called Bitche. Looking Bitche up in Wikipedia yielded the following:
Bitche (German and Lorraine Franconian : Bitsch) is a commune in the Moselle department of the Grand Est administrative region in north-eastern France. It is the Pays de Bitche's capital city and the seat of the canton of Bitche and the communauté de communes du Pays de Bitche.
The town belongs to the Northern Vosges Regional Nature Park and is rated 4-flowers at the towns and villages in bloom competition. As of the 2013 France census, the town's population is 5,225. The inhabitants of the commune are known as Bitchois and Bitchoises.
Yes, I'm immature, but I am jealous of females now because I'd really like to say I belong to the Bitchoises.
================================
August 4, 2019
I did not think I would like this book, inasmuch as I think that World War Two was mostly fought on the steppes of Russia. Still, this is a book by John Gimlette, whose books on travel I tend to idolize. Panther Soup: Travels Through Europe in War and Peace follows the WW2 itinerary of one Putnam Flint, member of a tank destroyer unit, as he goes from Marseille to Alsace-Lorraine to Swabia to Austria.
In the process, he looks at parts of Europe that are not usually found in travel literature of our time. I love it when he steps away from Flint and goes deep into strange corners of Europe. The WW2 context does not interest me quite so much, but the devastating aftermath of the conflict does, as Flint, being de-mobbed, travels by train through the bombed-out German landscape.
In the end, I feel that anything by Gimlette is worth reading.
In the process, he looks at parts of Europe that are not usually found in travel literature of our time. I love it when he steps away from Flint and goes deep into strange corners of Europe. The WW2 context does not interest me quite so much, but the devastating aftermath of the conflict does, as Flint, being de-mobbed, travels by train through the bombed-out German landscape.
In the end, I feel that anything by Gimlette is worth reading.
August 6, 2008
Travelogues are a dime a dozen these days – not to mention travel blogs, which mine has a tendency to become whenever I hit the road. [Note: And, yes, I will get back to my Comic-Con adventures momentarily. And let’s not forget that wacky second trip back to Vegas for a double bachelors party I just back from late Monday night. But back to our regularly scheduled programming.]
Gimlette’s latest journey takes him to Europe with Putnam Flint, a retired GI, who serves as his guide as they trace the latter’s journey up north from Marseille, through Paris, Alsace-Lorraine, and then east through Germany and into Berlin during the last year of WWII. Along the way Gimlette, with the help of Flint and the locals they encounter at their numerous stops, shed light on the liberation of Western Europe. We’re talking the good, the bad, and – most particularly – the ugly. While he could have easily recounted the main historical events that determine the overall course of that awful war, Gimlette instead opts to delve deep into the suspicious nature of the everyday European of every stripe, nationality, and political persuasion. Many were not just wary of the invading Huns, but also of their eventual liberators. (Odd in retrospect, I agree.)
Along the way, Gimlette manages to gently skewer the earthy Alsatians, the fickle Parisians (passive collaborators who quickly sided with the Resistance once the Allies were at the gates of the City of Lights), the corrupt Marseillaise, and prisoner-of-war Josef Ratzinger (former Nazi Youth member turned current Pope) – to name but a few. Of course, a handful of folks manage to spark his eye and heart; most notably the famed resistance fighter Nancy Wake – a Kiwi journalist who married a notorious Corsican, only to become not only a widow during the war but, shortly after the close of WWII, a highly decorated war heroine. Nancy’s tales are truly the stuff that dreams and Hollywood period movies are made of. And which only whets my appetite for more.
Although a bit too discursive – or circumambulatory – in nature (which makes for a slightly jerky read at times), Gimlette’s style does manage to become endearing because of his high regard for the average American GI, like his guide and companion, Flint. In a time of strong anti-American sentiment abroad, I find it refreshing to read about America during its finest hour in living memory.
Gimlette’s latest journey takes him to Europe with Putnam Flint, a retired GI, who serves as his guide as they trace the latter’s journey up north from Marseille, through Paris, Alsace-Lorraine, and then east through Germany and into Berlin during the last year of WWII. Along the way Gimlette, with the help of Flint and the locals they encounter at their numerous stops, shed light on the liberation of Western Europe. We’re talking the good, the bad, and – most particularly – the ugly. While he could have easily recounted the main historical events that determine the overall course of that awful war, Gimlette instead opts to delve deep into the suspicious nature of the everyday European of every stripe, nationality, and political persuasion. Many were not just wary of the invading Huns, but also of their eventual liberators. (Odd in retrospect, I agree.)
Along the way, Gimlette manages to gently skewer the earthy Alsatians, the fickle Parisians (passive collaborators who quickly sided with the Resistance once the Allies were at the gates of the City of Lights), the corrupt Marseillaise, and prisoner-of-war Josef Ratzinger (former Nazi Youth member turned current Pope) – to name but a few. Of course, a handful of folks manage to spark his eye and heart; most notably the famed resistance fighter Nancy Wake – a Kiwi journalist who married a notorious Corsican, only to become not only a widow during the war but, shortly after the close of WWII, a highly decorated war heroine. Nancy’s tales are truly the stuff that dreams and Hollywood period movies are made of. And which only whets my appetite for more.
Although a bit too discursive – or circumambulatory – in nature (which makes for a slightly jerky read at times), Gimlette’s style does manage to become endearing because of his high regard for the average American GI, like his guide and companion, Flint. In a time of strong anti-American sentiment abroad, I find it refreshing to read about America during its finest hour in living memory.
October 31, 2010
This is totally not my genre. I picked this up in the bookstore because of the title (we have two black cats we call our panthers) and I bought it because I thought I'd learn something about the European theater in WWII. I'm on page 121 and so far the main messages are: There are whores in Marseilles. Whores. Whores whores whores whores whores whores whores. (Gimlette doesn't use the word whores that much, maybe not at all, but I'm up early feeding my infant son and kind of punchy. whores whores whores whores). The other lesson is that terrible things happen in a war.
The book is a travelogue, not a history lesson, so my expectations aren't fair. Still, a hundred pages about what a stinking mess of poo and whores Marseilles is? Really? I mean, the guy just went on and on. We get it! There are whores!
The book is a travelogue, not a history lesson, so my expectations aren't fair. Still, a hundred pages about what a stinking mess of poo and whores Marseilles is? Really? I mean, the guy just went on and on. We get it! There are whores!
July 9, 2011
Another great Gimlette travelogue, topsy-turvy with his usual obtuse perspectives and a fractured structure which recalls his excellent At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig. His way of looking at the American experience in this theater of World War II is one you will not encounter elsewhere. Gimlette's great qualities are a tremendous power of observation, an equally strong ability to record these observations, and most importantly, the bravery and willingness to follow his own path not only in terms of actual travel but in terms of the extraordinary angles at which he comes to the things, cultures, and people he meets.
February 12, 2009
How inexperienced American soldiers fought their way against the battle hardened Germans through France, Germany and Austria with great loss of life and limb, and ultimate victory. An idiosyncratic travelogue which combined elements from 1944-45 and the modern era, highlighting shady, unknown corners of Europe.
November 8, 2020
The author decided to take an 86 year old American veteran of WW2 to retrace his steps throughout Europe when as a young lieutenant (eventually) he landed in Marseille and fought his way through Eastern France, then southward through Western Germany finally reaching Innsbruck in Austria by VE Day. I found this particularly interesting for this is part of the campaign following D-Day that has been little covered, at least here in the UK. Possibly because there was little or no involvement of UK troops? There were vicious battles that I'd never heard of before, particularly in the Vosges during the bitter winter on 1944/5. The author interweaves this with a more modern travel story when he revisited some of the areas on his own. The descriptions of such as the landscapes and the towns visited are extremely well done. He visits one very old bar which was totally destroyed during the war, only to be rebuilt exactly as before. On congratulating the owner on this, he's informed it's all polystyrene! The landscapes of the Vosges are described in detail, not to the areas advantage! Enough maps are included to enable the reader to keep tabs on where the journey is going.
August 3, 2017
This is the last of John Gimlette's travel books I have read (though this was his 3rd book) and most I have really enjoyed, but this one seemed quite weak because he tries to do too much. The main focus of the trip through France, Germany and Austria is to recreate the final push by the Allies against Germany in the waning days of World War II. Gimlette asks Putnam Flint, an 86 year old veteran of that march to travel with him. The book includes Putnam Flint's remembrances of that time, their recreation of it and other side trips Gimlette took to the area. Unfortunately, the three parts don't make it stronger; just more confusing, and you are left not really feeling you understand what it was like for Putnam Flint during WW II, how the recreation of that time worked, and how the side trips fit in. It all ends up too confusing. Read his other books instead. They really bring out the places he visits well.
July 9, 2023
One of the best historical travelogues I've ever read. Ww2 veterans are dying out quickly. This book, written back in the early 2000s, said at the time, there were 3 million known ww2 veterans and they were dying out at 1000 a day!! The rate is now at about 237 per day. Going into 2024 the total number of serving WW2 veterans is expected to dip below 100,000. These types of projects are needed to document their personal journeys and recollections in the historical context of the "Good War". I cannot recommend this book enough, you will not be disappointed.
August 3, 2021
Author tours war sites of Europe with a veteran
February 20, 2012
This is both a frustrating and enlightening read. I learned a lot, but constantly had to stop reading and look up some bit of information: translate a phrase or acronym, define a word (often Briticisms), locate context or biography or geography. Gimlette slings it all out there and often does not slow down to explain. He has his own set of prejudices; he is, in short, high on America and American GIs, down on Marseilles, Paris, and all things French (including bouillabaisse) , and ambivalent about the Germans (they’re either sinister or comedic, short of like Sergeant Shultz of Hogan’s Heroes). Putnam Flint, the American GI whose WWII military journey from Marseilles to the Austrian Alps provides the structure for the book, is stoic, humble, and heroic in a quiet way. It interesting to read of his measured reactions to the changed landscape of Europe. However, often Gimlette sets out on his own. For example, Flint refuses to return to either Marseilles or Paris, so Gimlette goes alone with just an idea of what the typical American GI would have experienced. Thus we are treated to digressions about whores and brothels (of which Gimlette seems particularly enamored) as well as reactions to bouillabaisse (he hates it), the history of the Parisian bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, and treacherous Alpine hiking excursions. Flint and his memories seem to pop in and out of the narrative. Basically this is a travel book, albeit about a journey most tourists would not elect to take, showing WWII Europe and sixty-years after draped around Putnam’s military experience. I found Gimlette’s narration opinionated and humorous; he has a sense of the absurdity of life and its travails, and turns a phrase well even when he’s going down a rabbit hole that only tangentially involves his purported subject. It’s hard to rate a book like this. Perhaps it was too long? However, I kept looking up explanations right up to the end, which means that it stayed interesting and relevant to me. This book better helps me to understand my own WWII veteran father and his reluctance to speak of the war at all. For that I am grateful, although I’m not sure I’ll read any of Gimlette’s other books.
August 9, 2011
Really 2.5 stars, but I'm rounding it up for disappointment in what I'd expected, rather than the book itself - the first part in France is less World War II combat-centered, and more historical, which was fine, but the later German and Austrian parts grew progressively less interesting, unless you're specifically looking for the W W II G. I. experience.
February 26, 2013
Panther Soup tells of the author's travels through southern France, Germany, and Austria with an American WW II vet. He focuses mainly on the probably of remembering details of battles that took place sixty years and also the destruction caused by the war. Unfortunately, he doesn't focus very much on contemporary life there.
November 9, 2015
The best bits of this book are when the author is recounting his travels with Flint or when he is discussing the history of the war. The sections where he reflects on the ambience of various locations (his hotel room, a bar, a street) feel overwritten and become tedious.
February 13, 2013
What a fantastic book. So much more than I expected -- it's multiple travelogues and multiple histories all in one, always written deftly, with energy and heart. Just fantastic.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews