Essays on Steinbeck

During the Second World War (1939-46) Steinbeck spent six months in England as a War Correspondent for the Herald Tribune, seen here alongside a bombed out school in London.  

His letters and dispatches tell us much about what he did in those six months of 1943, but at that time how must life in England have looked to a stranger from across the ocean? 

A People in Denial

In 1939, the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe was no surprise to Steinbeck. By the late 1930s it was apparent in every news report that war was coming. The signs and pattern of events were obvious. First Ethiopia, followed by Spain, the Ruhr and the Czech Border. As Steinbeck wrote in ‘A Primer on the ‘30s’, ‘We had watched ‘with paralyzed attention’ . . . (as) . . . ‘America knew it was coming, even while we didn’t believe it’.¹

His picture of America as a people in denial was matched by many in Europe. Countries on the mainland of Europe were most aware of the inevitability of war as Germany crossed their frontiers one at time, but Britain was an island, had not been occupied or even invaded since 1066, and  though the country was by no means of one mind the dominant emotion was more one of fear than inevitability. 

Following World War I (1914-18), in which Germany had been soundly defeated and humiliated by Britain and her allies, Germany went through a difficult period of depression, guilt and re-building. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power promising a new future, strongly backed by a nation without looking too closely at what he offered or indeed what he was doing. His ambition, that all members of the German state should be of pure ‘Germanic’ stock, meant three generations without any connection with ‘non-Aryans’ including Jews, Asians and Africans. Throughout the 1930s rumours of the persecutions of the Jews filtered out of Europe but British leadership was divided in its sympathies and many British citizens could not make up their mind whether what they read in the Press was true, and if it were what, if anything, they could do about it. 

Tensions mounted from 1935 when Hitler decided to re-arm Germany and introduced conscription as part of a programme of German expansionism, followed by the invasion of Austria and threats to Czechoslovakia. Hitler knew full well that European nations were reluctant to take him on. 

By 1938 Britain and France decided enough was enough. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, went to Munich for discussions with Hitler resulting in the ‘Munich Agreement’: Hitler could keep what he had taken on condition he made no more demands on other lands. But when Chamberlain returned, waving his famous ‘piece of paper’, hailed as ‘bringing peace to Europe’, while there were those who rejoiced that diplomacy and common sense seemed to have prevailed there were others who knew the deal was not worth the paper it was written on. Some were relieved that at least it gave a year’s grace to build up the war machine. Others could not wait to get their hands on guns to make an onslaught on Nazism. Well away from London and the south east, in small market towns and villages, however, there were many who, despite the signs and omens, could not be roused to action, laughing it off with ‘he won’t come here and if he does we’ll deal with him'.

Waiting for Action

Steinbeck read the mood and understood it but realism dominated and when war was declared in September 1939, despite his basic pacifist instincts and an intellect which told him that war was futile, he craved involvement.² Biographer Jackson J Benson³ says he had ‘no lust for blood and battle’ and ‘no need to certify his manhood’ but that may be only part of the story because writing home later, after accompanying a routine operation in the English Channel, he said that one of the big questions he had often asked himself (how would he react under fire, and, more specifically, how scared would he be when it came to the crunch?) had now been answered. He had discovered that he was no different from most men.

Believing in 1941 that the Germans absolutely outclassed the allies in propaganda and convinced that the allies were losing the propaganda war Steinbeck flew to Washington to propose to President Roosevelt the setting up of ‘a propaganda office . . . to get this side of the world together . . . to make for understanding rather than friction’⁴ and when that failed⁵ he offered his services to the Herald Tribune as a war correspondent and in June 1943 (only ten months after his second marriage) he sailed for Europe. In the meantime he worked off some of his frustration by producing two new books. 

This clarification may well not have been fully appreciated in 1943 and even today may still be judged only of academic interest but had added poignancy as it offered ‘comfort and encouragement to the conquered peoples of Europe during the dark days of the Nazi New Order’, the force of which has been demonstrated many times.¹⁰ 

Over the next six months Steinbeck travelled in England and Africa, writing letters from ‘Somewhere in XXX’ because identification of places was forbidden as part of the war effort, and in Africa he went six weeks without a single letter from home. Seen here returning to England on a troopship via Sicily and Italy, before going back to the USA.

England in 1943 

Steinbeck must have found England in 1943 a cold and cheerless country though he does not write about it in detail. Not only could places not be identified, but all signs and directions for road and rail had either been taken down or daubed out. No invading army, whether arriving by sea or parachute, was to know where they were or how to get where they were going. There is no evidence that Steinbeck experienced this or found it a hardship but one thing he did learn as a war correspondent was what it means to be nameless, as he watched hundreds of soldiers boarding a troopship and feels for their anonymity; identical in uniform and helmets save by the numbers on their helmets by which they are checked off, the nearest they get to individuality.¹¹

Many other oddities he may have noticed. No sign of any iron railings, or indeed iron anywhere. Parks, churches and buildings all looked undressed and unprotected with all the familiar external metal trappings removed and melted down for armaments. Street lights and illumination at bus stops, railway stations and in shop windows were either non-existent or dimmed almost to the point of imperceptibility. Traffic after dark crawled along with headlights that barely showed the roadside. Pedestrians wended their way through the dark streets aided only by a torch (flashlight) for guidance, longing on the one hand for a full moon and a clear sky to make the torch unnecessary and on the other for plenty of cloud cover to reduce the chances of an air attack. Buses and trains were reduced to minimum service and those that survived were usually heavily overcrowded with standing room only. Rationing was universal and tight. Every individual had a ration book and coupons covering almost everything from sweets to clothes, nearly all food and even furniture; the only new furniture available was labelled ‘utility’, manufactured to basic standards and offering very little choice. Under eighteens had blue ration books with special nutritional allowances, and even as late as 1947 bananas were still only available on a blue ration book.

All the coast line was protected by barbed wire, with fortified pillboxes every few miles, all prepared for the possibility of a German invasion. Areas most susceptible (notably the east and south coasts) were denied access to anyone with no direct business there, and bays and inlets were specially protected from German U-boats (submarines). 

Every town or city had its Dad’s Army (officially Home Guard), men too old or otherwise unfit for full combat, who wore soldier uniforms and were trained in defence, all prepared for an invasion. In large cities and small towns volunteers (mainly women and young people in high schools) manned searchlight units, constantly swirling across the night sky on the outlook for enemy planes, with all guns at the ready. Schools, shops, offices, pubic buildings and every row of houses all had their rota of fire watchers taking turns to spend nights on the premises so as to be prepared for incendiary bombing. Windows were boarded up or secured with tape to prevent splintering either as a result of direct bombing or bomb blasts.

Steinbeck makes very little mention of any of these things. This may be because, as an American, a journalist, living close to the troops and spending most of his time in the capital, they passed him by, but it may also be that for a man like Steinbeck what mattered more was the spirit of the people, who may not have been 'out' but were certainly 'down', still suffering from the bruises of the Battle of Britain. 

For Steinbeck, however, however, the ‘quality of life’ was not to be judged in terms of things and possessions, gained or lost, but rather in the people’s values and character, as evidenced in his tribute to the people of Dover, describing them as ‘incorrigibly, incorruptibly, unimpressed with the intimacies of conversation mingled with serious opinions of the broader vision of the war’s events;’ in fact, not unlike the Okies in The Grapes of Wrath though nowhere (I think) does he make the comparison.

What Steinbeck Saw

When Steinbeck came to England he brought with him his skills as a writer, observer and commentator, already well-honed and demonstrated, together with his commitment to people, his concern for humanity rather than issues, and a capacity to empathise with people living on the raw edges of the consequences of issues beyond their control. When he left, after nearly six months, he returned with those skills and qualities all intact to which the war experience had added a new dimension. Having drawn attention to what he seems not to have noticed or failed to mention, reading his letters and reports give us insight into what he saw.

Separation

Many people in England, for example, discovered in those six years that whatever their class, background or education, their emotions had much in common. Everybody knew what it meant for a happily united family suddenly to be separated, miles apart, with very little communication, lots of fear, and anxiety. A woman, fearing for anything up to six years for the safety of the one she loved existing in a world she had never known and could never enter, and wondering whether the same man would return. Soldiers, worried not so much for the safety of their family (though that was a factor) as for the faithfulness of their wives. Separation was something Steinbeck saw and understood only too well. 

Writing to his new wife in July 1943 Steinbeck shares the experience of ‘separation’ and the pain of waiting, what it means to him and to millions of others and what it might do to their marriages. Scarcely had he arrived in London than he was bemoaning the fact that he had not heard from Gwyn; after a week, in which he had not heard from her or anybody else, he was ‘lonesome beyond words’, and by mid July he is longing to ‘go home with the letter’, adding that separation may seem a short time when it is over but now ‘it seems interminable like an illness,¹² to which all around him and many more would have readily cried ‘Amen’. Writing later from ‘Somewhere in Africa’, and having heard not a squeak from her in six weeks, he says the worst thing is the loneliness, confessing to bad dreams and occasional fits of jealousy ‘baseless and useless but seem to come on without warning’.¹³ Most of them would say ‘Amen’ to that too.

Information

With loneliness and isolation goes the difficulty of getting information. In a world where communications were so very different from today families with someone ‘at the front’ in World War 1 (1914-18) would often tell how their heart missed a beat when they saw the telegraph boy turn the corner on his bike and enter their street. They knew at once ‘someone was missing’ but which house was he making for? The Second World War was not quite the same but not very different and of that Steinbeck had his own personal experience.

On July 7 his brother-in-law was reported ‘missing’. The only other information they got was ‘missing in action’. Even those two words still left lots of questions and no answers. Almost the news that he was dead might have been better, but all they could discover was that ‘he went out with troops and did not return’.¹⁴ 

But then alongside the heartache and the privation Steinbeck also knew the joy and the thrill of the homecoming. Writing on September 20 ‘from a ship’ (it was a troopship but he could give no further information) after the Salerno landing he can’t help but be excited. He knows he is now on his way back and when he arrives in Italy two days later and collects all the letters from his wife over the previous six weeks his joy is unbounded. The news and the stories may be two months old and no longer very relevant but he spent a whole evening devouring them and experienced the joy of being in touch once again.¹⁵

Personal Joy and Pain

But then, sensitive man that he is, moments of personal joy must never blot out moments of continuing pain for others, and he experiences that when back in London he still finds soldiers with no immediate hope of reunion still shuffling round the streets. They say they are looking for a girl — ‘any girl’ — but it isn’t that at all. Joy because home is in sight. Pain because he knows, and they know, that they will not, and neither he nor they know that for some of them it may still be another two years, if indeed at all.¹⁶

Some of these emotions are summed up in his appreciation of Ernie Pyle,¹⁷ his closest friend among the war correspondents who mirrored the ordinary soldier, ‘identified with every soldier in the army’ and who ‘died every time a man was killed’, as he describes what it was like living under fire — the feeling that you can’t take it any more while at the same time living with the conviction and commitment that it is where you are, it is your job and you have to get on with it. Steinbeck’s personal letters home suggest that even a few months as war correspondent intensified the experience, similar to the soldier though in his case less intense, less prolonged and (some would say) less dangerous, though one should not overlook the fact that he had a very narrow escape from a German bomb, shattering both ear drums and resulting in an early withdrawal from the front and a journey home.¹⁸

Had he been able to travel more widely, visiting smaller towns and rural hamlets, he would have found further similarities with civilian life, which for most people meant carrying on very much as usual as far as the limitations of war would allow, and it was not unusual for men who had been away for months, if not years, coming home, visiting friends and workmates for whom little if anything seemed to have changed, as they never gave up hope and looked and longed for the day when it would all be over. What mattered to them was what mattered to Steinbeck — the human qualities of courage and determination, twinned with the importance of love and relationships.

Self-discovery

Steinbeck writes not so much about the rightness or the wrongness of the war or the details of the way in which it was conducted but rather of its impact on people which he saw with his own eyes at close quarters and felt it chime in with his own experience. Simmonds¹⁹ draws attention to his skill in revealing ‘his own emotions, masked though they may be by a carefully manipulated objective viewpoint, but mirrored in the thoughts and actions of the men he writes about’, citing the six ‘Troopship’ dispatches¹⁹ as a good example.  At no point does he complain nor does he make much of what the people of Europe were going through but what he describes, particularly in his letters, would leave any Englishman alive at the time and reading it today say, ‘We know how he felt because he knew how we felt.’

In less than six months Steinbeck has learned something not only about war and European attitudes but also, like many others in similar circumstances, he had learned something about himself, perhaps nothing that he did not know before but now he knew it in a different way. In a letter to his wife, telling her how in the action at Salerno he did what he had always wanted to do and did not flinch, adding, 

In less than six months he has touched something of the traumas of a six-year war struggle.

Steinbeck in Action

Steinbeck, War Correspondent, arrived in Europe in June 1943 and left in December, during which time he sent 86 dispatches to the New York Herald Tribune, many of which were syndicated around the world, to provide a vivid picture of what was going on for the benefit of American readers. Subsequently they were put together to produce Once There Was a War.²¹

Critical fellow correspondents treated him with suspicion if not disdain.²² He was a journalist not a professional war correspondent, but his remit was to eschew the sort of copy war correspondents were expected to supply, covering day-to-day hard news on the progress of the war, and instead to seek out human stories of ordinary men and women, service men and civilians, going about their life and performing often boring wartime duties, which he did admirably. His first dispatch, sitting on board waiting to sail and gazing at the troops in their thousands sitting on the dock waiting to embark, sets the tone:

It was a different approach and as a result an island deemed to be dry of stories suddenly became alive with more human anecdotes and incidents than Steinbeck had time to tell.²⁴

For five months he lived with the troops, visited air bases, travelled by troopship to Africa and took part in the Italian landings, but he never lost the human touch and much of his work is descriptive of ordinary people and their daily lives; how they shaped up to crises, their heartaches and hardships, worries and anxieties, including how the American troops felt on meeting their allies for the first time. The result is a series of snapshots, not so much about the war as about the people who fought, suffered and endured. though not without clear comments and judgements on wars and the people who fight them.

Post-War Reflections

Reading his dispatches subsequently in preparation for the collection he found them equally interesting for two powerful conventions which were not reported.²⁵

One was the way everything was dominated by, and subjected to, the War Effort. Anything which interfered with or ran counter to the War Effort was inevitably bad, and if a correspondent forgot this and broke the rules then the censors, Military Command and the Newspapers were quickly after him. Such imposed and often self-imposed rules he found very amusing when he reviewed them a decade later.

The other was the Army Mentality. The infantry soldier, for example, carries the brunt of any attack but was never allowed to question anything that happened or that he was required to do, and woe betide him if he did. Never was there a cruel, ambitious or ignorant commander. Young men were no longer interested in girls, despite the fact that so much evidence (pin-ups and the like in every barracks) pointed in the opposite direction, and when things went wrong it was either ‘always foreseen’ or ‘part of a wider strategy’.

Overall critics vary in their assessment of the extent to which the whole experience determined the pattern of much that was to come, both in terms of creativity and critical reaction to his work, especially East of Eden and The Winter of Our Discontent, though regarded as ephemeral and inferior to his earlier and more creative productions by some who firmly believe that ‘he never really re-gained his pre-war prose style in his post-war work’.²⁶

Whether this was the result of the war experience or whether the war experience simply marked a watershed in a process of change that was happening anyway is a matter for debate. Others might argue that in their own way they contributed to make Steinbeck the writer that he was in the post-war period, just as The Grapes of Wrath made him what he was in the pre-war years thereby contributing to the quality of his writing afterwards.

When Steinbeck returned to England in the summer of 1968, where  he spent six months based at Bruton in Somerset something of a rest cure and a chance to explore Malory’s Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in his quest for the Holy Grail, it was a different Steinbeck and a different England. (See Steinbeck in England and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur - Success or Failure?).