Back From Tobruk

by Croswell Bowen, Betsy Connor Bowen (Editor)

Overview

In 1941 photographer Croswell Bowen joined American Field Service volunteer ambulance drivers and served alongside the British Eighth Army during World War II. As the war continued to escalate, he would have his mental, emotional, and physical well-being tested beyond anything he ever imagined. Back from Tobruk is the remarkable account of one man’s journey across a world torn apart, with only his camera and his moral convictions to guide him. As Bowen watched the number of wounded and dying soldiers grow, he struggled to understand the very nature of war itself. A lifelong Catholic and devoted pacifist, he tried to reconcile his commitment to nonviolence with his growing belief that the end of this war would finally bring peace to the world. As he spent time in hospitals and field dressing stations as both a caregiver and a patient, he witnessed soldiers reaching out to their former battlefield enemies, showing grace and compassion in a world seemingly bereft of both. “When the great leaders sit down at the peace table,” he wrote of his fellow servicemen, “they might take a lesson from those men.” Later a successful journalist and author, Bowen never forgot what he had witnessed during his time in Africa and the Middle East. Back from Tobruk documents the brutality of war and the resilience of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597979856
Publisher:	Potomac Books
Publication date:	11/01/2012
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

BETSY CONNOR BOWEN has worked as a community organizer, elementary school teacher, college instructor and assistant professor, securities analyst, journalist, and filmmaker. She is the author of a young adult novella, Spring Bear, and the editor of her father's World War II memoir, Back from Tobruk (Potomac Books, 2012).

Table of Contents

Foreword Betsy Connor Bowen xiii

Preface xxiii

Introduction xxv

1 Off to the Wars 1

2 Convoy to the Front 57

3 Tobruk 93

4 Flight from Terror 135

5 Panic in Cairo 161

6 War's Reverse Supply Lines 175

7 Home from the Wars 195

Afterword 209

Appendix A An Essay on Photography 213

Appendix B AFS Volunteers Who Gave Their Lives in North Africa and the Middle East, 1939-1945 219

About the Author and Editor 221

Editorial Reviews

“As World War II recedes in human memory, we are left largely with statistics, battles, generals, destruction. Back from Tobruk, Croswell Bowen’s memoir of the war in the desert in the summer of 1942—published, at last, more than forty years after his death—tells what the war was like for an American attempting to do his part as ambulance driver and photographer. It is a cultural gem, recording Bowen’s personal awakening to war’s reality at the most human, individual level. Deeply moving.”—Nigel Hamilton, author of Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years 1942–1944

Nigel Hamilton

“I found Back from Tobruk fascinating. A sensitive young American journalist watching the British at war and play in the Middle East does some of his best reporting when he becomes a stretcher case and is evacuated through various field hospitals, fraternizing with the wounded of both sides. By rescuing her father’s unpublished memoir from undeserved oblivion, writer Betsy Connor Bowen has done us all a favor.”—Colin Smith, military historian and coauthor of Alamein: War without Hate

Colin Smith

I found Back from Tobruk fascinating. A sensitive young American journalist watching the British at war and play in the Middle East does some of his best reporting when he becomes a stretcher case and is evacuated through various field hospitals, fraternizing with the wounded of both sides. By rescuing her father’s unpublished memoir from undeserved oblivion, writer Betsy Connor Bowen has done us all a favor.”—Colin Smith, military historian and coauthor of Alamein: War without Hate

“As World War II recedes in human memory, we are left largely with statistics, battles, generals, destruction. Back from Tobruk, Croswell Bowen’s memoir of the war in the desert in the summer of 1942—published, at last, more than forty years after his death—tells what the war was like for an American attempting to do his part as ambulance driver and photographer. It is a cultural gem, recording Bowen’s personal awakening to war’s reality at the most human, individual level. Deeply moving.”—Nigel Hamilton, author of Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years 1942–1944

From the Publisher