A Ramble Through My War

by Charles F. Marshall

Charles Marshall, a Columbia University graduate and ardent opponent of U.S. involvement in World War II, entered the army in 1942 and was assigned to intelligence on the sheer happenstance that he was fluent in German. On many occasions to come, Marshall would marvel that so fortuitous an edge spared him from infantry combat - and led him into the most important chapter of his life. In A Ramble through My War, he records that passage, drawing from an extensive daily diary he kept clandestinely at the time. Sent to Italy in 1944, Marshall participated in the vicious battle of the Anzio beachhead and in the Allied advance into Rome and other areas of Italy. He assisted the invasion of southern France and the push through Alsace, across the Rhine, and through the heart of Germany into Austria. His responsibilities were to examine captured documents and maps, check translations, interrogate prisoners, become an expert on German forces, weaponry, and equipment - and, when his talent for li