Binding Up the Wounds: An American Soldier in Occupied Germany, 1945--1946

by Leon C. Standifer

In his highly acclaimed Not in Vain, Leon C. Standifer recounted his experiences as a small-town Mississippi boy who at age nineteen found himself fighting as a combat infantryman in World War II France and Germany. Binding Up the Wounds carries the story beyond V-E Day to describe what the author saw, heard, felt, and learned as a member of the American occupation army in the homeland of its defeated enemy.

Standifer, who...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807120944
• ISBN13: 9780807120941
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

After The War.

"Binding Up The Wounds" by Leon C. Standifer. Subtitled: "An American Soldier In Occupied Germany, 1945-1946" Louisiana State University Press, 1997.The theme of this book is set by the quotation of the part of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which we all know and which is triggered in our memories by "With malice toward none..." In this, his second book on the War, retired professor Leon C. Standifer recounts his experiences in dealing with the conquered German people, learning a little of the German language and learning, it seems, a lot about life and the opposite sex. Professor Standifer has written a very charitable book, using the Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) for a framework for a theme of forgiveness and understanding with the defeated Germans. So many Americans, who tend to quote this section of Lincoln's Address, neglect that in that Address, Lincoln also said that it would be just if the tragedy of the Civil War continue "... until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword". This clearly applied to the Germans who had drawn so much blood.In his first book (see "Not In Vain: A Rifleman Remembers World War II"), the good professor gives the story of his days in combat and how he earned the Combat Infantryman's Badge, that pale blue emblem of having served on the front line. In this present book, Standifer tells the story of his unit's adventures as they begin to understand the Germans as fellow human beings, and not as targets on the field. Since he started out as a very young man from the "back woods" of Mississippi, he grew up in combat and then he was first exposed to urban life in the old cities of the Sudetenland and Bavaria. Throughout the year in occupied Europe, (he says that he had a "ball"), his experiences were firmly filtered through his fundamental Christianity and his background in segregated Mississippi. I can understand some of his background. A dozen years after the time of his book, (1958), I was stationed at Naval Air Technical Training Center, Memphis, and, as a Native New Yorker, I found the segregation in Tennessee to be irritating and different enough to be exotic. Further, in all of Memphis, they did not know what a pizza was, let alone know how to make pizza. (I suspect that national chain restaurants have changed all that today.) So, Standifer's outsider's account of beer drinking, Catholic Bavarians rings true. I suspect that some of the nostalgia that seems apparent on the author's part is due to the fact that 1945-1946 was a happy year when he was young. This is an excellent personal memoir.