From the Burma Road to Kunming, China to Shanghai, a 20-year old US Army Sergeant experiences the perils and pleasures that can come only from the Orient---especially during a World War---from November 1944 to November 1945. Two of the 54 poems have been published. "The Five and Dime", was featured in a newspaper's Sunday Supplement, and "Cadillac Kate" was selected for a well known collection of poems a few years back. Experience the War through a young soldier's eyes. From the people he met and the women he loved, to the hospitals, nurses and more. I was lying in bed in a Kunming tent My nurse was a Burmese beauty; She said, "You really velly sick." I said, "and you really are some cutie!" There's a guy in the next bed, Says, "It's called lack-a-nookie." The nurse giggled a bit, and then asked, "You guys wan some milk, and maybe a cookie?" "The doctor," she said, "he 'dink mararia. I tell him, I 'don dink so. I see whole bunch in India, But here in China, I dink No" You will cry a little, laugh a lot and wonder why you never heard of the Yunan Province where opium was legal, the Chinese generals hated each other, and Shanghai was the only port in the world that took in Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, etc. And what the city was like a few weeks after WW2 ended.
About the Author: Robert E. Maloney was the first person in his family to be born in a hospital (Keene, NH---1924). He served in the US Army from March 1943 until December 1948. Uncle Sam happily provided passage, with beer and cigarette money, to some exotic places like, Bombay and Ledo (India), Bhamo and Lashio (Burma), and Kunming and Shanghai (China). Thanks to the GI Bill, he received two degrees (Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management) from Northeastern University. He married two wonderful women, both now deceased. He made a decent living, enjoyed spending most of it, as a mechanical engineer (during the cold war) and as a conniving stockbroker during the roaring eighties. His children are up north swatting bugs and cursing the New England and New York traffic. He has another book due out on the heels of this one. It is a trio titled, "A World War II Trilogy". He expects it to outsell "From Here to Eternity". And says, "If it doesn't, at this stage of my game (age 90), who will give a damn one way or the other.