Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506020034
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY ROBERT HILLDRUP
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For those who believe Winston Groom's claim to fame lies solely as the fictional father of Forrest Gump, this book should serve as a reminder of other talents and other times.
The other talents are those Groom possesses as a war novelist. "Better Times Than These," his first novel, is one of only two or three fictional treatments of the Vietnam War that shows much promise of endurance.
And the other times are the American Civil War, specifically as the sub-title of this book states, From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War.
The year is 1864. In the East, Robert E. Lee and the courageous Army of Northern Virginia are being pressed slowly but inevitably by U.S. Grant. In the "West" as it was then known, Atlanta faces destruction while one-legged John Bell Hood seeks to relieve the pressure by a thrust into Tennessee.
Looming over all of this was the deranged William Tecumseh Sherman who planned an all-out war on civilians and their property as he marched toward the sea to cut the South in half, leaving a level of bitterness and hatred behind him that has not died out entirely even today in parts of the ravaged South.
It is in assessing and evaluating these depredations - and similar ones done to innocent civilians in the Valley of Virginia - that Groom brings his own skills and backgrounds. Those who think America made war on innocent civilians in Vietnam, he notes, should have seen - and remember - what "Cump" Sherman did to truly innocent people in Georgia and the Carolinas.
In effect, Groom notes, it was Sherman, not some anonymous American officer in Vietnam, who first applied the theory that the only way to save the South (for the American nation) was to destroy it.
Groom takes no new position on the varied and substantive reports of Sherman's insanity; certainly Sherman was wildly unhinged early in his career, which makes the cold rationality of his treatment of Southern civilians all the more frightening.
It was ironic, Groom notes, that Sherman's madness complemented Grant's drunkenness, or that the two were to emerge as the most feared of Union army commanders. It was a relationship that Sherman tacitly recognized in his comment, "Well, Grant, you supported me when I was crazy, and I supported you when you were drunk."
Groom's commentary is not restricted to Sherman, however. He devotes as much, if not more, to the Confederate John Bell Hood, a hugely popular officer with many of his men, but one flawed in the way of so many second level Confederate commanders - men who could accomplish spectacular things at the division level, but when moved to corps or army command, somehow fell short.
"Shrouds of Glory" is a good, solid piece of popular work, written with the novelist's skill and the eye of the avocational historian. If the book breaks no new ground in studies of the war in the West and in Sherman's infamous "march," it is still a reminder that Winston Groom is no one-dimensional writer.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
by CNB