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Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen | 
 enlarge | Author: Bob Greene
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $1.06
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Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 20598
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 006008197X
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5378282
EAN: 9780060081973
ASIN: 006008197X
Publication Date: May 1, 2003
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Amazon.com Review
Millions of American soldiers, many of whom had never left their hometowns before, crossed the nation by rail during the years of World War II on their way to training camps and distant theaters of battle. In a little town in Nebraska, countless thousands of them met with extraordinary hospitality--the "miracle" of veteran journalist Bob Greene's title. "The best America there ever was. Or at least, whatever might be left of it." So Greene writes of North Platte, now a quiet town along the interstate, its main street all but dead. It was a quiet town then, too, at the outbreak of the war, but still a hive of activity as its citizens gathered to provide, at their own expense, coffee, sandwiches, books, playing cards, and time to the scared young men who rolled through by the trainload, "telling them that their country cared about them." Greene's pages are full of the voices of those who were there, soldiers and townspeople alike, who took part in what amounted to small acts of heroism, given the shortages and rationing of the time. Greene, generous in his praise if rather disheartened by the modern world, against which he contrasts the past, turns in a remarkable account of the home front. It deserves the widest audience. ---Gregory McNamee
Product Description
In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today—a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons. During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen. Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen—staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers—was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended. In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Required Reading March 3, 2008
C. Kirsche (East Coast, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this book because it was required reading for one complete grade in our high school of 2500 students last summer. I felt that if it was read by them, I should read it. I enjoyed learning about a part of history with which I was not familiar. Parts of the book moved a little slow but it is an easy read and worth the time. I especially enjoyed the interview snippets with the women who worked at the canteen and the servicemen who visited the canteen. I am in awe of the way North Platte ran the canteen for so long with so little. Bless them.
 Book December 25, 2007
Christine Benedict (Princeton,WI)
This is a great read. I learned something I didn't know went on in this time of history.
Forgotten History October 25, 2007
M. A. Ramos (Florida USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is about the inspirational story of North Platte, Nebraska, a town that served as a brief haven for millions of World War II American soldiers. From Christmas Day 1941 until the end of the war, the residents welcomed every troop train with food, drink, magazines and words of encouragement. This was a brief moment of time that sustained these soldiers when they were away from their families performing their duty. And that they still remember and appreciate to this very day.
 nostalgic look at the past January 6, 2007
Meme (Boston, MA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a book I read for my book club. I liked the story yet I felt it became repetitive. I think I would like to see more pictures and a few less stories. I found myself wishing the book would end and kept going back to the photos.
Love the story, despise the writing and the writer November 8, 2006
Harry Eagar (Maui)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Six million boiled eggs, more or less.
Fried chicken, sandwiches, cookies, milk, birthday cakes, chewing gum, candy, matches for six million.
North Platte, a small town in western Nebraska, was a water stop for steam locomotives. From a few days after Pearl Harbor until 1946, the people of North Platte and the surrounding farm and ranch country of Nebraska and eastern Colorado met every troop train that came through town.
Dozens, sometimes, in a single day, at any hour. During the 10-minute stops, the ladies of the area handed out food and smiles.
No other place did that. When Bob Greene tracked down some of the men who were met at the North Platte Canteen, most of them started crying. It was, they said, the nicest thing that happened to them during the war.
You can take it as heartwarming or as a slap at the rest of the country, much of which was indifferent or hostile to men in uniform in those days. In places like Norfolk, Va., there were signs on stores that said: No sailors or dogs allowed. Either way, it's a remarkable story.
It started with Rae Wilson, then 26, whose brother was in the Nebraska National Guard. She thought, mistakenly, that her brother was coming through town on a troop train and wrote a letter to the North Platte Daily Bulletin suggesting a canteen to greet the local boys.
Somehow, the community recognized that all the soldiers and sailors passing through were their boys, and they spontaneously formed the canteen.
Greene takes the story as purely heartwarming. The mothers, some of whose sons had been killed in combat, coming down day after day, the young girls excited to meet the handsome boys even if only for minutes.
It was a women's outfit. Men participated, but only in the background.
The story never got the attention it deserved, and Greene was barely in time to salvage it. The heroism of the people was worthy of a better messenger.
Greene's attempt to explain why this happened in North Platte and not anywhere else is superficial.
To him, it was a remarkable effort from a town of 12,000 people who had been through the Great Depression. But in fact western Nebraska's economy had collapsed in 1922. Most of the banks had failed even before the stock market crashed in 1929.
The rest of Greene's ruminations are equally ill-informed, trivial or both.
The writing is as inept as we have come to expect from Greene, a long-time Chicago Tribune columnist until he was forced to resign in disgrace for a serious violation of ethics. The book does not appear to have been edited or even proofread.
The story is wonderful, though, and worth reading anyhow.
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