Very few men in an Army do all the fighting and dying. I didn’t fight or die but I was witness to a great many who did.” “Anyone who lives through a war without being killed or seriously wounded has had an experience that can be matched by no other. It is likely that I saw things most people will never see unless they were there.” Andy Rooney wrote those words, and Paul W. Wittmer was there. He did fight. He did live to come home. Many of the men Wittmer sailed with died and many returned home, too.
Wittmer has put together a collection of a unique type of story he describes as “about the individual recollection of significant experiences and incidents while on board a submarine during a war patrol.” Wittmer’s inspiration and driving force to publish A Big Anthology of World War II U.S. Submarine and Historic Stories was the desire to get authentic stories from the participants, the living veterans, so no one else could re-write their history. A noble undertaking.
Along with the help of many volunteers, Paul W. Wittmer has collected, edited, and published more than 128 stories. The stories run the gamut from maiden voyages, to fierce battles in scenes like Midway Island and Pearl Harbor, to personal memories and the “Story of Taps.” Some of the stories were published previously in the now defunct Polaris magazine. Polaris was the official publication of The United States Submarine Veterans of World War II, a congressionaly-chartered veterans organization that was established to "perpetuate the memory of those shipmates who gave their lives in submarine warfare" in World War II. Others appeared in newsletters of local and state chapters, and now in book form.
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