Beschreibung
Two small quartos volumes. Bound typed manuscripts with hand-painted cloth covers and pictorial endpapers. *A Soldier's Experience at Home and Abroad, 1943-1945*. 324pp. with three added maps and tipped-in letter; *For Gentlemen Only, 1945-1947* variously paginated [approximately 300pp], with a few holograph text illustrations. Mild external wear, else fine. The first volume is Signed by Spotz. A pair of substantial, elaborately produced, and highly unusual handmade books, reflecting the experiences, preoccupations, and humor of an enlisted serviceman in World War II. Created by Robert F. "Bob" Spotz, an Army quartermaster who saw service in the 347th Quartermaster Battalion in Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the 4152 Quartermaster Battalion in North Africa. Spotz mustered out of the Army in 1945 as a Staff Sergeant; genealogical websites provide no further details on his life or post-army career, but we do find a 1998 death notice for a "Robert F. Spotz" at Sun City Center, Florida. The first title provides a meticulous, almost day-by-day manuscript recollection of the author's wartime service, beginning with basic training in Virginia and ending with quartermaster duty in Italy and North Africa. Spotz is less concerned with recording the larger events of the war than with conveying a realistic picture of what daily life was like for a rank-and-file enlisted man, and he accomplishes this in an artless, vernacular style: despite frequent misspellings and grammatical errors the manuscript is deeply engaging and unquestionably authentic. Of added interest is a letter, tipped into the manuscript following the final page of text, addressed to Spotz by one "Benjamin Ansah-Okrofi" of Accra (then Gold Coast, now Ghana), who is identified by context as a civilian typist assigned to Spotz's unit who produced the typed manuscript of this memoir. In the letter, dated 1947, Mr. Ansah-Okrofi recounts these recently past events and complains that, since the Army's departure, life has been reduced to mere subsistence for residents of Accra. The second manuscript is a rather eccentric compendium of racy, and at times pornographic materials, including jokes, one-liners, short-stories, and doggerel verse gathered by Spotz from around the globe during his years of military service. In his foreword Spotz states: "The following fictitious stories and poems were compiled by me in the United States, Italy, North-Africa and on the Equator at the Gold Coast. There is very little doubt that you have ever read or heard any of the stories in this book. Many were given to me that were written in a foreign language, which of course had to first be translated for me [.] read at your own risk and happy reading to you all. ." Though the foreword is dated 1943-45, the pagination is not continuous and the text includes several additions that were obviously made later (with one insertion dated as late as 1978!) suggesting the manuscript may have been the lifelong project of a connoisseur of racy stories. Together, a significant manuscript journal of the times during World War Two, paired with a remarkable work of amateur anthologizing, each housed in an exceptional hand-painted vernacular binding. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 404624
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