Playing with the Enemy

"Playing with the Enemy," is a book about war, but is it a true war story. I believe that it is a true war story because the book has nothing to do with the war, even though the story is during war times and of a soldier. The main character Gene Moore was a star catcher on his town baseball team. He could throw a runner out without getting out of his stance and was amazing at the plate. Word spread around the country about Gene and soon the Brooklyn Dodgers decided to try and snatch him up.

Gene was having the greatest time of his life, playing ball and getting recruited. This all ended when he was drafted, or so he thought. When he got to his training camp a man was there to tell him the good news that he would be entertaining the troops by playing ball in Africa. This pleased Gene, but he was still upset that he would not be playing for the Dodgers yet. He ended up playing in Africa for a while until his team was need for a secret mission in the states. The team would be guarding Germans captured from the U-505 submarine. All the ball players thought that this would be great, they would be going to the mainland, playing ball, and be closer to their families. They were wrong when they got to the camp they were told there would be no time for baseball. They find time though to play catch and hit some balls, but never were able to get a game started. Until one day when they decided to teach the Germans.

Gene was the lead on this project of teaching the German POW to play baseball. Each player that wanted to teach them had a shift they would take each day. As time went on more players wanted to teach them for the sake of being able to play. Not soon enough for most of them the camp commander aloud them to set up a field and play against the Germans. The game was a good one since the Germans had learned fast. It went all the way to the last out and batter, Gene. He hit a long ball that took a good bounce giving him an easy triple, but that was not enough he wanted to win and be the hero. He ran home and as he slid into home his foot got caught on the plate and his ankle snapped. After this happened he was discharged from the army for being injured.

Now it is time to decide if Playing with the Enemy is a true war story according to O'Brien. The first reason I believe that it is a true war story is that it is not about the war. There was barely any scenes of them being in a fire fight or being in a place where they were being attacked. Also the story does not make you feel uplifted in the end. It may make you feel uplifted in some parts of the story, but in the end, even the things that went right go bad. This is why I believe the Playing with the Enemy is a true war story.