My War with the United States

This eccentric account of the author's war service was published in 1937. He explains in the foreword that the chapters of the book were translated from the German entries he made in the diary he kept during his service in the United States Army. The author served with a New York State field hospital unit, beginning at a fort in Oswego on Lake Ontario and later at an army psychiatric hospital at Fort Porter, Buffalo. During his time at Buffalo, the author himself experiences mental illness and protects his sanity by transporting his thoughts to the rural idyll of his Austrian childhood:
“I have found a way to calm myself: I go myself to the long baths. There is a bathroom for the men that is not much used, as they prefer showers. I lie in it whenever I can and I have started to think in pictures and make myself several scenes to which I can escape instantly when the danger appears.”

The author, Lüdwig Bemelmans (born 27 April 1898), the son of a Belgian artist, was born in South Tyrol and grew up in the central Austrian town of Gmunden and in his mother’s home city of Regensburg, Bavaria. He emigrated to the United States in December 1914 and worked for several years in hotels and restaurants. He joined the army in 1917 but was restricted to home service due to being a citizen of an enemy state. In the 1920s he did some work as a newspaper cartoonist but he did not achieve success as a published author until the 1920s. His first children's book was published in 1934 and his Madeline series commenced in 1939. He won the Caldecott Medal (for the most distinguished American picture book for children) in 1954. He also wrote several autobiographical books and some travel literature.

At one point during his war service, a colonel from headquarters sent for him and revealed that someone in New York had told the police he was a German spy and that the claim had been investigated. He writes elsewhere that “it is fine of the Americans that now, here in the war, they let me speak German, tell me that Germany is beautiful and don't say a word that I have a stack of German books and many German ideas. I am truly thankful for all this and respect it.” He compares the American mindset with the German one:
“I am thankful that there is little or no patriotism among the soldiers. They will fight and even be killed but they do it, even the crude ones, with the same feeling as if they were repairing a truck and it rolled over them. This seems a bigger field of sentiment and thinking than the Germans are capable of and I think it makes men better soldiers. The Germans are tied up with three little holy grails; they constantly shout and march around with them...”