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Carl F. Heintze —

Going Home
Two on Two
Crush & Heat
An Island in the Turquoise Sea
All They Had

 

745
A Memoir of World War II

by Carl F. Heintze


In the Dictionary of Military Occupations
the code number is 745.
It stands for rifleman, basic.
His job is to close with the enemy, to kill capture
or wound him and to take his ground.


In 1944 as World War II came to its final stages the desperate need of the Allies and the Axis was for manpower. Casualties were heavy in the last months of the war on both sides. Both  sought any one they could find capable of fighting.

Carl Heintze suddenly found himself  reclassified from limited service (as a “tailor”) to general service, (as a rifleman, basic). He was given the briefest training and sent to Europe as an infantry replacement: a body to fill a gap in ranks left by death or wounds.

This memoir is the story of how he succeeded in fulfilling that challenge, of how he made it through seven and a half months of combat, of how he shared in victory, of the men with whom he fought and what happened to them, told as he remembered it eight years later. It is a story rife with pain and endurance, the lot of the infantryman, a 745.

 

745 - A Memoir of World War II
228 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-61170-168-5
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Selected Poems
1940—1990

by Carl F. Heintze


These poems were gathered from more than one hundred others I have saved over the years and those which I wished people to read. I stopped writing poetry in my fifties (with an occasional lapse) and these verses span approximately the time from when I entered college until I became a grandfather. I am proud of one or two, but less enthused by others.

I never thought of myself as a poet—indeed, I am not sure what a poet is—but if it means wringing from personal experience some words that seem to belong together, then I think these pages fulfill that definition.

Many poems are concerned with war and death. I would like to think they also reflect a time when war and death or the cold war and death were important themes in history. They certainly reflect how I felt about both at the time.

I do not know why I stopped writing poetry, but clearly it was in part because I no longer needed it as a means of expression. Nevertheless, I think it worth saving these poems, if only because they are a record of the past. —CFH

Selected Poems 1940-1990
82 pages • 6" x 9"
ISBN: 978-1-61170-152-4


Published by: Robertson Publishing
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Going Home

by Carl F. Heintze


Going Home is the story of a Japanese-American who was born on Kauai and returns to the island to attend his mother’s funeral.

Wilson Tanaka is engaged in developing a non-invasive heart device (that has not been working properly) and is also is in the process of being divorced by his wife of ten years, a Silicon Valley corporate executive.

On Kauai Wilson meets an Irish-American pediatrician. He later runs into her at the mainland hospital, where his device is being tested. Difficulties with the device persist. Just as it is about to be tested again Wilson is called back to Kauai, because of his father’s illness, leaving his pediatrician friend to stand by her patient alone. Read how Wilson resolves this impasse and reaches a decision about how his life will evolve.


The author has been an annual commuter to Kauai, Hawaii, since 1975 and the island remains one of his favorite places. Going Home is the result of one of those visits. On his way back to the mainland Carl sat next to a Japanese-American who had just attended his mother’s funeral. The result: first a prize winning short story and then this novel.


Going Home
198 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-61170-138-8


Published by: Robertson Publishing
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Two
on
Two

Two Novellas

by Carl F. Heintze


Two stories about couples who struggle to find their way to
love and fulfillment.

In the first, Sunset, a pair of aging San Francisco lawyers, one divorced, the other widowed find their friendship turned to love as they were engaged in a case involving a Texas oil company named Sunset, owned and operated by a single  family.

The second novella, Uncertain, details what happens during the Vietnam War when a woman hospital chaplain in Monterey meets a general who has been relieved of his command in World War II because he would not order further attempts at advance in the battle for the Huertgen Forest. The chaplain is opposed to war, the general is uncertain where he stands, still striving to repair his damaged reputation, only to find the chaplain is  uncertain about her future  as well.

Read a sample from Two on Two

Two on Two. Two Novellas
326 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-61170-070-1


Published by: Robertson Publishing

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Crush
&
Heat

Two Stories of the Napa Valey

by Carl F. Heintze


The Napa and other valleys north of San Francisco Bay are the settings for these two novellas.

In Crush Charles Henry, a San Jose newspaper reporter, is enlisted by Gina Cefalu, a wealthy Napa Valley widow and former high school classmate, to try and find her missing son who has mysteriously vanished from his home and his marriage without leaving a message.

Henry agrees, but only after Gina has awakened the feeble flame of their former romance. Henry’s search proceeds through the Napa Valley and beyond with visits to the missing man’s brother, estranged from his mother, the brother’s wife, with hints from Esperanza, a woman who works at he Home Vineyard, the winery Gina has inherited from her husband. Along the way are surprises and twists and turns before the end of the search.

Heat is about another valley and another time long ago. A boy, Charles, perhaps Charles Henry, is working picking windfall peaches for his Uncle Will. The ranch lies at the edge of wild lands on which deer and even mountain lions range. A fire threatens the ranch and its crop, requiring of Charles and Uncle Will swift and difficult actions.

Read a sample from Crush & Heat

Crush & Heintze
212 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-935125-86-0


Published by: Robertson Publishing

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All They Had
Stories of War and it's Aftermath


by Carl F. Heintz
e


All They Had is about the comradeship of men at war and the trials which followed, told in a series of related short stories by Carl Heintze, an infantry replacement himself.

Band of Brothers? They were the dregs, the last manpower left to fight the closing days of World War II. They were the cast offs of service commands, the Air Force rejects. They were the college boys the Army had hoarded until then in the Army Specialized Training Program, the 18-year-olds just old enough to be drafted, but not to buy a drink. With inadequate and hasty training these infantry replacements were rushed overseas to fill the gaps in the frontline left by unexpected casualties.

For the Army, as usual, had miscalculated. The war had gone on longer than planned; new bodies were needed immediately.

They learned quickly, and if they didn’t, they became casualties themselves. And by their presence they brought the war in Europe to a close; they created a peace, they began a new world—a world bright with hope yet stained by the past.

They were indeed all we had, and all they had, they gave. They emerged into a strange new world of rubble and ruin which surrounded them in the fretful peace which followed the end of the war.

They were hardly a band of brothers, but for a little while they were comrades, and the memory of that time would be with them as long as they lived.

Read a sample from All They Had

All They Had

181 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-935125-03-7


Published by: Robertson Publishing

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An Island in the Turquoise Sea

Stories of Kauai

by Carl Heintze

“We all live on islands,” a old man counsels in “An Island in the Turquoise Sea,” the opening story in this collection of short stories by Carl Heintze.

But all islands are not the same. “An Island in the Turquoise Sea” tells of a special island, Kauai, the northern most inhabited of the Hawaiian islands, the first to emerge from the ocean eons ago. Its subject is its natives and its visitors. Once dependent on sugar cane, but now a tourists’ dream Kauai has drawn Heintze to it each year for thirty years.

“An Island in the Turquoise Sea” is his tribute to the island. In it Carl describes those who have lived there all their lives and those come for the first time. His stories tell how the island, though seemingly eternal, brings change, of how its trade winds, showers, clouds and surf offer new vistas, new life and new beginnings. Two of these stories are prize winners, but all are bewitching. Like Kauai itself, truly an island in the turquoise sea, they are unique.

 

Read a sample from An Island in the Turquois Sea

An Island in the Turquoise Sea
220 pages • 5" x 8"
ISBN: 978-1-935125-53-2

Published by: Robertson Publishing

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The Author:

Carl Heintze

Carl Heintze was a veterin newspaper reporter and science writer with 22 years experience on the San Jose, California, Mercury, and News and 17 years as a columnist for the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers.

Carl fought in the closing days of WWII. He served in Belgium and Germany in 1944 and 1945, fought in the opening days of the Battle of the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge and crossed the Rhine River on the Remagen Bridge the day after it was captured. He was wounded Jan. 1, 1945 in the Ardennes campaign and was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, and served in the occupation before returning to his home in California.

He was the author of half a dozen published short stories, ten juvenile science books, and ten years of columns for the Silicon Valley Newspaper Group.



Teen seeks stories of Latino veterans
By Dana Hull, Mercury News, Tue, Dec. 28, 2004

Carl Heintze and Robert Corpus
High school student Robert Corpus, right, interviews
World War II veteran Carl Heintze about his experiences.
Photo: Patrick Tehan / Mercury News

...On a recent afternoon, Robert raced from school... to interview Carl Heintze, a World War II veteran who was at the December 1944 German offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Robert's vast knowledge was quickly evident. He asked Heintze a number of questions about his life growing up in Napa and his student days at Stanford, then moved to basic training and the theater of war.

"Did you come in on LCTs?'' he asked, referring to the landing craft tanks used to transport equipment, supplies and soldiers from ship to land. When he asked Heintze to describe what the war smelled and sounded like, Heintze talked at length about mortar shells raining into his foxhole. "I was scared to death,'' Heintze said. "I started digging the hole deeper.''...





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