Wm. Morrow, 2002, $24.95, ISBN 0-06-008196-1, 265 pgs., hardback

I invented a phrase the other day: scriptum verite. I don't know if anyone has a better phrase to describe stream-of-conscious travelogues, but it's my phrase until I hear otherwise. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I used it in conjunction with describing my own amblings at various military history conferences and shows. It's a way of recording what I see, as well as what I think, while walking the aisles or sitting in an auditorium. Little did I know that I could be a best-selling author from my musings the way Bob Greene turned out to be.

The short story is that locals in North Platte, Nebraska, took it upon themselves to feed every WWII serviceman who passed through the town on a troop train. Sandwiches, cake, milk, cookies, eggs, and other American fare were heaped upon tables in the station-the so-called canteen. Servicemen would stop off for 10 minutes for a bite of home-cooking and maybe a quick dance, and then pile back on the trains. Every train was met at all times and at all hours by a shift of volunteers.

About half the book derives form Greene's interviews with those servicemen and volunteers. Like Tom Brokaw before him, Greene lets them tell about their experiences and emotions of those brief encounters. These are the real gems to the book -- the first-person recollections and excerpts from letters long ago that tell of a community (and surrounding communities) pulling together to give a little extra to the war effort, and the grateful recipients of their compassion.

The other half of the book is Greene walking around North Platte giving us a running commentary about the environment of the town. He's at Walmart, he's at a softball game, he's hoofing down mainstreet, he's poking around the old hotel, post office, and museum. Scriptum verite. And while his prose flows smoothly, it's also too intrusive for its own good, mostly because it's off-topic.

You see, he sandwiches modern North Platte in between veterans' stories, and while I understand a certain bemoaning of the loss of Main Street USA for the cookie cutter mall/plaza/strip mall uniformity of chain-store suburbia, I get a little tired of the message. And, by the way, passenger trains no longer run through North Platte, even though it's one of the largest freight train marshalling and repair yards in the country.

Green deserves praise for covering the story of the North Platte Canteen. He would earn greater praise if he had omitted most of the modern-day travelogue. Perhaps a chapter would have been sufficient. I tended to skip through much of the latter intrusions in order to read about the real stars of the book -- those servicemen and volunteers who made a bit of American history in the middle of the country.