And No Birds Sang

This is a much overlooked classic now days. Mr. Mowat has given us a vivid first hand account of his expierences during WWII and this book ranks at the top of such works. Not only do we get a first hand view of the actual fighting (found in many/most accounts), but we also see the other side of the war. The horrible loneliness and boredom. Mr. Mowat is an acute observer of human nature, something he uses with a cutting edge in this book. For this amature historian of this period, and those just passingly interested, this is a good read and I highly recommend it.

This book was a great surprise for me. I picked it up at a local library because I saw the name Mowat and thought, "Funny, Isn't he a Canadian naturalist? What's he doing in the History section?" What followed was a fascinating voyage of war,adventure,hilarity and,ultimately,tragedy and pain. Walking into the experience of WWII with a completely innocent demeanor, anxious to get into a fight, this brilliant writer has many funny and almost fatal false starts. When the fighting gets serious, the glib descriptions of his units treacherous challenges are positively riveting. I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN. If you like your war personal, exciting and honest, get this book to a comfortable chair and be prepared to not move for a night and a day. A brilliant book by a Canadian national treasure.

In late 1943, the western allies attack the so-called "soft-underbelly of Europe" and worked their way up from Sicily through the boot of Italy. Horrendous battles ensued with names writ large in history, Salerno, Cassino, Anzio are a few that are evoked. On the extreme right hand side of the Allied Line, at a coastal village called Ortona, a personal contest of wills was under way between the German Parachute Regiment of battle-hardened soldiers who has seen tours of duty on the Russian Front, against Canadians from dispirate backgrounds with little combat experience. In the month-long battle that followed nearly 2000 Canadian soldiers were killed to capture a small village. Farley Mowat was a young officer in one of the Canadian regiments, the Hastings Prince Edward Regiment "Hastie-Pees." After a landing at Sicily and fighting their way up this far in Italy what to come at Ortona made all that came before pale in comparison. Mowat, a writer known for his wit shows that even during the dark, wet, winter months he was able to find things that give him joy in the charnel house of Ortona. He describes the pressure on an officer just before and attack goes in, the corssing of the Moro River, and, in one of the most amazing tales of battlefield desperation, describes his charge against a German tank with fixed bayonets. As the battle drew on streets in the town changed sides frequently with the focus of the battle being a particular house in a particular street. Ortona earned the name of "little Stalingrad" for those who faught there and Mowat describes the drama day by day as the battle winds on and the Germans are forced out leaving the legacy of 1600 Canadian corpses buried in the British Commonwealth Moro River Cemetary. It is a changing experience for Mowat and one wonders how he retained his wit and verve to produce the wonderful naturalist novels that he later became famous for. This is lyrical poetic auto-biography of an intelligent, well-educated young man coming to terms with the horrors of war. As such Mowat is very much like Robert Graves in "Goodbye to all That" --- smart enough to be troubled by the nature of war yet too young to come to terms with all that it entails. Perhaps that is why Mowat waited over 40 years before he wrote the book in the first place.

This book, written about the author's personal war experiences as an infantryman fighting in Sicily and the mountains of Italy, exposed the brutalities of war and also the kinship of the common foot soldier. Mowat's usual humor is present but the savagery of the battles in combination with the cold, rainy weather of the Appenine mountains in winter, threaten to break both his spirit and his sanity. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the hardships that an infantryman experiences in combat and also anyone with an interest in the Italian campaign of World War II. I was completely engrossed in this book and was sad to see it end.

We should all know what these men went through in order to give us the freedom we take so much for granted today. World War II was a terrible time in the world's history, and the vast majority of people don't realize how close we came to being defeated. If the invasion of continental Europe was delayed only by six months to a year, the free world as we know it would definately not exist today. Instead, we would have all been either killed or made into slaves!