The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945

By Bill Marsano. This book comes along just in time: Already I've been getting invitations from French tourism folks inviting me to learn all about their plans for next year's 60th anniversary of D-Day. (Do they actually give a damn any more, or are they just trying to revive their critically wounded tourist trade?) Think of it--sixty years. Soon enough there'll be no one left alive to tell the tale, and then the whole shebang--World War II from front to back--will be deeded over to Ken Burns for a series of sincere and oh-so-tasteful documentaries for his caramel-centered fans to lap up on PBS.It's probably all that "good war" and "greatest generation" stuff that drove Fussell to write this book; he doesn't have much truck with gooey backward glances, and that will probably make some readers mad. Well, you don't come to Fussell--author of, among other things, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Other Essays"--for good times. You come to Fussell for the hard stuff.And here it is his contention that behind and beneath all that "greatest generation" nonsense was the Boys' Crusade--that last year of the war in Europe when too many things went wrong too often. The generals who'd convinced themselves that this war would not be a war of attrition--i.e., human slaughter--like the last one found they'd guessed wrong. Casualties were horrifyingly high and so huge numbers of children--kids 17-19 years--old were flung into combat. And they were, with the help of the generals, ill-trained, ill-clothed and ill-equipped.They were also faceless ciphers. As Fussell points out, the US Army's policy was to break up training units by sending individual replacements up to the line piecemeal--one at a time--so they often arrived as strangers among strangers, often addressed merely as "Soldier" because no one knew their names. The result was too many instances of cowardice--both under fire and behind the lines--too many self-inflicted wounds to escape combat. Too many disgraces of every kind because the Army's system, Fussell says, destroyed the most important factor in the fighting morale of the "poor bloody infantry"--the shame and fear of turning chicken in front of your comrades. Many of these boys--and Fussell is properly insistent on the word boys--funked because they had no comradeship to value.This is not in the least a personal journal. Fussell was serriously wounded as a young second lieutenant; he was also decorated. But he wisely leaves himself out of this narrative. There's no special pleading here, no showing of the wounds on Crispin's Day. Instead this is a passionate but straightforward report on what that last year was like for the poor bloody infantry--those foot soldiers, those dogfaces, those 14 percent of the troops who took more than 70 percent of the casualties.And yet there were those who stood the gaff, who survived "carnage up to and including bodies literally torn to pieces, of intestines hung on trees like Christ,mas festoons," and managed no

Never mind the tactics, maps, and much of the armchair version of the War, Fussell takes you onto the front lines and gives a glimpse of life from the infantry viewpoint. As indicated, it focuses on Northwestern Europe and the privation, suffering, and confusion of the youthful soldiers who served there.Fussell has an uncanny touch for bringing the horror to light in compact, efficient prose. Despite the carnage and mangled bodies, there is often a light touch, bringing some humor to bear on an otherwise dismal saga.Using a number of primary sources, one can get an experiental sense of the soldiers' plight. Mismanaged units, ill-conceived operations, and the Allies' rivalries all contributed to the ongoing misery. Despite the techonological and intelligence advantages, the Allies squandered lives and opportunities in their effort to clinch a hasty conclusion to the Western theater of war.Eisenhower, though not receiving glowing reviews, is treated respectfully by Fussell; not so for the egotistical Montgomery, whose persistent folly and dramatics compromised the Allied war agenda. Likewise, the tensions and almost mutual loathing between the British and American troops is an added bonus that often escapes some other more sanitized narratives. A mere 165 pages, it is fluid writing that makes for an enjoyable read.

Sometimes it seems that we tend to romanticize and glorify the nature of the general experience of war to better adopt ourselves to the idea of it and our tacit acceptance of and participation in it. Thus, with memorable novels such as "From Here To Eternity" or in movies like "Saving Private Ryan", we overlay the experience of war with a sentimentality that makes the whole notion of combat much more palatable. Yet, in this relatively brief but articulately stated and footnoted book, noted historian Paul Fussell takes able aim at such sentimental balderdash regarding the welter of pimple-faced post-adolescent warriors we sent by the millions to help liberate Europe in 1944. He announces early on that far from flying with the angels of popular culture, which imply that the experience of war produces admirable and even desirable factors as pride, companionship, and "the consciousness of virtue enforced by deadly weapons", the actual experience of the men on arms was anything but ennobling, prideful, or mutually embraced courage among one's peers. For, although the youngsters sent to liberate Europe were surely launched on what can only be described as a moral crusade, their experience of the events surrounding it were anything but romantic and sentimental. They arrived in Britain by the very boatloads, settling down amidst small rural setting in the countryside to polish their rather rudimentary soldiering skills and to prepare for the oncoming onslaught, the single largest amphibious landing ever attempted, and they understood from the beginning what a bloody affair it was all destined to be. They were more consumed with the particulars of their experience, an affair better characterized in terms of massively poor planning, inadequate training regimes, antiquated and obsolete weapons until close to the launch dates for the invasion, and a lackluster officer corps. Once launched into battle in France, these problems were additionally compromised by incidents of frequent desertions, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and overwhelming fear. This was, according to Fussell, especially true for infantry, which, while only composing some on eighth of the total allied forces in Europe, suffered more than seventy percent of all the deaths and wounded. Moreover, they were often poorly led, as by General Bradley in an unconscionable and yet insistent push into the Hurtgen Forest area in the late fall of 1944, managed to suffer over thirty thousand casualties. Indeed, before the end of the war in Europe, scores of units refused to obey orders, feigned illnesses, or shot themselves to avoid further combat. Many even broke ranks and ran. In fact, close to twenty thousand Americans deserted their units during the final campaign on 1944-45. In surveying all this, Professor Fussell is neither denying the heroic efforts of countless young men and women, nor is he suggesting the sacrifices of millions was anything less than justified for the result it produced; the tot

Books about the men who fought World War II tend to romanticize their subject, sometimes more than a little, especially recently. This book should be read as soon as possible by anyone who thinks that war was (or present and future ones can be) noble, uplifting, or even fun. It wasn't, as Fussell demonstrates in clear and unambiguous prose. He points out that the army in Western Europe was made up chiefly of 17-, 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds who had no notion of what would confront them on the beaches of Normandy or in its hedgerows or in the slave-labor camps inside Nazi Germany itself, and he tells the reader plainly what actually did confront them. The book is not for the weak-stomached, but it's a much-needed corrective for those of us who've subscribed uncritically to the "Greatest Generation" view. As Fussell makes clear, that generation "included among the troops and their officers plenty of criminals, psychopaths, cowards, and dolts." It is a superb little book of only 165 pages of text.

I suspect there is little middle ground for those who read Fussell and his work will resonate truly with some and will provoke accusations of being a pessimistic, bitter old man by others. If in reading about WWII you are looking for an unsparing impression of life in the American infantry after the Normandy invasion, something unsanitized by Zanuck, Spielberg, the History Channel or even Stephen Ambrose, this will fit the bill. My own father served in the Hurtgen Forest area and in the Bulge as one of the "Boy Crusaders" Fussell writes about. It's uncanny to me how the attitude of the two are alike. There is no sentimentalizing, no attempts to varnish the time with nobility. It was what it was. Reading Fussell hasn't helped me appreciate the magnitude of my father's (or Fussell's) experience. But it has helped me understand the anger that is till part of my dad, even now, sixty years on.