Young guns
Paul Fussell offers an unvarnished, unsentimental account of the Second World War's child soldiers
The Boys' Crusade:, The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945, By Paul Fussell, Random House, 184 pp., $19.95
"Ninety-nine percent" of American troops "would have escaped if there had been any non-shameful way out." Historian and literary scholar Paul Fussell reaches this conclusion not about America's most hated war -- Vietnam -- but World War II, a war that has taken on a sacred role in the memory of the United States and to this day lends legitimacy to America's role in the world.
"The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945" is a misleading title for Fussell's book. Fussell has not produced a comprehensive history of America's campaign from Normandy to Berlin. He has not even tried. But the deception seems deliberate. Because "The Boys' Crusade" is a written reminder that the real history of the war -- the suffering embedded in the minds of millions of veterans on nearly every continent -- is fast being replaced by a feel-good myth captured most prominently in what Fussell calls "the history of sentimental show business." Fussell's book sets out to explain why, in his words, "anyone who imagines a military `victory' gratifying is mistaken."
Few critics will doubt Fussell's familiarity with his subject. During World War II, at the age of 21, Fussell led a rifle platoon in the 103d Infantry Division and was severely wounded in France. In 1975, he wrote "The Great War and Modern Memory," a look at the Western Front of the First World War, which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and secured Fussell's place in the intelligentsia. Like "The Great War and Modern Memory," Fussell's new book relies heavily on first-person narratives to make its point. It follows only a rough chronology of the war. Chapters are brief. One -- on the Malmedy Massacre of Dec. 17, 1944, in which 86 American soldiers attempting to surrender were gunned down in a field by German SS troops under the command of Lieutenant
Colonel Joachim Peiper -- occupies a mere page and a half. And historical nuance and intricacy give way to a soldier's directness. A consequence of this approach is that Fussell's book is not for those unfamiliar with World War II. Fussell alludes to important milestones and achievements in the war, such as the British capture of a German encoding machine named Enigma or the mobilization of American industry to produce jeeps, bullets, and tanks, but does not fully develop their importance. Breaking German codes provided Allied leaders with a steady stream of intelligence and, as historians like Mark Harrison and Richard Overy have pointed out, the sheer volume of American industrial production may just have won the war.
But any failure of Fussell's format should be forgiven. After all, in "The Boys' Crusade," World War II is not a war of machines but a battle of young, insecure, and terrified boys. The boys suffered an often quiet, private hell that only a fellow infantryman can appropriately bring to life. Fussell tells the story of one front-line troop in Western Europe who, wearing as many as five or six layers of clothing to hold off the December cold, was suffering from the rampant diarrhea that plagued the soldiers. Fussell writes in the words of another unnamed soldier: "Aiming for the latrine, [he] slipped and fell in the mud and crapped his clothes. He lay there and cried in frustration." "That sort of hell," Fussell adds, "was never publicized but constituted a constant, unavoidable part of infantry experience." There was also little publicized failure. Fussell illustrates the point by telling the little-known story of the mass surrender of 8,000 members -- two whole regiments -- of the 106th Infantry Division while fighting in the Bulge. "One of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the American military," Fussell says, "that later narratives tried to brighten . . . up."
Then, of course, there was the death. Fussell quotes another infantryman, again from the Bulge: "People didn't crumble and
fall like they did in the Hollywood movies. They were tossed in the air and their blood splattered everywhere. And a lot of people found themselves covered in the blood and flesh of their friends." Even General George S. Patton, "ol' blood and guts," couldn't stomach the liberation of the German concentration camp Ohrdruf. The sight of thousands of stinking, naked, emaciated bodies caused Patton, "almost alone of the inspecting generals, to withdraw behind the corner of a building and throw up." To be fair, some in Hollywood have tried to capture the morbid intersection of youth and war. Fussell suggests "the retention of and familiarity with the first few minutes of Steven Spielberg's `Saving Private Ryan.' Then I'd suggest separating them to constitute a short subject, titled `Omaha Beach: Aren't You Glad You Weren't There?' " But then confides, "The rest of the Spielberg film I'd consign to the purgatory where boys' bad adventure films end up." Only 14 percent of the millions of Americans sent overseas in World War II were infantrymen. That 14 percent sustained 70 percent of all battle casualties. Fussell's point is this: If you weren't there, you can't understand numbers like that. You can only try to appreciate them. Historians before Fussell, many of them pop historians, made attempts. Stephen Ambrose tried in "Citizen Soldiers" and "D-Day." Even NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw made an attempt in "The Greatest Generation." Hollywood too has tried. One is left with the impression that Fussell sees these works and their brethren as a disservice to history. He has had enough and, accordingly, has written the anti-history by checking sappy patriotism at the door. Some may mistake Fussell's book as a pacifist text. It is not. Rather, it is a deeply personal reminder that only the appalling truth can save future generations from the mistakes of history.
Michael C. Boyer is associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine.
