The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 (Modern Library Chronicles)
by Paul Fussell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paul FussellEdition: Paperback
Published: 2005-09-13
ISBN: 0812974883
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Modern Library
Book Reviews of The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 (Modern Library Chronicles)
Book Review: Not Fussell's Best
Summary: 3 Stars
Paul Fussell served in the US Army infantry in Europe during World War Two. It was the defining event of his life. His war-related writings unrelentingly attempt to de-romanticize warfare in general and infantry service in particular by bluntly portraying the horrors of modern battle.
The Boys' Crusade is a thin volume of short chapters covering familiar ground. There's not much new here. The discussion of the COBRA affair highlights the book's small strengths and major weakness. COBRA was a plan by General Omar Bradley to use fighter-bombers and strategic bombers to blast a gap in the German defenses near St. Lo. Although the US infantry pulled back some 800 yards in advance of the bombing many were still killed when 'friendly fire' strayed off target. The chapter provides a tragic, but useful illustration of the FUBAR principle. On the other hand, the entire COBRA chapter is only eight short pages, far too short to develop the full story. Indeed, the chapters are too short to develop the repellent awfulness of infantry life and death.
Any reader familiar with Paul Fussell's work is likely to be disappointed and anyone not familiar with it is likely to be misled by The Boys Crusade. Anyone wanting to read a far superior book that also takes aim at de-romanticizing the infantry soldier's war need look no farther than Fussell's own Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. Or try E.B. Sledge's the With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. World War One spawned its own memoirs on the horrors of war such as Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel (Penguin Modern Classics) and Robert Graves' Good-Bye to All That. The best I can really say about The Boys Crusade is that it may open the eyes of the uninitiated and it will not long detain you because of its brevity.
Summary of The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 (Modern Library Chronicles)
The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veil of feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’s brutal essence.“A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussell writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on World War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands wholly apart. Fussell’s profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and a valuable lesson for future generations.
From the Hardcover edition.
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