The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945… (2003)

The preface made it sound remarkable; the body didn't live up to the promise. It was, I suppose, too abbreviated, in every respect. Granted he wanted it to be analytical rather than sentimental, but I think the subject might require rather more sentimentality than he seemed inclined to acknowledge. It left me with an empty, unsatisfied feeling. ( )

This is a short, somewhat disjointed look at the tragedy of even a 'good war,' by the great critic Paul Fussell. ( )

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. ( )

Gripping narrative about the realities of fighting in the ETO. Army became a less effective or competent institution as the war progressed because the best soldiers got killed. Army did not learn until late in the war that small unit cohesiveness and threat of shame were the only effective motivators to prevent cowardice. Brighter draftees went into the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). They were sent to college to bide time. Unfortunately for them, when manpwer shortages arose, the ASTP members were put into infantry units. (JAB)