Issue: 27 November
2004 |
PAGE 1 of 1
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| When someone has blundered
The
Boys’ Crusade: American GIs in Europe Chaos and Fear in World War
Two
Paul
Fussell Weidenfeld, 165pp, £9.99,
ISBN 0297646931
As a former second lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in France
in 1945, Paul Fussell may be supposed to have an intense personal
interest in posterity’s understanding of military combat. He is the
author of The Great War and Modern Memory and several other related
books, so this theme is certainly one of profound intellectual
interest for him too. His latest book, The Boys’ Crusade, is short
and anecdotal, manifestly not the product of great research. For an
author of such experience, one feels, it could almost have been
written off the cuff. So what is Fussell’s purpose?
Far from being suave professionals who mopped up the war for the
inept British, as popular American opinion has it, the American
‘replacements’ were inadequately trained by incompetent, ignorant,
complacent officers; they were even inadequately armed, compared to
their German counterparts. Handbooks were issued to the GIs
explaining how to deal with the peculiar British, but they made
little headway against the ignorance, and the sense of superiority
felt by most Americans towards the Europeans who had made such a
mess of things (again). The Americans were disinclined to pay much
attention either to their allies (except the women), or to their
foes. British superciliousness only compounded this arrogance. The
result was a colossal toll of casualties that might have been
averted by a deeper understanding of the war they were engaged in.
Not only did few GIs have any understanding of why they were
fighting but they were then exposed to horrors that were often made
worse by the blunders of their own officers. And yet, Fussell says
in his preface, ‘When [nowadays] the military looks for an
instructive classic, it is the European war on the ground that is
likely to be the model.’ Why? His answer seems to be that the
hitherto unimagined horrors encountered when the Allies reached
Germany itself, in particular the discovery of the concentration
camps, had the effect of providing a coherent moral narrative. Now,
at least, the troops knew why they were fighting.
Fussell says his book ‘is not intended as a pacifist text, but
the appalling truth may be let out occasionally’. His catalogue of
blunders and delusions certainly amounts to many appalling truths,
but German crimes appear to justify the war itself. Yet Fussell’s
purpose goes beyond this problematic equation. The brisk, disjointed
nature of The Boys’ Crusade complements the brutality of the GI
experience described; form perfectly suits content. But the book is
more than incisive and urgent, it is angry and distressed in tone.
And its emotional charge derives not from incompetence perceived
with the benefit of hind- sight but from another remark in the
preface:
Now, almost sixty years after the horror, there has been a
return … to military romanticism … There is nothing in infantry
warfare to raise the spirits at all, and anyone who imagines a
military victory ‘gratifying’ is mistaken.
I wonder what Paul Fussell would have to say about Iraq.
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