cover image Infantry: An Oral History of a World War II American Infantry Battalion

Infantry: An Oral History of a World War II American Infantry Battalion

Richard Stannard. MacMillan Publishing Company, $26 (250pp) ISBN 978-0-8057-9112-9

A journalist who served as a rifleman in Europe at the end of World War II, Stannard decided to collect his mates' recollections after attending a reunion of his battalion in 1985. He wound up interviewing 77 veterans and their wives, as well as checking government documents. The resulting book meanders from individual to individual, rarely forming a coherent whole. There are nuggets of interest. ``How to surrender was not part of our training,'' one veteran admits; a former prisoner of war says the experience helped him spiritually, teaching him that ``we should not waste anything''; a Jewish sergeant describes how, after meeting Jewish concentration camp survivors--``bean poles''--in Innsbruck immediately after the war, he and his buddies ``confiscated a hotel, threw everybody out, turned it over to the Jews, and got 'em food.'' Most descriptive is former second lieutenant Paul Fussell, but Fussell's own writings on the war are far more powerful than this book. Epilogues at the end of each chapter update the lives of the veterans; several consider Army service the high point of their lives. Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)