- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (Jun 15 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385496036
- ISBN-13: 978-0385496032
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.3 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #498,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In the summer of 1943, Robert Kotlowitz, an indifferent premed student at Johns Hopkins University, was drafted into the army. "I told myself," he writes in his affecting memoir of World War II, "that it was better than being blatantly tossed out of college." In any event, he continues, "part of me, at eighteen, was eager to suffer the hazards and humiliations of war."
Hazards and humiliations he found in abundance. He was assigned to a company led by an inept captain and put to work in a Browning Automatic Rifle unit. In combat school at Fort Benning he learned that, in battle, such units had a life expectancy of eleven seconds. "That is not hyperbole," he adds wryly. "It is scientific fact." But Kotlowitz lived through the war, fueled by his hatred, as a Jew, for the German enemy, and burning with the patriotic fervor of a young man. Both his hatred and his fervor diminished as he endured battle, living close to the bone and watching as his comrades fell.
Kotlowitz writes with skill and mordant humor of the infantryman's life, of the incredible instinct to survive, of "the sounds ... never before heard, swelling over the noise of small-arms and machine-gun fire, of men's voices calling for help or screaming in pain or terror--our own men's voices, unrecognizable at first, weird in pitch and timbre." His fine memoir belongs on readers' shelves alongside such books as Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers and Paul Fussell's Doing Battle, primary documents of a terrible time. --Gregory McNamee
From Kirkus Reviews
Novelist Kotlowitz acts as his fallen buddies' unofficial company historian of their combat duty in WW II, from army basic training to a precipitous, disastrous encounter with the enemy. More than 50 years after WW II, with over half its veterans now dead, Kotlowitz (His Master's Voice, 1992, etc.) recounts his own experiences, in part to find ``a definitive end to the accumulated weight of sadness and nostalgia.'' With this simple goal, his straightforward prose captures both the mundane and the horrific features of a soldier's life, as well as his own teenager's na‹vet‚. After getting bucked out of a training program in order to supply his division with live bodies after D-day, Kotlowitz is thrown into an eclectic mix of soldiers in the so-called ``Yankee Division.'' His commanding officer is a textbook-trained OCS graduate and former university football tackle from Ohio, his squad leader a generally reliable soldier with a tendency to go AWOL under pressure, and his buddies a melting-pot mix of draftees. Infantry life quickly sorts them into a soldiers' hierarchy, right down to the squad's sad sack, but Kotlowitz gives each man his balanced due. After an uneventful delay awaiting deployment orders in France, he and his buddies find themselves on the front, dug in a few hundred yards from the well-prepared Germans, in the fall of 1944. When they are finally sent forward, the assault is so disastrous that he survives only by ``playing the living corpse'' among his platoon, one of just three survivors. After subjecting him to grilling by the division's historian and its psychiatrist, the army, ironically, sends him behind lines to recuperate by guarding a warehouse of duffel bags, some of which belonged to his fallen buddies. An unsentimental, honest testament to the individual experience of war--the kind that history overlooks. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging and poignant account of WWII training and combat.,
By
This review is from: Before Their Time: A Memoir (Hardcover)
In a manner akin to that of Paul Fussell--professor, writer (Wartime, 1989), and WWII combat veteran--Robert Kotlowitz shares his recollections of state-side training and deadly combat in Europe during the Second World War. In this poignant albeit unsentimental account, Mr. Kotlowitz gives faces and humanity to the young men of C Company, 104th Regiment of Yankee Division, from the vantage of 50 years of personal distance. The mud and mundanity of infantry life provide an ever-present backdrop for boyhood dreams and urges, jovial conversations, and palpable fear.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Read,
By Shaina (Nebraska United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Before Their Time: A Memoir (Paperback)
This is another book that I read only because I was made to in school. But I actualy enjoyed it. Kotlowitz has a great writting style. It gives you a good look into what war can be like. It doesn't have as much action as some people maybe anticipating though. It does have some thriling parts but its not action packed. None the less though it's a good book. If you have never read any books on war before I would reccomend this as introductory book to the topic. Even if it isn't your usual book topic, Kotlowitz writes well enough to keep you intrested.
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Really Happened,
By Clarke Green "CAG" (Kennett Square, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Before Their Time: A Memoir (Paperback)
Don't miss the point of this book, it is not about combat, heroism, patriotism and the tactical history of the war. The story here, the reason that this book is so compelling and important, is the realitively simple story that is one of hundreds of thousands of men like Kotlowitz who served during WWII.These young men went to war from the security of home and high school during without knowing how the war would turn out. Many of them lost their lives, a very few became famous heros, most came home and lived their lives. What was it like to be an average GI? It was frustrating, frightening and difficult but worth it all in the end. This is a real story, not a lionozation. Don't come here for the false inspiration of a sanitized account. read this book and be inspired by what the soldiers of WWII experienced on our behalf.
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