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    The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945
    The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945
    The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945

    Written by Paul Fussell

    Narrated by Joel Leffert

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    National Book Award Winner Paul Fussell tells the breathtaking story of WWII from the young soldiers' points of view. WWII was not the glorified picture it is often depicted to be. For the American soldier it was a tiring, emotional, and gruesome experience. Fussell's extensive details and insight help to make this story come alive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 16, 2008
    ISBN9781449801519
    The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945

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    Reviews for The Boys' Crusade

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    • 3/5
      It's hard to know what to make of this book. It's certainly no Class or The Great War in Modern Memory. It's patchy and unfocused, a series of short chapters working to up-end easy notions of the "Good War." American soldiers were untrained boys, soldiers hated (and had good reasons to hate) the British, the French, their commanders but not--until the very end--the enemey, war was gristly and stupid. There was more command stupidity, self-inflicted wounds, diarrhea, and horrifying carnage than you'd ever know from something like The Greatest Generation. Another nod to depictions of the war is telling:"The heartrending events of Omaha Beach need no further description here... Speaking of which, Id like to recommend the retention of and familiarity with the first few minutes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan depicting the landing horrors. ... The rest of the Spielberg film I'd consign to the purgatory where boys' bad adventure films end up."Like all wars, World War Two had no point. Until it did. And so Fussell ends with a chapter on the American discovery of Nazi camps, like Dachau and Buchenwald, and how the realization of the--to most, unexpected--Nazi brutality changed everyone's perceptions of the war. Not surprisingly, the last chapter feels like it belongs in a different book.There is something healthy and important about Fussell's main point. World War Two was a meat-grinder, not a boy's adventure film. But it was a very necessary and--all the evil not forgotten--a "good" one.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      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.