Ww Ii

It is a fact that history is written by the winners, and for this reason many events of the past take on the spin and propaganda that suits those doing the writing. You could say that history is rewritten by the winners. With this in mind, it is easy to forget that in the case of Wars, in this instance the Second World War, the actual battles are fought largely by normal, everyday people, with only a uniform to distinguish the two sides. Much is made these days of the politics of the Nazi regime and the horrors that it created, and it is right that these themes should be examined for the sake of prosperity, but it is also refreshing to come across an Account of a normal, balanced Soldier, doing his duty and just trying to survive, like the majority of the millions of combatants that were engulfed in the conflict. Guy Sajer and E.B. Sledge have both written accounts close to being boisterous and boastful with almost for a form of glory in hellish acts and not to enlighten future generations with absolute truth.

The Forgotten Soldier is an account of Guy Sajer, half French, half German recruited into the German Army and sent to fight on the Russian Front in the summer of 1942. Sajer was one of thousands of recruits brought to the Russian Front to keep the momentum of Hitler's dream of beating the Soviets and obtaining the vast resources, particularly oil fields, that this would bring him. In his first year, he was a truck driver running supplies and men to the front but in a relatively safe position. As autumn turns into winter, the real hardships begin to show themselves, not the Russian army, which at this point is falling back, but the cold. This is his first taste of the hell of 'total war" that is to be his next two years. In the spring of 1943, Sajer and his friend volunteer for the Gross Deutschland division, a sort of German equivalent of a guards Unit, encouraged to do so mainly out of comradeship, but also drawn by the status and better treatment that this elite unit promises. All is about to turn sour for the starry eyed young infantryman. With the fall of Stalingrad the Russian counter offensive gains momentum and from that point on the over stretched and under supplied German units are pushed ever further back and Sajer's story becomes one of survival rather than duty.

All wars are terrible but what comes home in Sajer's account is the environment of "total war" not experienced by allied troops on the western front. The Russian bullets are just one danger to the troops there, but just as much a threat are the temperatures which reach minus forty and a point that is brought home by Sajer's description of stones on the road exploding through the sheer cold, and his account of Russian tanks crossing the river Don, frozen so thick with ice that it could bear the weight of armored units. Hunger became a killer as the supply line dwindled and disease and exhaustion were also a constant threat. The one thing that seemed to get people through these conditions and threats is the comradeship of the soldiers, by their own admission they are not fighting with any great cause in mind, they are just trying to protect themselves and their friends and make it through alive.

The book has some harrowing moments, but Sajer does not revel in his deeds, like any soldier, he does what he has to and leaves the heroic deeds to others. In his own words there came "a day when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal Human condition", however despite this harrowing and torturous experience he remained a rational and humane person. At the same time as many of his fellows lost their human qualities to survive like animals, it is Sajer's humanity that gets him through. This is a campaign that saw the worst and most extreme side to the war.

Unlike in the west the German and Russian leaders viewed each other as less than human and because of this issued orders that contravened not only the rules of war but morality itself. After a retreat from the Russian front which saw the tattered remains of his unit walk back to Germany, he is captured by the British and to the proners hilarity are driven to a holding camp, the irony being that in capture they receive better treatment than that supplied by their own army. The Russian Front is a subject that is largely forgotten by western writers but for a human account of the time and place, this book is unbeatable. It is a view of the ordinary combatant, his thoughts and actions and provides a fantastic portrayal of the ordinary soldier.

Furthermore, E. B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a difficult book to describe. Memoirs from World War II are generally descriptive and paint a reasonably detailed view of the subject in question. Sledge, however, takes With the Old Breed to an entirely different level of description and analyses.

A biology professor after the war at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, Sledge brings an academic style to the text that flows easily from chapter to chapter. Sources are used, Sledge suggests, "to orient the reader to the larger war that raged around me and to be sure I had the names and places right" (319). But he is quick to point out that the text is a personal view of combat as he experienced it, from the ground as a infantryman (as part of a mortar team) in Company K, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, 1st Marine Division (29).

Sledge begins his memoir admitting, like many men of his generation, he was "prompted by a deep feeling of uneasiness that the war might be over before [he] could get overseas into combat..."(5) so he joined the Marines. He initially found himself in Atlanta, continuing his college studies at Georgia Tech, and upon graduation, he would enter the Corps as an officer. Nevertheless, 90 men, nearly half of the student detachment, flunked out of the program, earning a trip to basic training in San Diego. Sledge was among them, still anxious to do his part (6).

Perhaps the book's most evident theme is the "feeling" of being of a Marine, what Sledge calls "esprit de corps." Readers will see it in many examples through the book, through Sledge's initial training, preparations for combat overseas, and in the grim Peleliu and Okinawa campaigns, where Marines regularly exposed themselves to fire to retrieve