(260 pages)
Quick read. Broken into very short chapters, each presented as a reminiscence of an individual (fictional) soldier. Based upon the author's WWI experiences.
Looking at the "Introduction" after reading the book (always read these after!), I learned that this was one of the first books to depict war experiences as awful and too often futile episodes from the perspective of the typically low-ranking soldier. We've now used to that sort of presentation, but apparently Company K was groundbreaking at its time. The Red Badge of Courage as a sort of precursor from Civil War days.
It amounts to horror. I don't have reason to doubt that this was pretty much how it felt.
Sometimes prisoners were shot. Officers made bad decisions, perhaps to preserve pride, that cost grunt lives. French villagers - sometimes sympathetic. Soldiers being supportive of, or cruel to, one another. Encounters with Germans who could have been friends. On it goes.
The cumulative effect is powerful; it catches up with the reader. In that way it reminded me of Kolyma Stories (highly recommended, by the way) - short snippets that just keep hitting the reader and building in effect. Not gratuitously. Just trying to bring home what was happening for those of us who fortunately weren't there (and perhaps dilute the effect of all the pro-war propaganda stuff we are hit with).
Something else I liked: a number of the stories are from the perspective of soldiers back home after the armistice. The betrothed who no longer wants to marry the soldier drastically changed by his experiences. The brother who gets all the attention after a slight wound just before the armistice (the brother who saw years of terrible action doesn't get home until a year later and by then the home front folks have moved on).
Recommended. Gift from PJr/Nedda.
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