The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II

by Charles Glass Narrated by Barry Press

Overview

An account that redefines the ordinary soldier in the Second World War, The Deserters is a breathtaking work of historical reportage, weaving together the lives of forgotten servicemen even as it overturns the assumptions and prejudices of an era. The Deserters reveals that ordinary soldiers viewed “desertion” as a natural part of conflict, as unexpected and inexplicable as bravery. Men who had fought fearlessly in the mountains of Italy were cowering wrecks a year later in the mountains of France; a man who fled from tanks in the desert showed superior courage in the D-Day amphibious landings. Many frontline soldiers saw no shame in these contradictory reactions and sought ways to comfort their comrades to fight another day.

With all the grace and pace of a novel, The Deserters moves beyond the false extremes of courage and cowardice to reveal the true experience of the Allied soldier. This is the story of men such as Private Alfred Whitehead, a Tennessee farm boy who earned Silver and Bronze Stars for bravery in Normandy-yet became a gangster in postliberation Paris, robbing Allied supply depots along with restaurants and ordinary citizens. It is the story of British soldiers such as Private John Bain, who deserted three times but fought well in North Africa and northern France until German machine-gun fire cut his legs from under him. The core of The Deserters resides with men such as Private Stephen Weiss, an idealistic boy from Brooklyn who enlisted at seventeen. On the Anzio beachhead and in the Ardennes forest, as an ordinary infantryman and an accidental partisan in the French Resistance, Weiss shed his illusions about the nobility of conflict and the infallibility of the American military.

Leading us through the moral twists and turns of The Deserters is Charles Glass, renowned journalist and author of the critically acclaimed Americans in Paris. Meticulously researched and deeply revelatory, The Deserters remains at its heart an unforgettable war story that, like the very best of the genre, deals with ordinary men struggling to fulfill the vast and contradictory expectations imposed upon them.

Editorial Reviews

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

The Deserters is…an intimate look at the whys and wherefores of three men who opted out of the front lines.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

Stories about cowardice can be as gripping as those about courage. One tells us about who we'd like to be; the other tells us about who we fear we are…The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II…performs a service. It's the first book to examine at length the sensitive topic of desertions during this war, and the facts it presents are frequently revealing and heartbreaking.

Publishers Weekly

ABC News correspondent Glass is to be commended for his take on WWII through the eyes of those who ran away from it. Nearly 150,000 British and American soldiers deserted the war; Glass follows three of them. Pvt. John Bain's brutal experience in a war-time prison as a deserter will make you question whatever moral authority the allies truly upheld, while Pvt. Steve Weiss's heroics behind German lines with the French resistance is as gripping as any Hollywood war epic. Except Weiss, upon returning to the front, walked away and spent the rest of the war doing hard labor. Finally, Pvt. Al Whitehead, a braggart, bully, and unreliable narrator, leaves battle less from psychological fatigue than for the riches of post-liberation Paris's black market; his gangster-in-uniform life an ignored and fascinating chapter of the period. Well-documented battle details will delight military enthusiasts but slow down the narrative. However, for readers who are not members of this "greatest" generation, Glass's history might be one of the best ways of relaying the experience of war: through the eyes of the young men who charged into the line of fire, gave up the ghost, and whose only reward was living to tell the tale. (June)

From the Publisher

Powerful and often startling…The Deserters offers a provokingly fresh angle on this most studied of conflicts… This is a stripped down, unromanticized, intimate history of battle in all of its confusion, chaos, terror, and moral ambiguity. Intricately structured — the author deftly juggles three narrative strands — and beautifully paced to build suspense, this tightly focused account, which draws on memoirs, archives, police files, psychiatric records, is neither reverent nor disapproving.” —The Boston Globe

"Glass is to be commended for his take on WWII through the eyes of those who ran away from it... Glass's history might be one of the best ways of relaying the experience of war: through the eyes of the young men who charged into the line of fire, gave up the ghost, and whose only reward was living to tell the tale." —Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

“The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II, by the historian and former ABC News foreign correspondent Charles Glass, thus performs a service. It’s the first book to examine at length the sensitive topic of desertions during this war, and the facts it presents are frequently revealing and heartbreaking… The Deserters has much to say about soldiers' hearts. It underscores the truth of the following observation, made by a World War II infantry captain named Charles B. MacDonald: 'It is always an enriching experience to write about the American soldier in adversity no less than in glittering triumph.'" —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“A veteran correspondent in war zones, Glass is richly credentialed to write The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II. He is qualified by talent, by the good fortune of finding surviving veterans, and by exploring their lives with diligence and, most crucially, a deep compassion… Glass tells the soldiers' stories with novelistic vividness and a good historian's grasp of research detail." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Glass brings something new to the table by going deep with desertion, an overlooked aspect of the wartime experience. The result is an impressive achievement: a boot-level take on the conflict that is fresh without being cynically revisionist... [Glass] pulled off something special here: showing respect to what the deserters endured while acknowledging that the war—gruesome and unfair and nonsensical though it was—had to be won, and that this happened because enough men somehow found the will to keep going." —The New Republic

"[Q]uite provocative... A well-written, fast-moving treatment of an issue still relevant today." —Kirkus

"Sensitive and thought-provoking … As this compelling and well-researched book shows, the battlefield was not a place for heroes, but a place where young men were dehumanised and killed … Given such conditions who among us would not also have considered walking away?" —Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"[These] stories of individual human beings who eventually cracked under the strain of hardly imaginable fear and misery – are wonderful, unforgettable acts of witness, something salvaged from a time already sinking into the black mud of the past." —The Guardian (UK)

"Gripping … painstaking … sympathetic … Glass reveals just how inglorious war really is." —Times (UK)

San Francisco Chronicle

A veteran correspondent in war zones, Glass is richly credentialed to write 'The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II.' He is qualified by talent, by the good fortune of finding surviving veterans, and by exploring their lives with diligence and, most crucially, a deep compassion...Glass tells the soldiers' stories with novelistic vividness and a good historian's grasp of research detail...May the reviewer be permitted [a] personal confession? Did I like this book? No, I loved it.

Library Journal

Author of the much-praised Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation, Glass can be expected to offer rigorous but accessible history. He explains that many World War II soldiers fought bravely one day, then turned tail the next, to be comforted by their comrades when they returned.

Kirkus Reviews

Glass (Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under the Nazi Occupation, 2011, etc.) takes on the nearly taboo subject of Allied soldiers who deserted or were said to have displayed cowardice during World War II. Tracking in detail the wartime biographies of three privates in the infantry--Tennessee farm boy Alfred Whitehead, Brooklyner Steve Weiss and Britisher John Bain--the author constructs a frame for his much broader, and quite provocative, discussion of military personnel policy. Each of his subjects was court martialed and sentenced to long-term incarceration. But each had also fought bravely, and continuously, through a series of campaigns in Africa and Europe, including the Anzio landings, the D-Day invasion and its aftermath, and the assault on Nazi Germany itself. Weiss, for example, won medals for bravery and, when separated from his unit, served with paratroops and the French Resistance. Glass situates the men's individual pathways within the context of a personnel policy that failed to fully assimilate lessons from World War I, when it was first acknowledged that there were limits to what combat soldiers could endure, both mentally and physically. Nevertheless, WWII military leaders prioritized combat experience, keeping veteran fighters in the field since raw replacement troops were not as effective; this led to increased pressure on long-serving soldiers that sometimes became intolerable. By the summer of 1944, the Allies' combat units were suffering in excess of 10 percent casualties per month. The command level was divided between supporters of treating desertion as a discipline problem and those who advocated a medical response. Glass shows how deserters established criminal networks in liberated cities like Naples, Marseilles and Paris, diverting military supplies on a significant scale. Using memoirs, correspondence and military records, the author works outward from his three individual protagonists, through their networks of friends and comrades, to their units and larger questions about the war's conduct. A well-written, fast-moving treatment of an issue still relevant today.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169863970
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/13/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

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