Book Review: "The Boys' Crusade" by Paul Fussell

The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-45 by Paul Fussell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon Book Description

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veil of feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’s brutal essence.

“A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussell writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on World War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands wholly apart. Fussell’s profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and a valuable lesson for future generations.


Although a very quick read and very easy to follow the author's narrative, this is not one of the World War II memoirs that I was particularly drawn into the lives of the soldiers. The style of writing is very straight forward with no attempt to glamorize battle but to share many different stories through a series of vignettes of the American infantry in Northwestern Europe during 1944-1945. While this style of writing allows the reader to hear specific examples of how tough it was for so many of the young and inexperienced soldiers who were placed into battle near the end of the war, the bitterness bleeds through in the narrative. While brutal honesty and candor is sometimes what is really needed to make a point, I wasn't necessarily left feeling as if I truly connected with many of the soldiers or the author. Perhaps mostly those who have lived through battle or similar circumstances can truly draw the connection and that is not without merit to reach an audience that has shown sacrifice through service to their country.

Here is a chapter listing to give a broad overview of the topics covered:

The Boy Crusaders
First Time Abroad
The Fortified Secret
The Boys and the French
An Episode Called Cobra
The Boys Hold Out Near Mortain
The Lost Opportunity At Falaise
One Small-Unit Action
The Haunted Wood: Hürtgen Forest
Replacements and Infantry Morale
Modes of Dishonor
Treatment of Damaged Bodies, Alive and Dead
The Bulge
The Skorzeny Affair
The Peiper Affair
The End 
The Camps
Seriousness