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Before Their Time: A Memoir
In this memoir of his experiences as a teenage infantryman in the US Third Army during World War II, Kotlowitz brings to life the harrowing story of the massacre of his platoon in northeastern France, in which he—by playing dead—was the only one to survive.
208 pages, Paperback
Published June 15, 1999
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About the author
Robert Kotlowitz
13 books2 followersNovelist, editor and television executive.
Mr. Kotlowitz was born on Nov. 21, 1924, in Madison, N.J., and raised in Baltimore, where his parents, Max and Debra Kotlowitz, moved when he was a child. His father was a cantor.
Among the last cohort drafted in World War II, Mr. Kotlowitz was part of an ill-fated American assault against German troops in France after D-Day, which he described in a 1995 article in The New York Times Magazine and in “Before Their Time: A Memoir,” published in 1999.
“In this engagement, which lasted 12 hours,” he wrote in The Times, “all but three men in the third platoon, Company C, 104th Regiment, were lost. I was one of the survivors.”
After the war, Mr. Kotlowitz graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where he studied piano. Instead of becoming a concert pianist, though, he decided to write novels. That did not become his full-time work either — he worked as an editor at Discovery magazine, a publicity manager for RCA Victor Records, and a contributor and editor at Harper’s and other magazines before joining Channel 13 — but he did publish four novels: “Somewhere Else” (1972), “The Boardwalk,” (1977), “Sea Changes” (1986) and “His Master’s Voice” (1992).
Mr. Kotlowitz was born on Nov. 21, 1924, in Madison, N.J., and raised in Baltimore, where his parents, Max and Debra Kotlowitz, moved when he was a child. His father was a cantor.
Among the last cohort drafted in World War II, Mr. Kotlowitz was part of an ill-fated American assault against German troops in France after D-Day, which he described in a 1995 article in The New York Times Magazine and in “Before Their Time: A Memoir,” published in 1999.
“In this engagement, which lasted 12 hours,” he wrote in The Times, “all but three men in the third platoon, Company C, 104th Regiment, were lost. I was one of the survivors.”
After the war, Mr. Kotlowitz graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where he studied piano. Instead of becoming a concert pianist, though, he decided to write novels. That did not become his full-time work either — he worked as an editor at Discovery magazine, a publicity manager for RCA Victor Records, and a contributor and editor at Harper’s and other magazines before joining Channel 13 — but he did publish four novels: “Somewhere Else” (1972), “The Boardwalk,” (1977), “Sea Changes” (1986) and “His Master’s Voice” (1992).
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October 20, 2022
This is not your typical “Greatest Generation” veteran’s memoir. Here is the opening paragraph:
“In 1943, I was a pre-med day student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Half the student body at Hopkins during World War II was pre-med; it was a respectable way of evading the draft. But I was a fraud on campus, and not the only one. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I had no interest in medicine, or in science of any kind. And so, even though I was a smart kid, my school marks showed mostly C’s and D’s and enough F’s to put me on probation. At eighteen, which was how old I was then, this record almost paralyzed me. I knew in my bones that I was going to flunk out and that there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe I even wanted to flunk out.
The Army soon intervened. With my lousy marks, they drafted me right out of the clssroom. I was there one day, gone the next…” (p. 3)
A whole lot of US citizens were drafted to fight in World War II, and Robert Kotlowitz tells a compelling story about the non-elite, non-gung-ho part of the US military. Which is what makes this book, despite some flaws, an astonishing document.
Getting “drafted” for a Johns Hopkins student, even a flunking one, was not the same as it was for the average Joe. Kotlowitz wound up in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), an interesting proto-G.I. Bill program that sent smart kids to college while simultaneously drafting them. Rammed through the university process (a degree in 18 months according to Wikipedia) what was hoped for was a well-educated batch of officer material made up in a hurry. And so Kotlowitz wound up at the University of Maine where he studied Engineering, another discipline he didn’t like. But he kept his grades up, worried about what happened if he didn’t. But it didn’t matter, as Kotlowitz notes:
“The Army Specialized Training Program couldn’t last. We knew that. After only two months, Congress voted it out of existence, under sharp pressure from constituents, who claimed that we were being coddled; it was the old populist cry of elitism…” (p. 9)
The Wikipedia article is recommended for ASTP, but the political component isn’t as emphasized as it is here. The universities were starved for students, so they were big supporters of ASTP, so the competing factions no doubt led to the usual political give-n-take. Anyway, the Army needed a lot of soldiers fast since the invasion of Europe was proving more costly than anticipated, and the ASTP provided a huge batch of pre-trained 18-22 year olds. And this is how Kotlowitz wound up in C Company, 104th Regiment of the famed 26th Yankee Division.
About half the book is spent with Kotlowitz’s experiences in training and getting to know his platoon. To his credit, Kotlowitz is an astringently unsentimental person, and the “Band of Brothers” bonding process is show to be a coarse process of desperation among a group of people who have very little in common (his classmate (but not friend) from ASTP in Maine being the only semi-exception, Bern Keaton). Kotlowitz’s observations on the officer and non-com leadership is harsh but he does give credit where it is due. His Company CO, the semi-literate college football player Michael Antonovich is prone to panic attacks and foggy thinking. Lieutenant Gallagher, commanding the platoon is perhaps the only competent leadership Kotlowitz encounters. Although Sergeant Rene “Arch” Archambault is terrific in training, his catastrophic failure in combat is one of the most shocking, and depressing moments in the book. As for his platoon mates, Kotlowitz and two ASTP mates are considered “college boys” and given the most demeaning tasks and made to carry the BAR semi-automatic rifle, which is cumbersome and vulnerable to sniper fire. The hazing is random and fairly innocuous, however, and mostly what you get is the Kotlowitz’s sense of distaste for the lack of privacy and stupidity of his surroundings. Anchoring the book in a peculiarly oblique way is Fedderman, a fat Jewish guy from Greenwich Village, smart, ironic, and an utter Sad Sack. Fedderman is the kind of guy Kotlowitz would have liked (in small doses) in civilian life, but in the Army he is a hopeless liability, embarrassing and a danger to himself and everybody else. Kotlowitz’s ability to delineate how these people get along (and don’t) is masterful and, again, free of “Greatest Generation” cant. For instance, one of the soldiers in his platoon, Willis, is a kleptomaniac who steals everybody’s underwear. The creepiness of this, and Willis’s insane denials of everything, even when standing in the stolen underwear with laundry tags visible, makes you wonder how such nuttiness can stay in the ranks. However, as it turns out, Willis is a capable scout, and when pressure is put on the platoon, he turns out to shed the creepiness and become a responsible, effective soldier. Kotlowitz manages to convey this plausibly and humanely, even though he understandably loathes the guy. Other soldiers who start off promising, turn to shit later on: for instance, Rocky Hubbell was the squad leader, a tough Texan who conforms to many of the WWII platoon Texans you’ve seen in the movies, but as it turns out, he too has a flaky side, and tends to disappear for days at a time to the point where he forfeits the platoon’s trust.
Before going overseas and to top off their training, the 26th Yankee Division engaged in war games against the 78th Division in Tennessee. In a grim foreshadowing of what is to come, Kotlowitz’s platoon strolls into an ambush and is instantly captured. Soon after, about 20 men are drowned in an exercise to cross the Cumberland River and the exercise is suspended in a muddle of rumors, rain and recriminations. Although Kotlowitz doesn’t overdo it, this serves as a omen for the tragic stupidity to come.
***
They land on Utah Beach, a few weeks after D-Day. Kotlowitz’s description of France and its people is deftly handled, for again, eschewing the cliches of “over there” that plague the Stephen Ambrose approach, the French are distant, wary and strictly segregated from the G.I.’s. Soon enough, France becomes a hole dug in the mud facing a small German salient on a quiet sector of the front line. It is in combat, of course, where these unpromising recruits (I think Kotlowitz would include himself in this description), spotty leadership, and poor training results in disaster. This is where this book becomes truly illuminating, for rather than the elite Airborne troops in “Band of Brothers” HBO series, or the Rangers in “Saving Private Ryan,” we have green “replacement” troops sent to the front lines. In those movies/shows you see these guys sometimes, usually moments before they are slaughtered, but here we are with those about to die, green, untested, terrified, and led by equally clueless officers.
The 26th Yankee Division is sent to relieve the Fourth Armored Division that had made a dramatic breakout after D-Day but had been bogged down by supply problems (gas and ammo). So the Fourth Armored dug in, and it is within their large (two-man)foxholes that Kotlowitz and his fellow soldiers move into. A Fourth Armored veteran briefs Kotlowitz and his foxhole mate Johnson (a guy from Vermont who virtually never speaks, but is otherwise pretty reliable given the standards of the platoon). The briefing is competent – far more competent than the stateside training they have received – but Kotlowitz is unnerved by the fact the 4th Armored vet cannot stop grinning because he is so happy to get out of there.
Basically, the deal is you have to stay in the hole during daylight hours, else you will get shot. The Germans are a couple hundred yards away on higher ground and they know what they are doing. So down they stay, all day, in their 2-man foxholes. At night they take turns going to the forward observation hole where they sit with their boots sole-to-sole to keep each other awake. The boredom, compounded with fear and having to shit in your helmet and dump it outside the foxhole make for some pretty grim reading. As for defecating, Kotlowitz tries to do so outside the hole one, impulsive time. The Germans send bullets zinging around him, apparently, so speculates Kotlowitz, as a kind of joke rather than any real attempt to kill him. Later on they prove what good shots they really are...
***
But of course officers commanding divisions that have yet to experience combat tend to be eager to show their mettle (and advance their careers), and so comes the catastrophe at the heart of the book. A decision is made to attack the German positions. Lt. Gallagher leads his men in a diamond formation at dawn, just like in World War I. As Kotlowitz notes: “There was no discussion of tactics. There were barely any orders. There wasn’t time. We assumed, if we assumed anything, that our squad leaders had been filled in.” Nope. Nobody knew anything. Moments later Lt. Gallagher is killed, shot through the throat “when the Germans began to fire their Mausers. At the same moment, perfectly synchronized, a 180-degree sweep of machine-gun fire, which at first I mistook for our own, took us from right to left, along the horseshoe’s curve, dropping the platoon where it stood…” (p. 136)
This, apparently, is how green divisions get “blooded”. About 40 people died, badly led, and for no apparent purpose. Three survived from Kotlowitz’s squad, and Kotlowitz was the only one not injured. He lay, frozen to the ground playing dead, slowing down his breathing, terrified, while German snipers finished off the wounded around him, then had at them with mortar rounds, then by lobbing grenades. Yards away from Kotlowitz, fat, incompetent, intellectually precocious Fedderman took hours to die, calling for his mother. Johnson moaned for water throughout the day. After a few hours, somebody got up and tried to run for it and was instantly mowed down. During this entire time, from what I image to be incredible confusion and incompetence at the Division level, no artillery or air support came to attack the Germans. They were just left there all day while the Germans worked them over all day.
Some 12 hours later, when dark finally came, whispering medics picking their way through the dead found Kotlowitz. He could barely move from the cramps, but once he was able, he helped take back one of the wounded from another platoon, a guy who had part of his lower jaw shot off. He didn’t make it. His ASTP buddy Bern Keaton and his foxhole companion the silent guy from Vermont, Roger Johnson both survived with wounds. It is not mentioned, but it seems unlikely that the Germans suffered any casualties at all.
The rest of the book is taken with Kotlowitz’s experiences behind the lines. His CO, Captain Antonovich, predictably has a panic attack when he sees him. To Kotlowitz’s dismay, Sergeant Archie Archambault is there too, cowering in a corner of the headquarters tent. Kotlowitz is immediately waylaid by the fatuous Division Historian (since he is the first and only ambulatory combat veteran in the entire Yankee Division) and peppered with questions. Likewise the Division’s psychiatrist doesn’t have enough to do and engages in an absurdly thorough round of “talking cure” involving, at one point, shooting Kotlowitz up with sodium pentothal. This head-shrinking goes on for several days and then Kotlowitz is suddenly sent to the rear where is assigned duty guarding the duffel bags of the entire Division in a rat-infested, leaky warehouse. The duffel bags of the dead from his platoon are duly removed from the pile by Kotlowitz and another soldier, an experience which is needless to say, traumatic for him.
At the end of the book, he reunites with Bern Keaton for the first time in 1995. His heart doesn’t seem to be in it, but he is a good sport about it. There are occasional attempts by Kotlowitz to do the veteran’s nostalgia thing, but his heart just isn’t in it. He had no real interest in reunions or reflections on the past. It is somewhat of a mystery why he wrote this book, but I am sure glad he did.
***
I first read this book about five years ago and I didn’t much care for it. Kotlowitz is not an especially good writer (the opening paragraph above gives some idea of the somewhat awkward prose). Kotlowitz himself is a somewhat unpleasant person, at least from what I read. The irony is rather crudely handled in many places, and although it is certainly deserved, an overall aggrieved tone colors everything. This is in comparison to, say, Robert Graves WWI memoir “Goodbye to All That” or Vonnegut’s “Slaughter House Five” (which is essentially a memoir of sorts). Kotlowitz’s raw honesty impressed me more this time around, and his refusal to sentimentalize the dead (his ambivalence about Sad Sack Fedderman never goes away, and is apparently never softened). Kotlowitz is clearly a very intelligent person, but he is not an intellectual, exactly, which is to say this is not a “literary” memoir. (Interestingly, he goes into some detail about what he reads in the service, and it is solidly middlebrow. Fedderman, the Greenwich Village intellectual of the outfit, reads westerns, noting that they are a truly brilliant American art form; it is impossible to say if he was being ironic or not, and he is killed soon enough anyway).
But on re-reading the book, I find Kotlowitz’s unwillingness to paper over his attitudes and personality with the aw-shucks false modesty of so many memoirs is commendable; his artlessness provides veracity. Another commendable thing I noticed on second reading was Kotlowitz’s ability to recall what it was like to be a callow 18-year-old. Without a whiff of sentimentality, or too-easy “I was such an idiot” dismissals, he uncannily recreates the touchy, proud, disgusted, terrified teenager that he was.
And yet by not particularly trying to be charming, self-effacing, or forgiving, Kotlowitz is perhaps being honest in a way that is not often encountered in these sorts of memoirs. The sticky fog of nostalgia never clouds over things. Kotlowitz not only knows he is no hero, rather refreshingly he never even hints that he had any interest whatsoever in ever being one. The closest he comes to a military motivation is his expressed hatred for Germans, brought about because he is Jewish, but even this seems rather unconvincing. His “band of brothers” motivation – that you fight for your platoon -- as he makes quite clear, comes from desperate necessity – no matter what poor soldiers your platoon consists of, you have to rely on them. His platoon mates garner very little by way of fondness or even basic respect. All of it, the soldiers, the officers, the organization, the tasks were distasteful to Kotlowitz. Stephen Ambrose would have no use for this guy, and that is what makes this book so important because I tried to read “Band of Brothers” years ago and I couldn’t stand Ambrose’s heavy-handed mawkishness that taints every page (kudos to HBO for stripping out most of this crap and just telling the story).
Kotlowitz died just weeks before I read this book (August 2012), noted for his pioneering work in Public Television, but perhaps it will be this book that will be his truly enduring legacy.
“In 1943, I was a pre-med day student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Half the student body at Hopkins during World War II was pre-med; it was a respectable way of evading the draft. But I was a fraud on campus, and not the only one. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I had no interest in medicine, or in science of any kind. And so, even though I was a smart kid, my school marks showed mostly C’s and D’s and enough F’s to put me on probation. At eighteen, which was how old I was then, this record almost paralyzed me. I knew in my bones that I was going to flunk out and that there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe I even wanted to flunk out.
The Army soon intervened. With my lousy marks, they drafted me right out of the clssroom. I was there one day, gone the next…” (p. 3)
A whole lot of US citizens were drafted to fight in World War II, and Robert Kotlowitz tells a compelling story about the non-elite, non-gung-ho part of the US military. Which is what makes this book, despite some flaws, an astonishing document.
Getting “drafted” for a Johns Hopkins student, even a flunking one, was not the same as it was for the average Joe. Kotlowitz wound up in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), an interesting proto-G.I. Bill program that sent smart kids to college while simultaneously drafting them. Rammed through the university process (a degree in 18 months according to Wikipedia) what was hoped for was a well-educated batch of officer material made up in a hurry. And so Kotlowitz wound up at the University of Maine where he studied Engineering, another discipline he didn’t like. But he kept his grades up, worried about what happened if he didn’t. But it didn’t matter, as Kotlowitz notes:
“The Army Specialized Training Program couldn’t last. We knew that. After only two months, Congress voted it out of existence, under sharp pressure from constituents, who claimed that we were being coddled; it was the old populist cry of elitism…” (p. 9)
The Wikipedia article is recommended for ASTP, but the political component isn’t as emphasized as it is here. The universities were starved for students, so they were big supporters of ASTP, so the competing factions no doubt led to the usual political give-n-take. Anyway, the Army needed a lot of soldiers fast since the invasion of Europe was proving more costly than anticipated, and the ASTP provided a huge batch of pre-trained 18-22 year olds. And this is how Kotlowitz wound up in C Company, 104th Regiment of the famed 26th Yankee Division.
About half the book is spent with Kotlowitz’s experiences in training and getting to know his platoon. To his credit, Kotlowitz is an astringently unsentimental person, and the “Band of Brothers” bonding process is show to be a coarse process of desperation among a group of people who have very little in common (his classmate (but not friend) from ASTP in Maine being the only semi-exception, Bern Keaton). Kotlowitz’s observations on the officer and non-com leadership is harsh but he does give credit where it is due. His Company CO, the semi-literate college football player Michael Antonovich is prone to panic attacks and foggy thinking. Lieutenant Gallagher, commanding the platoon is perhaps the only competent leadership Kotlowitz encounters. Although Sergeant Rene “Arch” Archambault is terrific in training, his catastrophic failure in combat is one of the most shocking, and depressing moments in the book. As for his platoon mates, Kotlowitz and two ASTP mates are considered “college boys” and given the most demeaning tasks and made to carry the BAR semi-automatic rifle, which is cumbersome and vulnerable to sniper fire. The hazing is random and fairly innocuous, however, and mostly what you get is the Kotlowitz’s sense of distaste for the lack of privacy and stupidity of his surroundings. Anchoring the book in a peculiarly oblique way is Fedderman, a fat Jewish guy from Greenwich Village, smart, ironic, and an utter Sad Sack. Fedderman is the kind of guy Kotlowitz would have liked (in small doses) in civilian life, but in the Army he is a hopeless liability, embarrassing and a danger to himself and everybody else. Kotlowitz’s ability to delineate how these people get along (and don’t) is masterful and, again, free of “Greatest Generation” cant. For instance, one of the soldiers in his platoon, Willis, is a kleptomaniac who steals everybody’s underwear. The creepiness of this, and Willis’s insane denials of everything, even when standing in the stolen underwear with laundry tags visible, makes you wonder how such nuttiness can stay in the ranks. However, as it turns out, Willis is a capable scout, and when pressure is put on the platoon, he turns out to shed the creepiness and become a responsible, effective soldier. Kotlowitz manages to convey this plausibly and humanely, even though he understandably loathes the guy. Other soldiers who start off promising, turn to shit later on: for instance, Rocky Hubbell was the squad leader, a tough Texan who conforms to many of the WWII platoon Texans you’ve seen in the movies, but as it turns out, he too has a flaky side, and tends to disappear for days at a time to the point where he forfeits the platoon’s trust.
Before going overseas and to top off their training, the 26th Yankee Division engaged in war games against the 78th Division in Tennessee. In a grim foreshadowing of what is to come, Kotlowitz’s platoon strolls into an ambush and is instantly captured. Soon after, about 20 men are drowned in an exercise to cross the Cumberland River and the exercise is suspended in a muddle of rumors, rain and recriminations. Although Kotlowitz doesn’t overdo it, this serves as a omen for the tragic stupidity to come.
***
They land on Utah Beach, a few weeks after D-Day. Kotlowitz’s description of France and its people is deftly handled, for again, eschewing the cliches of “over there” that plague the Stephen Ambrose approach, the French are distant, wary and strictly segregated from the G.I.’s. Soon enough, France becomes a hole dug in the mud facing a small German salient on a quiet sector of the front line. It is in combat, of course, where these unpromising recruits (I think Kotlowitz would include himself in this description), spotty leadership, and poor training results in disaster. This is where this book becomes truly illuminating, for rather than the elite Airborne troops in “Band of Brothers” HBO series, or the Rangers in “Saving Private Ryan,” we have green “replacement” troops sent to the front lines. In those movies/shows you see these guys sometimes, usually moments before they are slaughtered, but here we are with those about to die, green, untested, terrified, and led by equally clueless officers.
The 26th Yankee Division is sent to relieve the Fourth Armored Division that had made a dramatic breakout after D-Day but had been bogged down by supply problems (gas and ammo). So the Fourth Armored dug in, and it is within their large (two-man)foxholes that Kotlowitz and his fellow soldiers move into. A Fourth Armored veteran briefs Kotlowitz and his foxhole mate Johnson (a guy from Vermont who virtually never speaks, but is otherwise pretty reliable given the standards of the platoon). The briefing is competent – far more competent than the stateside training they have received – but Kotlowitz is unnerved by the fact the 4th Armored vet cannot stop grinning because he is so happy to get out of there.
Basically, the deal is you have to stay in the hole during daylight hours, else you will get shot. The Germans are a couple hundred yards away on higher ground and they know what they are doing. So down they stay, all day, in their 2-man foxholes. At night they take turns going to the forward observation hole where they sit with their boots sole-to-sole to keep each other awake. The boredom, compounded with fear and having to shit in your helmet and dump it outside the foxhole make for some pretty grim reading. As for defecating, Kotlowitz tries to do so outside the hole one, impulsive time. The Germans send bullets zinging around him, apparently, so speculates Kotlowitz, as a kind of joke rather than any real attempt to kill him. Later on they prove what good shots they really are...
***
But of course officers commanding divisions that have yet to experience combat tend to be eager to show their mettle (and advance their careers), and so comes the catastrophe at the heart of the book. A decision is made to attack the German positions. Lt. Gallagher leads his men in a diamond formation at dawn, just like in World War I. As Kotlowitz notes: “There was no discussion of tactics. There were barely any orders. There wasn’t time. We assumed, if we assumed anything, that our squad leaders had been filled in.” Nope. Nobody knew anything. Moments later Lt. Gallagher is killed, shot through the throat “when the Germans began to fire their Mausers. At the same moment, perfectly synchronized, a 180-degree sweep of machine-gun fire, which at first I mistook for our own, took us from right to left, along the horseshoe’s curve, dropping the platoon where it stood…” (p. 136)
This, apparently, is how green divisions get “blooded”. About 40 people died, badly led, and for no apparent purpose. Three survived from Kotlowitz’s squad, and Kotlowitz was the only one not injured. He lay, frozen to the ground playing dead, slowing down his breathing, terrified, while German snipers finished off the wounded around him, then had at them with mortar rounds, then by lobbing grenades. Yards away from Kotlowitz, fat, incompetent, intellectually precocious Fedderman took hours to die, calling for his mother. Johnson moaned for water throughout the day. After a few hours, somebody got up and tried to run for it and was instantly mowed down. During this entire time, from what I image to be incredible confusion and incompetence at the Division level, no artillery or air support came to attack the Germans. They were just left there all day while the Germans worked them over all day.
Some 12 hours later, when dark finally came, whispering medics picking their way through the dead found Kotlowitz. He could barely move from the cramps, but once he was able, he helped take back one of the wounded from another platoon, a guy who had part of his lower jaw shot off. He didn’t make it. His ASTP buddy Bern Keaton and his foxhole companion the silent guy from Vermont, Roger Johnson both survived with wounds. It is not mentioned, but it seems unlikely that the Germans suffered any casualties at all.
The rest of the book is taken with Kotlowitz’s experiences behind the lines. His CO, Captain Antonovich, predictably has a panic attack when he sees him. To Kotlowitz’s dismay, Sergeant Archie Archambault is there too, cowering in a corner of the headquarters tent. Kotlowitz is immediately waylaid by the fatuous Division Historian (since he is the first and only ambulatory combat veteran in the entire Yankee Division) and peppered with questions. Likewise the Division’s psychiatrist doesn’t have enough to do and engages in an absurdly thorough round of “talking cure” involving, at one point, shooting Kotlowitz up with sodium pentothal. This head-shrinking goes on for several days and then Kotlowitz is suddenly sent to the rear where is assigned duty guarding the duffel bags of the entire Division in a rat-infested, leaky warehouse. The duffel bags of the dead from his platoon are duly removed from the pile by Kotlowitz and another soldier, an experience which is needless to say, traumatic for him.
At the end of the book, he reunites with Bern Keaton for the first time in 1995. His heart doesn’t seem to be in it, but he is a good sport about it. There are occasional attempts by Kotlowitz to do the veteran’s nostalgia thing, but his heart just isn’t in it. He had no real interest in reunions or reflections on the past. It is somewhat of a mystery why he wrote this book, but I am sure glad he did.
***
I first read this book about five years ago and I didn’t much care for it. Kotlowitz is not an especially good writer (the opening paragraph above gives some idea of the somewhat awkward prose). Kotlowitz himself is a somewhat unpleasant person, at least from what I read. The irony is rather crudely handled in many places, and although it is certainly deserved, an overall aggrieved tone colors everything. This is in comparison to, say, Robert Graves WWI memoir “Goodbye to All That” or Vonnegut’s “Slaughter House Five” (which is essentially a memoir of sorts). Kotlowitz’s raw honesty impressed me more this time around, and his refusal to sentimentalize the dead (his ambivalence about Sad Sack Fedderman never goes away, and is apparently never softened). Kotlowitz is clearly a very intelligent person, but he is not an intellectual, exactly, which is to say this is not a “literary” memoir. (Interestingly, he goes into some detail about what he reads in the service, and it is solidly middlebrow. Fedderman, the Greenwich Village intellectual of the outfit, reads westerns, noting that they are a truly brilliant American art form; it is impossible to say if he was being ironic or not, and he is killed soon enough anyway).
But on re-reading the book, I find Kotlowitz’s unwillingness to paper over his attitudes and personality with the aw-shucks false modesty of so many memoirs is commendable; his artlessness provides veracity. Another commendable thing I noticed on second reading was Kotlowitz’s ability to recall what it was like to be a callow 18-year-old. Without a whiff of sentimentality, or too-easy “I was such an idiot” dismissals, he uncannily recreates the touchy, proud, disgusted, terrified teenager that he was.
And yet by not particularly trying to be charming, self-effacing, or forgiving, Kotlowitz is perhaps being honest in a way that is not often encountered in these sorts of memoirs. The sticky fog of nostalgia never clouds over things. Kotlowitz not only knows he is no hero, rather refreshingly he never even hints that he had any interest whatsoever in ever being one. The closest he comes to a military motivation is his expressed hatred for Germans, brought about because he is Jewish, but even this seems rather unconvincing. His “band of brothers” motivation – that you fight for your platoon -- as he makes quite clear, comes from desperate necessity – no matter what poor soldiers your platoon consists of, you have to rely on them. His platoon mates garner very little by way of fondness or even basic respect. All of it, the soldiers, the officers, the organization, the tasks were distasteful to Kotlowitz. Stephen Ambrose would have no use for this guy, and that is what makes this book so important because I tried to read “Band of Brothers” years ago and I couldn’t stand Ambrose’s heavy-handed mawkishness that taints every page (kudos to HBO for stripping out most of this crap and just telling the story).
Kotlowitz died just weeks before I read this book (August 2012), noted for his pioneering work in Public Television, but perhaps it will be this book that will be his truly enduring legacy.
June 18, 2016
This is an honest to goodness memoir about a soldier that talks honestly about his experience before and after he signs up (sorta reluctantly) in 1943. He speaks openly about the recruits and his buddies that he served with during WW11.
Refreshing. Very refreshing.
Refreshing. Very refreshing.
September 16, 2012
This short book is a subtle narrative. It begins rather artlessly but builds as the events recollected become more horrific. The clipped rhetorical style seems perfectly appropriate to the protagonist's tale & his profound anger.
I sometimes found myself wondering about the veracity of recollected conversations & scenes. But in an important sense the veracity of the account is besides the point. I was completely persuaded that I was reading a "true" account of a man who had been broken by events, a rendering at which one both marvels and condoles.
What Kotlowitz says about his company's official history can also be said about his memoir:
"The 104th's own history is far more specific and at times ... slightly romantic in tone. Its restrained narrative names names and places, calls a disaster a disaster, and is enriched here and there by curiously lyrical interludes, especially when the facts cannot effectively carry the narrative. In its restraint, the history catches something essential about the real experience, even while it avoids the central question for the handful of us who survived: that of accountability. Who actually was responsible for that day at the Horseshoe?" (p. 189.)
" '[T]he realization that combat means closing with the enemy and that closing with the enemy meant, for some, death.' Perhaps that's acknowledgment enough for the third platoon. It says something real and says it gracefully, even if it misses the full resonance of what happened, the elusive personal dimension of it, the private griefs and regrets. At least, the regimental history tries to look directly at the subject and describe what it sees—and succeeds often enough.
The same compliment should be said about Kotlowitz's memoir.
June 15, 2022
This was one of the first books that I ever checked out about World War II. I stayed with my grandparents for the summer, and they got me a library card for the library where they lived. I loved this book, and it helped start my interest in World War II.
This book is a memoir written by Robert Kotlowitz, that follows his time from boot camp through the war. There was a slow progression of horrific experiences that he was able to recall as though they just happened yesterday. People are so quick to say negative things about service members and wars in general, but they never stop to think about the personal impact that these experiences have on a person. I would highly suggest picking this book up.
This book is a memoir written by Robert Kotlowitz, that follows his time from boot camp through the war. There was a slow progression of horrific experiences that he was able to recall as though they just happened yesterday. People are so quick to say negative things about service members and wars in general, but they never stop to think about the personal impact that these experiences have on a person. I would highly suggest picking this book up.
May 9, 2020
This is a rare first person's account of what It was like to be in the Army during WWII from boot camp to battle and its aftermath. I thought it interesting that it was told entirely from a personal viewpoint without any comments about the war itself. Most of the time they had very little information, or interest, about where they were or why. A most of it was following orders. Get on the ship, get off the ship, set up camp, get on the truck, get off the truck, dig a hole and lie in it until ordered to move. It was up to them as individuals to avoid being killed. The big moment in the book is blank. I'm not sure if he had any recollection of what happened or like most victims of battle he just can't bring himself to think about it. Its like a lot of monster movies in that the scariest part is not being able to see the monster. William Manchester wrote about his personal experience as a marine in his war memoir "Goodbye Darkness" which I loved but I think Robert Kotlowitz captured more of the emotions and personalities of the individual soldiers.
February 5, 2018
Among the thousands of books on World War II in my local library, this slim volume caught my attention. My late husband, too, had served in the infantry, and I hoped this memoir might tell me about experiences that he never could bring himself to talk about.
It did.
Not many who remember that war are still alive, so it is understandable that twenty years after it was placed on the shelf, the book’s pages were unbroken, perhaps had never been turned by even one reader. Yet what it says about the nature of war is universal.
Kotlowitz, a former executive at New York’s PBS station, knows about the realities of war - any war.
Writers of history and psychology texts for the college or high school level looking for excerpts to illustrate the frontline experience can find them in the last four chapters. They spare no detail, physical or emotional.
It did.
Not many who remember that war are still alive, so it is understandable that twenty years after it was placed on the shelf, the book’s pages were unbroken, perhaps had never been turned by even one reader. Yet what it says about the nature of war is universal.
Kotlowitz, a former executive at New York’s PBS station, knows about the realities of war - any war.
Writers of history and psychology texts for the college or high school level looking for excerpts to illustrate the frontline experience can find them in the last four chapters. They spare no detail, physical or emotional.
August 20, 2019
This book came out 20 years ago, a recollection of Kotlowitz's experiences as a grunge GI in World War II. Amazingly, for this memoir, he' s able to recall details of experiences from 50 years earlier. (Well, perhaps he'd been mulling it over all that time but finally decided to put it down on paper.) He recalls with great detail the idiosyncrasies and quirks of his draftee buddies, his squad's sad-sack, his fears of rope ladders, the mundane rigidly of army life, bumbling leadership and the hell of combat experience (for him, only one). Kotlowitz's straightforward narrative resonates with a flair for wry humor: A Kraut sniper laughs as he takes potshots (without doubt purposefully missing aim) at Kotlowitz as he squats to poop outside his foxhole. Mud and mundanity, but later his platoon was decimated as it endeavored to attack. My own undistinguished service came during the Korean War, but I having heard tales from GI friends who'd served in WWII, I empathized.
September 6, 2023
Outstanding short book from a private/PFC perspective through draft, training, and war. Short for this type of book, but well written. The author trained in part at "Camp Jackson" outside Columbia SC. I trained there in 1960 immediately after high school. Went into service with 12 buddies from high school. We were in for only 6 months, but I learned a lot. I turned 18 about 4 months after entering duty. I received basic training and advanced infantry training (AIT). In AIT I was trained on the mortar and the recoilless rifle. This author was a BAR man.
Many of his stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. resonated with me. The camaraderie was perhaps the best part. I think that is a central theme of the book, or maybe I projected my own experience. Heck the author even
liked Fedderman. At any rate, if anyone out there wants to reconnect vicariously through this book to their own service experience, I am sure much of the book will resonate.
Many of his stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. resonated with me. The camaraderie was perhaps the best part. I think that is a central theme of the book, or maybe I projected my own experience. Heck the author even
liked Fedderman. At any rate, if anyone out there wants to reconnect vicariously through this book to their own service experience, I am sure much of the book will resonate.
July 29, 2020
Heartfelt, beautifully written memoir of the author's World War II infantry service in the 104th Regiment, C Company. A few months after he arrived in France, his platoon was ordered into a catastrophic, doomed engagement with a German unit. Out of about 40 men in the platoon, only 3 -- one of them Kotlowitz -- survived. And Kotlowitz was the only one who survived uninjured. He managed to do that by turning himself into a corpse for 12 hours, until the Germans finally withdrew.
The final few pages, in which Kotlowitz describes meeting one of the two other survivors -- who also happened to be his best buddy -- 50 years after the war ended in Europe, is deeply affecting.
The final few pages, in which Kotlowitz describes meeting one of the two other survivors -- who also happened to be his best buddy -- 50 years after the war ended in Europe, is deeply affecting.
March 31, 2023
Short and succinct. An unsentimental memoir that is detailed and personal. Quite a different view of war with little of the heroics and selflessness we have been conditioned to expect.
October 27, 2008
Memoir of RK's time in the Army in WW2 after being drafted out of college. The writing is very clear and direct as it tells about fellow soldiers and officers from boot camp to France. The action is mostly drudgery and mundane until RK is the lone survivor in a fight with Germans that pretty much ends the war for him. Short, no nonsense look at what it is like to be an ordinary soldier in WW2 with no heroes--it's just kids over in some country fighting an unknown, faceless enemy, while trying to survive.
September 17, 2015
Some WWII memoirs concentrate exclusively on how heroic the writer was during the war, not this one. The emphasis here is a thorough look at the friendships created and then lost when Mr. Kotlowitz's fellow soldiers were killed during a poorly planned frontal assault on a German position in France. Reminded me of E. Sledge's 'With the Old Breed' for its honesty and eloquence. It must have been difficult for Kotlowitz to write this book, considering what he lived through and what happened to him subsequently, which makes me admire his efforts to put this story in writing all the more.
March 8, 2016
What an interesting take on a WWII combat memoir. Self-deprecating, honest, strange and brutal -- all at the same time. Kotlowitz is an excellent writer and puts his memory to work recounting his single combat experience in WWII that ended in a devastating experience for him and the other members of his platoon. This period and arena in WWII has gotten little attention over the years but was in fact one of the worst periods in U.S. military history. Desertions were at an all-time high and "combat fatigue" was destroying psyches. Interesting memoir...
July 28, 2011
What a perfect and poignant book. Concise, humble, utterly frank and honest, all too human. Robert Kotlowitz's story of a young man sent to war is not unique. What is, though, is the sheer heart and beauty he tells his tale with. I finished this book and thought how beautifully it had been written. Very moving.
January 13, 2013
Far different take on WWII grunts in Europe. Strangely poignant, Kotlowitz's experience in combat is not heroic in the traditional sense. Far from it; he's the lone survivor of a poorly trained platoon forced to attack a larger German force. He falls a part afterwards and is not the least self-conscious about it, nor should he be. Good read and very human in its observations about men in combat.
February 6, 2008
This book was about Dziadek's platoon or command (or something, i can't remember what the term is) He said it was pretty accurate on the sequence of events...of course Dziadek's stories are way better.
September 3, 2014
Striking, clear and tragic. RK presents the familiar characters of a platoon from the Greatest Generation heading to war, but upends the narrative with his telling of a massacre he survived by playing dead. It's as unforgettable as the best fiction.
April 23, 2013
Ably told memoir of the author's WWII experience, brief and tragic. Highlighted for me once again the futility, frustration, ineptitude and filthiness in every way of war.
September 21, 2015
I would give the last 70 pages 5 stars, but the lead-up is flat. Very compelling from Bezange to the end.
March 19, 2014
One of the best books about WWII soldiers' experience that I have read. Really enjoyed it.
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