And No Birds Sang

by Farley Mowat, Charles Martin Smith (Foreword)

In July 1942, Farley Mowat was an eager young infantryman bound for Europe and impatient for combat. This powerful, true account of the action he saw, fighting desperately to push the Nazis out of Italy, evokes the terrible reality of war with an honesty and clarity fiction can only imitate. In scene after unforgettable scene, he describes the agony and antic humor of the soldier's the tedium of camp life, the savagery of the front, and the camaraderie shared by those who have been bloodied in battle.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, War, Canada, World War II, Biography

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Farley McGill Mowat was a conservationist and one of Canada's most widely-read authors.

Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist. His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books.

Mowat studied biology at the University of Toronto. During a field trip to the Arctic, Mowat became outraged at the plight of the Ihalmiut, a Caribou Inuit band, which he attributed to misunderstanding by whites. His outrage led him to publish his first novel, People of the Deer (1952). This book made Mowat into a literary celebrity and was largely responsible for the shift in the Canadian government's Inuit policy: the government began shipping meat and dry goods to a people they previously denied existed.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship RV Farley Mowat was named in honour of him, and he frequently visited it to assist its mission.

Reviews

[Metodi Markov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книгата с преживелиците на Фарли Моуът разби няколко мита за ВСВ, които твърдо бях убеден, че са истина.

Мислех си, че съюзните генерали на англичаните, канадците и американците са ценяли повече войниците си от болшевишките. Нищо подобно, хвърляли са ги в месомелачката на войната също без пощада. До пълно изтощение, смърт и лудост…

Организацията на армиите е била както винаги - много неща липсват или са дефектни, хаос и грешки, но задачите от щаба трябва да се изпълняват безпрекословно и без мисъл, колкото и глупави, опасни или безумни да са…

Моуът се записва в армията още на 02.09.1939 година и воюва в пехотата с чин лейтенант до началото на 1944 година. Участва в десанта на Сицилия и след него в настъплението към Рим. Ужасите на войната и смъртта на приятелите му го пречупват психически и след лечение е назначен на щабна служба до края на войната в Европа. Уволнява се капитан, макар и да е имал предложение да остане да служи с чин майор.

Ужасите, които е преживял вероятно са го преследвали докато е бил жив. Тази книга е написал 35 години след случилото си - до тогава е потискал всичко у себе си и не е желал да си спомни преживяното.

Тематично, но абсолютно случайно завършвам тази книга на 09.05. - Денят на Европа, празник който нямаше да имаме без саможертвата на Моуът и другарите му!

Този мемоар е чудесно написан и заслужава да се прочете от повече хора, въпреки ужасната си българска корица!

💜🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇧💜

P.S. Не знам защо баща му - сам участник в ПСВ, поощрява младия Фарли да се запише доброволец за участие във ВСВ. Не ми го побира акъла просто, как можеш да причиниш това на детето си…

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farley Mowat is one of my favorite authors and usually his books are humorous, producing everything from giggles to guffaws.

This is not that type of book.

Here the author shares the story of his time in the Canadian infantry during World War II. The book is a brutally honest, unflinching record of the horrors the author experienced, and it hit me hard. My father had been in Sicily at the same time, but with the US infantry under General Patton. He landed at Palermo, and that is all he would ever say about Sicily.

But the infantry is the infantry no matter what country it marches for, so I am sure that many of Mowat's experiences would have been familiar to Dad and his buddies.

And it is a terrible thing to think of any man going through such horrors.

This book helped me understand both the author and my father. Although Mowat finishes the story while he is still on Sicily, and we don't know what happened to him after that, I kept on thinking of my father. He went on to participate in another beach landing: Anzio. He was injured early but could not be evacuated because of the bombardments going on. He had to lay there on the beachhead, helpless, with shrapnel in his face, listening to "all of that" going on around him. And that was all he would ever say about Anzio.

As long as there are men who sit in oval offices thinking that war is the answer to everything, there will be stories like Mowat's and my father's.

This book should be required reading for anyone who sends other young men off to war. Maybe someday its message will sink into even such thick skulls as Those In Power have.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for all high school and college students, so they will understand what war really means.
The Newsweek review for this book when it was published in 1979 said: "Reads like a novel and fixes images in the mind like a movie." I agree with that assessment. Perhaps I will write more of a review when I'm not so emotionally bowled over. The book had a profound impact on me.

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memorable story of Mowat's experiences in WWII. FM is a favorite author and if you only know him from his animal stories, I suggest you spend some time with him in this context.
***
copied from Wiki
"Mowat served throughout the campaign as a platoon commander and moved to Italy[7] in September 1943, seeing further combat until December 1943. During the Moro River Campaign, part of the Italian Campaign, he suffered from battle stress, heightened after an incident on Christmas Day outside of Ortona, Italy when he was left weeping at the feet of an unconscious friend, Lieutenant Allan (Al) Park, who had an enemy bullet in his head.[9] He then accepted a job as Intelligence Officer at battalion headquarters, later moving to Brigade Headquarters. He stayed in Italy with the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for most of the war, and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_...

[Robert French · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 80s I read a fair number of books by Farley Mowat, but had never encountered And No Birds Sang. It is an emotional memoir of Farley Mowat’s experiences in Sicily and Italy during WWII as a member of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (Hasty Pees). He participated in Operation Husky, the Canadian invasion of Sicily in July and August of 1943 and then the drive toward Rome. Mowat does not mince words and is often critical of senior command decisions. But what comes through most of all is the utter horror of the war and its impact on Mowat. Long before battle fatigue was redefined as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Mowat described the Worm and “the inexorable way it liquefies the inner substance of its victims.”

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

And No Birds Sang

Dying is just a word until you find out differently.

And No Birds Sang is a short war memoir by Farley Mowat.

The story begins with Mowat's enlistment in early 1943 with the first Canadian division. Then it's off to England for live training drills and on to Sicily for the war.

There is a tragic scene where a German sniper shoots at an old donkey who is working its way up the hill towards the town to the west of Mt Etna. Lots of blood was spilled there on the ground amongst the spare brush and skittish lizards.

Much of the island was heavily mined by the retreating German army and many bridges had been blown up. Mowat led many reconnaissance missions so the threat of explosives were ever present. In some cases they would encounter Italian forces who were not clear who or what they were fighting against. They could not decide if the British and Canadians were actually foes because they were most interested on being on the winning side.

Many of the Germans (the Jerrys) fighting were elite paratroopers. They were merciless in their efforts to demolish Sicilian cities as they retreated. In this regard the deaths were especially unnecessary.

After six months of near misses and the agony of seeing his comrades who had been shot or blown apart, and the fury of artillery barrages and the horrors of the dead bodies all around him, Mowat himself was wounded in the buttocks. Much to his dismay the medics removed the pieces of shrapnel and sent him back out to the Battle of Moro.

This battle did not go well for the Allies or the Germans for that matter. Some three days later some five hundred bodies lay lifeless near the flooded river. Mowat describes the battle as his breaking point moving about like a "robot". Days later he drank himself into oblivion. His battalion had already taken very heavy losses over the six months.

This memoir penned in 1979 ends abruptly on the island of Sicily in December of 1943 when Mowat was transferred off the front lines to headquarters.

4.5 stars. This is an excellent restrained piece of writing.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was 12 the poem that brought to me a love of poetry and literature was Keat's "La Belle Dans san Merci" which I found in my father's old high school text book 'Literature and Life'. which had a black and white copy of the Frank Dicksee painting of the same name. I thought of Mowat who probably through his Canadian schooling had competed in Elocution, each year memorizing a different poem for the competitions much as I had.
This is a story of an infantry Lieutenant and war as he imagined it would be and as he would find it to be. There is no analysis of Montgomery's strategy of the sweep up through Italy as the Canadians and Irish led the push into the teeth of stiff German defense. The Brits were known to push their colonials ahead of their own to bear the brunt in every war. All of these things are not the point of this account...Mowat's point is that war is not that glorious adventure that young boys learned about in their Latin classes (yes, unlike America Canada still followed the English model of teaching).
I thought of my boy's who spent endless hours re-fighting the Franco-Prussian wars with their painted lead soldiers on a garage sized diorama, with my brothers and his friends, and their sure knowledge that a soldier had but one duty: 'to do or die'...and how that knowledge did not deter their enlistment.
Mowat brings the reader slowly to the realization of what war is to an individual, and makes us wonder if that seductive woman who the pale knight succumbs to is not the man devouring female of romantic poets, but the seduction of war's glorious promise of adventure, and the hero warrior bathed in immortality.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Farley Mowat is remembered for his genial, often humorous natural history books such as Never Cry Wolf and Owls in the Family. He wrote with an engaging style and had the ability to artfully describe situations while giving the reader useful and interesting insights into the natural world.

This book is nothing like those. This is a Coming of Age Under Fire book, written in a style reminiscent of World War One memoirs such as Guy Chapman’s A Passionate Prodigality and Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That. It starts with youthful enthusiasm and high spirits and ends with shattering despair in the rain-swept, corpse-strewn Italian mountains. He only survived because once he reached the end of his endurance as an infantry platoon leader he was transferred to staff positions at the battalion and later division levels.

Nothing about his behavior should be seen as failure. He had reached the point that all infantrymen reach, if they live long enough. Combat destroys minds as well as bodies. In 1946 the U.S. Army released a Report of the Special Commission of Civilian Psychiatrists Covering Psychiatric Policy and Practice in the U. S. Army Medical Corps, ETO, and stated

Psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare…Most men were ineffective after 180 or even 140 days. The general consensus was that a man reached his peak of effectiveness in the first 90 days of combat, that after that his efficiency began to fall off, and that he became steadily less valuable thereafter until he was completely useless…The number of men on duty after 200 to 240 days of combat was small and their value to their units negligible.

Mowat was in the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment of the 1st Canadian Division, which was among the first wave of troops to land in Sicily in July 1943. His battalion was quickly engaged in bitter fighting against well-equipped German troops. By this time many of the Italian soldiers had had enough of the war, but they too put up stubborn resistance in many cases. Mowat watched as casualties mounted and the strains of combat began to tell on himself and everyone around him. He also noted the absurdities of war, such as

Alex, who had come up unseen behind us, was flushed and furious. “There’ll be no killing prisoners! Try anything like that and I’ll see you court-martialled on a murder charge!” The anomaly of hearing such sentiments voiced by a man who had just butchered twenty or thirty Germans did not strike me at the time. It does now. The line between brutal murder and heroic slaughter flickers and wavers... and becomes invisible.

He had the usual front-line soldier’s disdain for the higher echelon troops, who were safe from the fighting but nevertheless always managed to get the best billets and most comfortable conditions. One time General Montgomery himself reviewed the troops, and Mowat was not impressed: “It was not God who came; it was his self-anointed deputy. General Bernard Montgomery, fabled commander of the Eighth Army, descended upon us in a long, open Bentley limousine. We came to attention, presented arms, and then were told to “gather round” while the ferret-faced little man in his black beret stood up on the back seat of his car waving an Egyptian flyswatter, and gave us the Word.”

He also describes his first encounter with one of the terrible new weapons of the war:

I had scarcely rejoined the platoon when the day was rent by a rasping, metallic screeching that rose to an ear-splitting pitch and volume, culminating in a series of stupendous explosions that shook the solid rock beneath my cringing flesh. A blast of furnace-hot air buffeted me, and six coiling plumes of smoke and dust sprang, towering, above the castle ruins. This was our introduction to the chief horror of the front-line soldier’s life in World War II, the rocket artillery which the Germans had misleadingly code-named Nebelwerfer—smoke thrower—and which the Eighth Army, encountering it during the last stages of the North Africa campaign, christened Moaning Minnie.

Within a few weeks of landing in Sicily his regiment had lost one-quarter of its fighting strength, and the soldiers were beginning to understand that the lives of combat infantrymen are short and end violently. The strain was beginning to tell, and on returning to his unit after a bout of illness he writes, “It was not that I felt myself physically incapable of returning to battle—the truth was that I did not ever again want to have to taste the terror which had overwhelmed me at Assoro. The desire for action which had been my ruling passion since enlistment had collapsed like a pricked balloon—to be replaced by a swelling sense of dread.”

As more and more of Sicily was taken by the Allies, the Germans made a stand behind a well fortified position in the north-east of the island. There was no obvious or easy way to prise them out, and Mowat was part of a small group that climbed a nearly vertical slope that was only lightly defended to get behind them. One reason it was so lightly defended was that the Germans knew that anyone coming that way would have no line of retreat if the attack failed, so it was almost a suicide mission. And indeed, after first surprising the Germans their counterattack pushed the Canadians into an impossible situation where they would have been annihilated except for the timely arrival of a heavy artillery barrage which forced the Germans to pull back. It was a very close thing and casualties were heavy on both sides.

Once Sicily was secured the Allies moved to mainland Italy in September 1943 and the Germans retreated to prepared defensive positions, where they had to be pushed out repeatedly, each time falling back to another line. The Allies threw men against these positions again and again, suffering appalling casualties as fall and winter brought torrential rains and freezing conditions. “It was a time for plants to die, for birds to flee, for small animals to burrow deep into the earth, and for human beings to huddle by charcoal braziers and wait the winter out. It was assuredly neither the time nor place for waging war.”

Mowat’s descriptions of the fighting are horrific, and he was palpably disgusted by orders issued by higher-up who had no idea of the conditions into which they were sending men to die. Some of the fighting he describes sounded like accounts of the battles in the mud of Passchendaele in the First World War.

As one futile assault after another was repulsed, and Mowat watched more and more of his friends die he felt himself gazing into the abyss of madness and terror which all soldiers eventually face, “Four months earlier I would have welcomed the chance to make a patrol like this. Two months past and I would have accepted it as a risky job that had to be done. But on this December day I would have given everything I was, or ever hoped to be, for a way out. There was none.”

His descriptions of the fighting become almost hallucinogenic, and reminded me of the famous scene at the bridge in the movie Apocalypse Now:

What followed was the kind of night men dream about in afteryears, waking in a cold sweat to a surge of gratitude that it is but a dream. It was a delirium of sustained violence. Small pockets of Germans that had been cut off throughout our bridgehead fired their automatic weapons in hysterical dismay at every shadow. The grind of enemy tanks and self-propelled guns working their way along the crest was multiplied by echoes until it sounded like an entire Panzer army. Illuminating flares flamed in darkness with a sick radiance. The snap and scream of high-velocity tank shells pierced the brutal guttural of an endless cannonade from both German and Canadian artillery. Moaning Minnie projectiles whumped down like thunderbolts, searching for our hurriedly dug foxholes. Soldiers of both sides, blundering through the vineyards, fired with panicky impartiality in all directions. And it began to rain again, a bitter, penetrating winter rain.

The book ends with the death of his company commander and close friend, which might have been suicide with the way he exposed himself to fire. The battalion’s companies had been reduced to platoon size, and Mowat could feel his mind fracturing, “I was staring down a vertiginous tunnel where all was dark and bloody and the great wind of ultimate desolation howled and hungered.” He saw a draft of half-trained replacements marching toward the front line, and as they moved forward through the increasingly devastated land he could see in their faces that they were starting to realize the fate that was in store for them.

World War II is not known for its memoirs in the way that World War I was, but this is a remarkable book, equal to the best of the Great War accounts. Although it has flashes of the wry humor that would become a large part of Mowat’s later natural history books, it pulls no punches in its descriptions of combat in both its physical and mental horrors. Anyone with an interest in this part of the Second World War might want to start by reading Rick Atkinson’s Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, which provides a useful perspective to get the most out of this book.

[Kathleen (itpdx) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me when I was looking for books about what WWII was like in Italy. It a non-fiction recounting of a young Canadian's front line experiences starting at the invasion of Sicily by the Allies. I am amazed that Mr. Mowat can take us through his own emotions in retrospect. He conveys the impatience of the young gung-ho troops as they cool their heels in Canada and England waiting for their chance to take it to the Germans--through the terrible fighting--to the end where he is frightened, angry at his commanders and feeling the terrible loss of comrades.

It also gave me wonderful glimpses of the Italians-the startled young shepherd out in the middle of nowhere; the Italian troops waiting to safely surrender; the partisan who hid his identity and provided invaluable information and reconnaissance to the Canadian troops; the stubborn old man who would not be evacuated from his home even as it became a forward command post and was hit by artillery, sitting is his cellar with the medics through the battle; and the small isolated mountain villages that greeted stray allied troops as liberators.

The language seems so simple and straight forward but you can hear the incoming artillery, feel the cold and the mud, and feel the heart rending fear and loss.

[NeDa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Баща ми ме предупреди за това в писмо...
"През дните занапред не забравяй, че войната причинява на хората необясними неща и че човек хич и не предполага как ще му се отрази тя, докато не си сръбне до насита от попарата ѝ. Най-нещастните след войната не са ония, които са изгубили по някой крайник; най-нещастни са хората, на които са им простреляли душите. Кръчмите и гетата и до ден днешен са претъпкани с такива клетници, осакатени още през моята война, и никой не разбира и не иска да разбере какво е станало с тях... Помня два шокиращи инцидента от някогашната ми рота в Четвърти батальон. И двамата бяха чудесни момчета, но и двамата стигнаха до самоубийство на фронтовата линия. Не, не че се застреляха сами - оставиха се да ги убият немците, понеже вече им беше писнало от всичко. Така и не разбраха обаче какво става с тях; че са се превърнали в празни, безсъдържателни черупки, че са били духовно осакатени, че са били изпепелени."

[T.R. Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I beg of you, anyone on this site who respects my opinion even to the slightest degree, read this book.

Too much of Canadian history is overlooked and far too many men died for that to be acceptable. This book delivers tales of Canadian heroism during Operation Husky (The Invasion of Italy). The men who are mentioned in this book deserve to be remembered. They were called the greatest generation for a reason. The horrors they went through are the reason we aren't all speaking german today. They're the reason the world as we know it today is allowed to exist and thrive in the way it does. They are the reason Canada is a great country.

Read it. Know it. Remember it. Then tell of it.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farley Mowat, one of Canada's most famed and successful authors, was known mainly for his works about nature and the Canadian North and his provocative attacks on the Canadian government's treatment of native peoples. This is a different kind of tale, a highly personal and profoundly honest one, about his experiences as a young lieutenant in a Canadian infantry regiment -- the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment -- in World War II.

After Mowat has impatiently endured more than two years of training, his regiment is sent into battle in the invasion of Sicily in 1942. His eagerness for war is quickly dampened as he soon sees the ugly face of battle, looking into the face of a dead Italian soldier lying in a dusty street, and noticing that he and the dead man have the same blue eyes.

Within months, as the regiment fights its way across Sicily, crosses the Straits of Messina and then begins the slow, bloody slog up the spine of the rugged Italian peninsula, one quarter of its soldiers have become casualties. Almost everyone he knows is killed or wounded. He struggles against the constant presence of fear he calls the Worm. And he struggles just as much against his fear of showing fear, knowing that as an officer he must inspire courage in others and lead them into battle.

The closing chapter of the book, by which time it is 1943 and the war still has two more years to go, makes clear he is at the breaking point. Almost certainly he is suffering from shell shock -- what we would now call PTSD. He carries a canteen filled with rum. He begins to move like a robot. He is constantly in a rage at the insane orders that come down from above to mount yet another attack up steep slopes against an entrenched German enemy who determinedly makes them bleed for every foot of ground gained.

One day, he meets a fellow officer and friend, Alex, just returning to the regiment after recovering from a wound, who hands him a sheaf of poetry. Alex tells him to read it and then marches off, leading a bunch of brand new recruits directly into a battle already raging.

The first poem Mowat reads is about struggling against fear and showing fear:

"These men of mine must never know
How much afraid I really am!
Help me to stand against the foe
So they will say: He was a man!

Later that day, Alex unaccountably grabs a rifle, suicidally rushes a German machine gun nest head on over open ground, and is riddled with bullets. A sergeant, still incredulous, relates this story to Mowat and concludes: "Crazy as hell, but Jesus, what a man!"

Mowat is left weeping, and writes from the perspective of more than 30 years later,
"I wonder now ... were my tears for Alex and Al and all the others who were gone and who were yet to go?
Or was I weeping for myself ... and those who would remain?"

I have read several books by Mowat, starting when I was a teenager. I think this may be his best.

[TheIron Paw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a standard Farley Mowat book, nor is it a typical military history/memoir. In the "anti-epilogue" Mowat describes the book as representing three decades of forgotten memories. I think it more likely they were repressed memories. He recounts his experiences in the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (the ``Hasty Pees) through England, Sicily, then up Italy, culminating in the crossing of the Sangro and Moro rivers. This account progresses from the idealistic youth, eager to get to war, through the realities of war, to the horrors of war as Mowat describes his inner battle with ``The Worm`` of fear, desperation, and hopelessness.

The account ends abruptly after the crossing of the Moro by the regiment. Mowat includes an anti-epilogue at the insistence of his publisher, that tells us only that he was reassigned rearward to Brigade HQ - no reasons why. I think Mowat felt he had told his story, he had made his point, and what came after was perhaps none of our business.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A harrowing memoir of WW2. I knew Farley Mowat's name from Never Cry Wolf and The Boat Who Wouldn't Float. And No Birds Sang is a faithful representation of life during the boredom and battle of war.

War books are one genre where I relax my language standards a bit. The language in this book is rough, but Mowat tends salty in non-war narratives.

I felt the reverberations of those hundreds of bursting shells as an obbligato to the unsteady pounding of my heart.

[Robert Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Once of the most riveting memoirs I've ever read.

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve ever read.

This gut-wrenching memoir begins in Mowat’s usual swashbuckling style, in tandem with his self-deprecation (he ordered Spitfires to fire on King George VI, not knowing that the King was in residence…), but it quickly moves into a much more psychologically complex look at the ravages of war. It’s visceral, beautiful, horrible, and terrifying real. The chapter about The Worm That Never Dies (fear) is one of the most compelling passages I’ve ever read. And the ending gutted me.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

In July 1942, Farley Mowat was an eager young infantryman bound for Europe and impatient for combat. This powerful, true account of the action he saw, fighting desperately to push the Nazis out of Italy, evokes the terrible reality of war with an honesty and clarity fiction can only imitate. In scene after unforgettable scene, he describes the agony and antic humor of the soldier's existence: the tedium of camp life, the savagery of the front, and the camaraderie shared by those who have been bloodied in battle. The title paraphrases a line from a John Keats poem in which Farley quotes:

"O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering,
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!"

I have always had great admiration for that generation who went to war and survived its horrors. This is a brutally honest account of what the author, Farley Mowat, witnessed and felt as his company went through Sicily and Italy in the allied invasions of 1943 and 1944. The book starts on a light and often humerus note with stories of his attempt to get into the army and the war, and some of the stories of his training in England. He finally goes into battle his mood and the mood of the book darkens as we witness the change that takes place within him and others he knew as they fought battle after battle ... after battle. The book is so well-written and even the letters that he sent home have such eloquence to them. May we never forget those dark days and may we have sense enough to never repeat them.

[Heep · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of the book is taken from the John Keats poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci":
O what can ail thee, Knight in arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake,
And no birds sing!
It is so apt both to the book and its author - a noted naturalist and bird-lover.
This is a brilliant war memoir that describes, perhaps better than any prior book I have read, the descent into "battle fatigue". It does so in a detailed and beautifully crafted description of Mowat's war experiences during the Allied invasion of Sicily, and the subsequent and even more brutal conquest of the Italian mainland.
The narrative first takes you along almost breezily. The author experiences harrowingly events and loses friends, but seemingly copes and carries out his duties with appropriate skill and dispatch. The accumulation and acceleration of these experiences, as high-command becomes more desperate for results and inured to the aweful mortality, is more than he can endure. The last 20-30 pages are absolutely gripping. Mowat writes precisely but with a poetic quality.
The book ends with a close friend being brought in on a stretcher - bullet in his head:
As I looked down at his faded, empty face under its crown of crimson bandages, I began to weep.
I wonder now... were my tears for Alex or Al and all the others who had gone and who were yet to go?
Or was I weeping for myself... and those who would remain?

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, poignant, utterly devastating...following Farley Mowat through the Canadian infantry's battle for Sicily and Rome in World War II is just that...you are right along with him at every battle. It took him 30 years to write about this story and I couldn't help but wonder how awful this must have been for him to recall. The details are painfully and tragically clear. Everyone should read this account of what it is like to be exposed on the battlefield, to watch your friends die in front of you, to constantly want to run, the madness, the fear. The question that comes to mind...how would I react in the same situation? The most amazing part of the story is the number of near misses Mowat experiences where he is saved either by strange coincidence or a friend who delivers him from certain death. There is humor here as well; and Mowat's constant optimism; as well as his love for nature and his fellow soldiers.

[Craig Snider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly Farley Mowat's best work, which is saying something for such an accomplished author and a personal favourite.

Mowat has a very Bill Bryson way of relating things in a lighthearted way, but in this novel the subject matter occasionally takes you to a much darker place than his other books would. I had no idea the things he'd seen and done as a young man, and wasn't aware of his time in the infantry fighting his way across Italy in WW2. As hard as his time as a soldier was, it makes me think that we may not have had Farley Mowatt the beloved naturalist, lover of the great white north and borderline hermit if he hadn't experienced the shell-shock that he did.

With that said, if anyone could find and relate the occasional humour of life in the trenches of WW2 then it would be this man. Not one for kids, but this is a book that everyone can take something from.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read concerning Mowat's years in the Canadian Military and his actions during WWII in the Italian theater. Well written and very evocative. I only give it four stars because the story just stops on Christmas in 1943 and we don't really find out any more about his war experiences, other than that he survived them. I'd rather have liked seeing some completeness to the work, which was pretty short, even though I understand that he left it this way deliberately.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a young Canadian, Farley Mowat, and his coming-of-age during World War II. He gives us the sense of the horrors of war and shows the conversion of a patriotic youth into a disillusioned soldier.
It is all the more interesting to me because Mowat is a naturalist and very aware of the nature around him (as shown in the title). His "Never Cry Wolf' is one of my favorite books ( and I thought it was a good movie too).

[Martin Koenigsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Farley Mowat wrote a World War II Memoir? Sign me up! The Never Cry Wolf guy is a GREAT writer.... come along and live Italy in 1943-44... I love this book... try to read it every time i see it! Not to be missed. Even those without the military history bent will like this. Its that good.

[Robert Swanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immersive.
Squib is no hero. A diary, a retelling of the horrors still immediate many years later. No false attempt to adorn, to explain.

Had to read it, it has a torn cover and was in danger of being thrown out in spring cleaning.

p.120: "Although we were very short of reinforcement, the news from home told of a continuing evasion of overseas conscription by Mackenzie King's Liberal government: of antiwar riots led by fascist sympathizers: of strikes by war workers for higher pay; and of the sacrifices being less than stoically endured by the civilian population, which was having to submit to the horrors of sugar rationing." - we seldom get this view of WWII in the histories of the Good War; in this period of lockdown during the Covid pandemic, it is a reflection that people only reluctantly make the effort for the greater good - notice gun-toting morons occupying the Michigan statehouse because they cannot go wherever they want for a couple of months - the horrors of sugar rationing.

p.109: "This was a disturbing discovery, and for a time I thought it must indicate a singular lack of emotional depth in me. I was deluded by the conventional wisdom which maintains that it is personal linkages that give a group its unity. I was slow to comprehend the truth; that comrades-in-arms unconsciously create from their particulate selves an imponderable entity which goes its own way and has its own existence, regardless of the comings and goings of the individual who are its constituent parts. Individuals are of no more import to it than they were in the days of our beginnings when the band, the tribe, was the vehicle of human survival. Once out of it, it ceases to exist for you -- and you for it." - takes a while to learn this truth when you first retire, after spending years on a team, toward common goals, churning in the trenches, then to be outside, and forgotten.


John Keats (1795–1821). The Poetical Works of John Keats. 1884.

55. La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Ballad


I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! 5
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew, 10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 15
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan. 20

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet, 25
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore, 30
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d 35
On the cold hill’s side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!” 40

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here, 45
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dead on, Farley. Kill the Lie.

[Heather(Gibby) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a gut wrenching account of the author's experience in World War II.

[Mark U · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book; really well-written. No wonder he has an elementary school named after him.

[Barksdale Penick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting memoir of a Canadian soldier's WWII experience. At the beginning, in Canada, England and even Sicily, the war was a lark. Mowat tells an astonishing tale of the King of England having a picnic in a zone where Mowat has some responsibility for coordinating air cover. Because he missed the briefing, he decided to call in English planes for air cover, not knowing that had been specifically discussed and rejected, so the anti-aircraft fund went after the planes. Fortunately no one was hurt but Mowat was moved on to another position.

But after the invasion of mainland Italy Mowat saw brutal engagements, with almost all of compatriots wiped out. I couldn't help wondering why the Germans fought so hard since they must have known the war was doomed, and why the allies had to undertake assaults on impregnable hill towns in Italy. Couldn't they just have waited? The ending is abrupt and rough. As he meant it to be.

Short and well worth the time.

[Enikő · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving this book two stars and that is being generous. Not that it is badly written or anything, but it was NOT what I was expecting. I finished it only because it was too cold to get out of bed and go look for something else.

Having recently read Lost in the Barrens, I was expecting another story about wilderness, wildlife and friendship. Little did I know that this book is not fiction. It is actually an autobiographical account of Farley Mowat's military service in WWII. I was unprepared, to say the least. I'm not too crazy about war books to begin with, but this one came off as a little dry, although I admit that once in a while a turn of phrase would almost have me smiling. I do appreciate Mowat's ability to write. However, this particular story did not interest me all that much. I felt that the characters weren't developed enough for me to really care about them. It feels cold to say that, because they were all real-life human beings. But the story was too journalistic. It seemed like a list of dates, transfers and soldiers' names that all seemed to blend into one. It seemed kind of monotonous. Once the young Farley Mowat got to Italy, there was more action, but once again the story failed to draw me in. I wasn't even horrified at some of the descriptions of people dying. It was just too dry.

Even the ending of the book was disappointing. We do not see Farley Mowat safely home after the war. Instead, we leave him with tears in his eyes at the loss of one of his fellow soldiers. I felt that the end of the book came too abruptly. As long as I had stuck with it that far, I felt disappointed that I didn't at least get a nice coming-home anecdote for having having stuck with the book to the end.

The reason I am giving this book two stars instead of one is that there is a slight chance that, had I known what I was getting into, I may have been more open to the story. Perhaps part of the reason I wasn't drawn to the characters is that I was holding back. I do appreciate Mowat's writing and I still have some of his books that I really want to read, especially The Desperate People, which I have yet to find used or at the library. So I will stick with this author, but I won't be rereading this particular book.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

title by Keats
story by the !st Division Canadian Infantry
written by Farley Mowat with heart, humility and even humour as he related their actions during
WWII in the horrific battles in Sicily

Read through it so fast - pausing when Farley meets up with some others he had worked with earlier to get an overview of what was happing on their maps - so I had to get a map. I came upon this site : https://themaritimeexplorer.ca/2016/1... and was stunned at the inhospitable landscape.

I was wavering between 4- 5 starts when I reached the end :
"I wonder now ............ ?"
Then, happened to flip back and saw the dedication -
" .............................. " - and then I understood the true horror he was carrying.
The dedication should be on the page following the end of the story -

It made me think of this -
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” ― Franz Kafka
- therefore - gave it a 5 as tribute to honour those who supported these soldiers' physical and/ or mental trauma when they returned home as the soldiers and their loved ones struggled with the trials and horrors of war that most had not anticipated.