Boy Soldier: Coming of Age During World War II

by P.E. Russell

It is said that in order to completely understand a man you should probe the world as it existed when he was 19 or 20 years old--at the moment he became mature and autonomous as a man. Russell McLogan has done just that in this well-written autobiography. Drafted out of college at age 18 in 1944, he was trained as a rifleman and then sent to the Philippines as an infantry replacement. There he joined the battle hardened 6th Infantry Division on the Shimbu Line near Manila. Wounded in combat in northern Luzon, he spent 89 days in Army hospitals on Luzon and Leyte. When the atomic bomb abruptly ended the war, he was returned to duty just in time to sail off to Korea where he served in the Army of Occupation. Boy Soldier is about a young man's coming of age during this period of tremendous historical change. It includes much well-researched history of the Army's replacement training system, the Liberation of the Philippines, the dropping of the atomic bombs, the American-Russian occupation of Korea, and the Army's post-war demobilization--the people, places, and events that shaped a young life. Although written in a scholarly mode with endnotes, bibliography and index, it is very readable with the humor, violence, sexual situations and sometimes raw language as it actually happpened. Text is supplemented with 72 illustrations and 15 maps.

Genres: World War II

432 pages, Hardcover

First published December 7, 1998

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

My dad wrote it, so of course I’m biased, but what a treasure it is. He spent ten years after his retirement to research and publish it. The Greatest Generation!

[Kenneth F Emsweller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story of a teenager who served in the Army during WWII. He describes his life from before entering the service up until his discharge and everything in between. He describes boot camp and his combat experience in vivid details. He goes into great detail about the campaigns and historical events. It is a well written book and I would recommend it.

[hoffnarr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Memoir of McLogan. Includes a chapter on his postwar assignment to Korea. There are some interesting moments throughout. Unfortunately, McLogan includes a lot of general historical narrative from other sources so that the reader will get more of a macroscopic picture of what is going on. While some readers unfamiliar with Korea or its history may be interested, this means that we are left with relatively little in the way of his own experiences and anecdotes, especially in the postwar chapters I was most interested in. Given how hard it is to find good accounts of Korea from 1945-1950, it was thus somewhat of a disappointment.

Some of my favorite quotes from the work.

"I don't think they appreciated us burning the rice to keep war, but then, we did get rid of the Japanese overlords so their standard of living had to improve."

"One day we went down to the town and practiced village fighting maneuvers, much to the consternation of the villagers."

"I think it was the combination of kimchi and fecal matter which made the town smell so rank." (Kunsan)