The World within War

Book excerpt: Gerald Linderman has created a seamless and highly original social history, authoritatively recapturing the full experience of combat in World War II. Drawing on letters and diaries, memoirs and surveys, Linderman explores how ordinary frontline American soldiers prepared for battle, related to one another, conceived of the enemy, thought of home, and reacted to battle itself. He argues that the grim logic of protracted combat threatened soldiers not only with the loss of limbs and lives but with growing isolation from country and commanders and, ultimately, with psychological disintegration.