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The deserters : a hidden history of World War II / Charles Glass.

by Glass, Charles, 1951-

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The Penguin Press, 2013.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Desertions.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Psychological aspects.

Military deserters -- History -- 20th century.

Desertion, Military -- History -- 20th century.

Combat -- Psychological aspects.

9781594204289 (hc.)

1594204284 (hc.)

xx, 380 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Includes filmography (page 371), bibliographical references (pages 363-371) and index.

Surveying the 150,000 American and British soldiers known to have deserted in the European Theater, this book tells the life stories of three soldiers who abandoned their posts in France, Italy, and Africa. An arresting portrait of soldiers pushed to the breaking point, a sweeping reexamination of the true experience of the frontline soldier. Private Alfred Whitehead, a Tennessee farm boy who earned Silver and Bronze Stars for bravery in Normandy, became a gangster in liberated Paris, robbing Allied supply depots. British private John Bain deserted three times but never fled from combat. He endured battles in North Africa and northern France before German machine guns cut his legs from under him. Private Steve Weiss, an idealistic teenage volunteer from Brooklyn joined up when he was not yet eighteen. On the Anzio beachhead and in the Ardennes forest, as an infantryman with the 36th Division and as an accidental partisan in the French Resistance, Weiss lost his illusions about the nobility of conflict and the infallibility of American commanders. Far from the bright picture found in propaganda and nostalgia, the Second World War was a grim and brutal affair, a long and lonely effort that has never been fully reported. Revealing the true costs of conflict on those forced to fight, The Deserters is an elegant and unforgettable story of ordinary men desperately struggling in extraordinary times.

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