BOOK REVIEW: COLIN MCDOUGALL'S "EXECUTION"

In fact, of course, he had done the most a man could do, and although this thought would never occur to him, the most a man can do is everything.

EXECUTION is a rare find, a novel about war viewed through the lens of execution. Not war or murder per se, but execution: the formal, legitimized process by which human life is taken in a civilized society.

Colin McDougall, a decorated veteran of the small but ferocious Canadian expeditionary force in WW2, takes us through a novelized version of his own experiences between 1943 - 1945, when the Allies were making their torturous hop-and-crawl from Sicily up the seemingly endless boot of Italy, in the face of resistance that seemed to increase rather than decrease over time. In the history of the Second World War, the contributions of Canada are often marginalized or forgotten altogether, just as the Mediterranean Theater of Operations is marginalized and forgotten; McDougall's novel serves from its opening lines as a valuable reminder that war is war wherever it is fought, and that if debts to those who fight war are owed by those they fight to protect, those debts must be paid equally.

EXECUTION's inciting incident is the summary and brutal execution of two Italian prisoners of war by the Canadians in a Sicilian barnyard. The second is a massive attack on the seemingly impregnable Adolf Hitler Line south of Rome by the Canadian division, a bloody massacre which its own commanding general likens to a formal execution of his own men. The last is the actual execution by firing squad of a Canadian soldier following his somewhat dubious court-martial for murder. All of these incidents are woven together, as are the lives and the deaths of the characters involved, to form a tapestry -- not about war exactly, but rather the effect that ending human lives has on the human beings tasked with ending them. McDougall is not merely writing a war novel, he is quite blatantly comparing the various forms of execution created by society: informal (murder), mass scale (battle), and formal (firing squad).

The novel's principal character is John Adam, a dutiful young lieutenant whose burning enthusiasm for the job of war is blown into a sort of existential vacuum by the two murders he is ordered to commit by his superior officer. Adam is left only with his sense of duty, and by periodic attempts to submerge himself into the pleasures of R & R, but even when coupling with "ladies of the evening" he is unable to be truly cynical or unfeeling, and he seems to come fully alive only when love, friendship, or duty beckon: at all other times the war has left him hollow, almost indifferent to his own fate. He is not a bold character despite his battle courage, nor is he intended to be: he is simply a victim, and the theme of victimhood runs throughout the entire book. The executioners and the executed share a bond: their roles can reverse any moment, and in this novel, they frequently do.

McDougall himself is a startling writer. His prose often rises to the lyrical, and his insights into human nature buckling and occasionally strengthening under the extreme pressures of war is profound. Nobody who reads EXECUTION will forget Ian Kildare, the cigar-waving brigade commander who travels with a personal bagpiper and takes sadistic relish in insulting his superiors; or Philip Doorn, the platoon chaplain known as The Ghoul, who goes so thoroughly insane he has nowhere to go but back to sanity; or Bunny Bazin, the quirky battalion commander who accepts his own inevitable death in battle so completely he takes conscious steps not to try to avoid it. And McDougall's description of the Battle of the Hitler Line rises to the truly epic: I actually got goosebumps at its mixture of mindless butchery and accidental glory. McDougall is the sort who grasps by virtue of bitter experience that war is a catalyst for the most terrible but also the most powerful chemistries within mankind, which is not profound in itself; it becomes profound because he understands this applies also to civilization, that instrument designed to enhance and protect human life, which through the process of war, or law, can extinguish life. There is a madness implicit in this which cannot help but chagrin the reader as it chagrins characters like John Adam, who is fully committed to committing executions in combat but is gutted by execution in its crueler, more personal forms.

The cultural links between Britain and Canada show strongly in McDougall's writing. EXECUTION, despite its dark subject matter, is laced with dry (but stinging) English-style wit which occasionally rises to the level of black comedy or even satire; fans of Evelyn Waugh and Derek Robinson will smile at his tongue-in-cheek depictions of idiot bureaucracy, fools in uniform, ironic outcomes and eccentricities often indistinguishable from madness. And indeed (and not to repeat myself), madness is a recurring theme in the book: it is arguable that nearly all the characters in EXECUTION are insane at one point or another, and some continually. The dissonance that creates this is not merely cognitive, it is psychological and spiritual. It is the end product of the paradox of execution itself.

One extremely memorable scene takes place when the soldiers are gathered to be told about the great benefits which await them when the war is over -- cash payouts, job assurance, free schooling, et cetera and so on. The civilian speaker is in true earnest as he informs them that the mistakes of WW1 will not be repeated, this time the government will take care of its soldiery and not abandon them as they did before. The commanding officer cuts the presentation short and orders his men out of the room in a cold rage, knowing that the speaker means well but that filling the men with thoughts of what they will do after the war will merely distract them and contribute to their deaths. He views his men as condemned, with commutation possible only if they focus entirely on their task -- itself execution.

No novel is perfect, of course, and there are admittedly a few sluggish chapters in this book, and some which fall into war-cliche tropes. The narrative is more fractured than I would have liked, and as a result we do not get to know some characters as well as we should. Because the novel is constructed in four acts, the pace of the narrative sometimes loses its rhythm. In the end however I would not only say this is a terrific novel, I think it's one of the better novels I've ever read and certainly a legitimate classic of war literature. McDougall apparently never wrote another one, which is perhaps just as well, because it is difficult to believe he could have topped EXECUTION.