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And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat
4★'s
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.
