The Boys' Crusade
The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945

In the American Civil War there was a shorthand phrase for having been in combat, “seeing the elephant.” Like an elephant, being under fire and seeing death and destruction all around was completely different from anything previously experienced, or even imagined. Paul Fussell saw the elephant, expe......more

In his opening pages, Fussell recalls the famed Children's Crusade of the early 13th century, when 50,000 young people may or may not have marched into the Holy Land in an attempt to free it of Islam. It was an adventure that strikes modern sensibilities as nothing if not appalling. He then points to......more

This was a present for my father which I subsequently took out in the backyard on a subsequent visit to read while avoiding him. This is a sad and ongoing condition. The book is also disturbing, a sage counterpoint to the warmongering shit of Stephen Ambrose. Fussell's work puts myths to rest and rem......more