The Medic

April 16, 2001
Leo Litwak's lightly fictionalized memoir of combat puts the lie to the current sentimentalization of the "Greatest Generation." Litwak's WWII was, like all wars, an exercise in mass homicide, presided over by a mostly unseen officer class and carried out by young men trained to erase the boundary between violence and its sublimation—a boundary that is, at other times, the very foundation of civilization. The fictional Litwak, the son of a disaffected Jewish union organizer in Michigan, is drafted into the army in 1943. His upbringing naturally leads to clashes with his fellow recruits in the South Carolina camp where he receives training to become a medic. But by late fall, 1944, when his company is shipped to Europe, Litwak has made a few good friends. He idolizes Sergeant Lucca, who literally dies on top of Leo, eviscerated by a rocket fragment. A fellow soldier, Maurice Sully, views the war as an extension of his motto, "I go to the border, say 'Fuck you' to no-trespassing signs." He loots, connives, entertains and ends up being drafted into an army musical produced by Special Services. Another soldier, Roy Jones, a Louisiana boy, kills German prisoners to exact personal vengeance. Roy's opponent in the platoon is Frank Jones, an older man who served on the left side in the Spanish Civil War. The platoon fights through Belgium and into Germany, and ends up in Grossdorf, a village in territory ceded to East Germany after the war, where they wait for the Red Army's arrival. Litwak's tough-minded narrative portrays war's peculiar customs with compelling honesty and wry humor. Agent, Ellen Levine. Author tour.

February 15, 2001
Litwak, who served as a medic in World War II, is a novelist, and he currently teaches English literature at San Francisco State University. He is a Jew who personally witnessed the results of Nazi brutality toward Jews, yet he is also a man whose basic decency and sensitivity to the human condition will not allow him to succumb to hatred. In this dramatized version of his wartime service in Europe, Litwak has altered the names of some people and places, and some of the events described are actually composites of several experiences. Nevertheless, this brutal and yet frequently uplifting saga of war has the ring of authenticity. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" here, although the presence of both good and evil is constant. Instead, we witness ordinary men, most of them quite young, striving to survive a conflict that few of them understand. This is a disturbing, revealing, and very important glimpse of warfare at the most elementary level.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)