New books illustrate war that guaranteed more war

Steve Bennett

Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 | 8:27 a.m.

H.G. Wells, memorably, called it "the war that will end war." Far from it; in fact, it fueled the bitterness of an Austrian corporal named Hitler, whose captain said he "lacked the capacity for leadership," and led to the blitzkrieg of 1939.

World War I, which lasted four years, from August 1914 to Nov. 11, 1918, and erased an entire generation of men -- some 8.3 million killed, 21.4 million wounded -- is largely a forgotten war. Most of us don't even remember that Veterans Day, which we celebrate every Nov. 11, was once known as Armistice Day.

When we think of World War I, we think of "doughboys" in pie-pan helmets, songs such as "Over There" and Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing.

Even the term armistice, which means a mutual agreement to cease hostilities, is antiquated, almost quaint.

Two new books, one a novel by Jeff Shaara, best known for his books re-creating Civil War battles, such as "Gods and Generals," the other a narrative history by Joseph Persico, whose books include "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial," bring the war back to us in all its visceral horror.

This was the war in which new methods of killing -- the airplane, the submarine, the tank, mustard gas, the flame-thrower and, most horribly, the machine gun -- were unleashed on soldiers fighting with 19th-century strategy and tactics.

French and English and German and, later, American boys were mowed down by the thousands as they marched straight into extremely efficient machine gun fire. Bully commanders on both sides of the trenches quickly learned that cavalry charges were nothing more than a waste of good horses -- 7,000 were killed in a single day at Verdun.

It was perhaps the only thing that now-forgotten generals such as Haig, Foch and Ludendorff learned; they kept mounting attacks that gained ground measured in yards but killed a staggering number of soldiers.

Through four years of war, casualties on both sides of the Western front averaged 2,088 dead and 4,965 wounded every single day. (Life in the trenches was a living hell, as soldiers battled rats, lice, constant rain and the smell of decaying bodies.)

Perhaps the most ludicrous thing about this useless war, as Persico makes abundantly clear, was its end. At 5 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, Germany, clearly beaten thanks to America's late entry into the war, signed the armistice in which German leaders acceded to more than 30 Allied demands, from returning captured territory to a naval blockade vengefully designed to starve its people.

Everyone, even the privates in the trenches, knew the war was over. But the terms didn't call for the war to end until 11 a.m.

Instead of rescinding attack orders to retake ground Germany had already agreed to give back, many career officers ordered their men over the wall and into the slaughter. Men were being blown to pieces at 10:59 a.m.

And at 11?

Capt. Harry S. Truman, commander of an artillery battery, recalled: "It was so quiet it made me feel as if I'd suddenly been deprived of my ability to hear."

Persico's exhaustive research -- he uses real soldiers' and civilians' voices throughout -- can become exhausting. But he succeeds in putting a human face on a horrific war.

Shaara's historically accurate novel, a much more cinematic telling than Persico's book, is divided roughly in two -- the air war and the ground war -- with alternating chapters focusing on a few historical figures.

Shaara brings alive such icons as Capt. Manfred Von Richthofen, aka "The Red Baron," and Gen. Pershing. Von Richthofen's sense of duty and Pershing's fight to keep his army from simply being absorbed into the British and French trenches are especially well-detailed.

But his best chapters focus on a farm boy in the Fifth Marine Regiment named Roscoe Temple, who gets his trial by fire at Belleau Wood, the American army's first real battle of the war. Temple's evolution from awestruck greenhorn to battle hardened (but never cynical) veteran is well-drawn.

As in his Civil War histories, Shaara astutely maps the big picture, but offers real human emotion as well.