Boy Soldier: Compelling Personal Memoir, Meticulously Researched History
By Chris Manson February 13, 2003 Issue

Russell E. McLogan’s Boy Soldier: Coming of Age During World War II tells a worthy story about an 18-year-old draftee’s wartime experience, but you have to sift through a lot of textbook war accounts to get to the good stuff.

In between this fascinating tale of a college student’s induction, long train rides and even longer journeys on troopships, you’ll find secondhand, heavily footnoted facts about the battles themselves. I haven’t read much history on the conflict in the Philippine Islands in which McLogan participated, so I took all of this in with great interest. But I kept waiting to see what kind of trouble Private McLogan was going to find himself in next, what kind of shit details he’d get stuck with, the popular songs and movies of the time...

I’ve always had a problem with footnotes. Call me quirky, but I find myself stopping to get to the bottom of them—here, they’re located in the back of the book--and all that flipping back and forth can be a little wearying. Not as wearying as the intense training at “Killer’s Kollege” in Camp Hood, Texas was for McLogan, however.

Participants in the so-called “good war” undoubtedly have their own interesting personal accounts to share, and we should cherish every one we get. What grabbed me about McLogan’s book were the anecdotes, some of which demystified the whole era for me. Take, for example, Hollywood Canteen, a 1944 movie that I love—watch the film and assume that our servicemen could enjoy the greatest musicians of the day, hang out with movie stars and have a tasty turkey sandwich served up by Barbara Stanwyck. But as McLogan relates his own experience at this famous place, there was a long wait to get in, there weren’t a bunch of film and music stars entertaining the troops—just a brief glance of Bette Davis shielded behind glass from the packed house of soldiers and sailors.
“She never came down to dance,” McLogan laments.

There is a lot more to savor here, like McLogan’s details of combat (67 days may not seem like much unless you’ve actually done it), homesickness, KP and “the million dollar wound” that didn’t get him sent home right away. More long rides on troopships followed, and the boy soldier was bounced around from hospital to hospital before someone saw fit to send him back to his outfit.

McLogan unearths some fascinating background about WWII of which I was embarrassingly unaware. Foremost is the construction of the Army’s Camp Hood (now Fort Hood) that left many farmers and their families homeless after the government took their land away. Also notable is the heavy censorship (by officers, of course) of the troops’ letters home.

After Hitler’s defeat in Germany, the war raged on with the seemingly unstoppable Japanese. Once Truman dropped the big one and they surrendered, everyone assumed the troops would be coming home right away. Nope. A lot of them waited (and waited), sparking mutiny among the units and angry letters to congressmen that would make a fascinating book in itself. The final days after the war found McLogan stationed in Korea, where the groundwork for the next long war was being laid.

McLogan has assembled a helpful collection of maps (most of them he did himself, he’s an engineer by trade), photographs and even cartoons by the late, great Bill Mauldin. The bibliography provides a required reading list for both war buffs and beginners.

With another long, drawn-out conflict staring us in the face, it is important to keep in mind that all those anonymous troops being shipped out are human beings with individual identities, sweethearts back home, family and friends. Boy Soldier helps us remember that.

Terrus Press, 412 pages. Available at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com.

About the Author

More than anything else, author Russell McLogan would like people to approach Boy Soldier as “a worm’s eye view of an ordinary grunt, the rifleman who does all the dirty work.” McLogan indicated that generals, not PFCs, write most World War II books.

After his manuscript was rejected by 40 publishers—nobody was interested in another WWII book—the author raised $30,000 and published Boy Soldier himself. This was in 1998, right before Steven Spielberg’s box office hit Saving Private Ryan sparked a renewed interest in the war. Interestingly enough, McLogan prefers Ryan to the Pacific-themed The Thin Led Line, although he noted that Terrence Malick’s philosophical war epic got the terrain right.

While most of the popular WWII movies, books and TV shows deal with the European conflict, McLogan recommends a couple of books to readers interested in the Asian war. He praises the recent Ghost Soldiers, about the daring soldiers who survived the Bataan death march, and Flags of Our Fathers, a factual account of the flag-raisers at Iwo Jima, written by the son of the Navy Corpsman who participated.

The winter holiday in Fort Walton Beach finds McLogan working on his next opus. “I’m writing about growing up during the depression in Detroit and attending the Henry Ford Trade School. It’s coming along,” he said.

While attending a recent reunion at Fort Hood, McLogan noted that he was impressed with the quality of soldiers in today’s volunteer army. “When I was drafted, there were a lot of unsavory characters, but the quality is quite high now. People are signing up. They’re all gung ho,” he said.

“But it boggles my mind that we have a president who’s so anxious to go to war,” McLogan offered. “I’d go with the U.N. on this one, but apparently we’re going to attack.”

McLogan will appear on Feb. 20 at 6:30pm for the Fort Walton Beach Library’s “Writer’s Live” series. On Feb. 22, he will meet and greet at Waldenbooks in Panama City’s Cordova Mall from 1-3pm. (Top)

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