3 Review(s)

In the author's words, taken from the preface: "I went on active duty on the first day of July 1943, and was discharged in March 1946. Between those dates I experienced the frightening, the pathetic, the moving, the ridiculous, the funny and the unbelievable, all to a degree I would not have thought possible. Just short of my twenty-second birthday I entered the Army a bookish, somewhat introverted person. For what happened then, read on." A remarkable story of courage, resourcefulness, tragedy and humor, Blood and Candles is unlike any other account of World War II that has ever been published. The author's combat duty lasted for seven months during which he served as a runner or scout, sometimes finding himself alone behind enemy lines. Once he was even captured by the Americans and was almost shot as a German spy posing as an American. How he got out of that jam and many others will keep the reader fascinated from cover to cover. While the climax of the book describes some of the most intense combat of the war, in which almost everyone around him was killed or seriously wounded, the author's experiences during basic training and after the War, attending the Sorbonne under the auspices of the Army, are equally fascinating.