Before their time

In this vivid and deeply moving memoir, novelist Robert Kotlowitz recounts his experiences as a teen-age infantryman in the Second World War. In a voice both restrained and unsentimental, he releases the memories that he has fiercely held on to for fifty years, memories of his comrades in arms, his youthful idealism, and - at the dark center of the tale - the massacre of his platoon in the hills of northeastern France. With his sharp, ironic novelist's eye, Kotlowitz brings every moment of his experience to life, from the day he's drafted as an eighteen-year-old and thrown into basic training…