from the city, from the plough (alexander baron)

All roads this year lead back to the Second World War. Baron’s book came to my attention when someone posted something about neglected post-war British writers. This book is, as the poster claimed, a completely credible and unsentimental fictional account of the D-Day landings. The first half of the novel follows the battalion as it waits in the UK prior to the invasion. The soldiers are regular men: farmers or East End wide boys. The novel employs a wide palette, with a varied cast. Some are good men, some are rogues. Most are ambivalent about being in the army. There is none of the triumphalism or heroism espoused by the pseudo nationalists who have tried to appropriate history for their own ends. Baron’s eye is a cold one, but irrefutably honest. The cruelty of war itself, as the novel in the second half moves with the men into France, is laid bare. People die. They are forgotten, the war machine moves on. Some will survive, but this has to do with luck rather than judgement. My grandfather was one who didn’t.