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[[File:wartime.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195065778/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195065778&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=110dec88927e9be921a6b64954a25636 Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War]'' by Paul Fussell]]

In ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195065778/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195065778&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=110dec88927e9be921a6b64954a25636 Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War],'' Paul Fussell, through neatly developed prose, debunks homespun myths and provides the reader with a glimpse into the realities of a combatant’s existence during World War II. As a twenty year old lieutenant who led a rifle company in France from 1943 until he was wounded in 1945, Fussell speaks from experience, thereby giving his voice an air of authority to convey the barbaric reality of war. This classic work supports the position that the public at large will have one concept of war while the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines engaged will have the truth. Fussell emphasizes this and immediately makes his aim clear in the preface: “For the past fifty years the Allied war has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty. I have tried to balance the scales.”<ref>Paul Fussell, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195065778/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195065778&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=110dec88927e9be921a6b64954a25636 Wartime],''(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), ix.</ref>

''Wartime'' presents a convincing argument that the true nature of war and its front line participants will never truly be understood by those without experience due to the unimaginable circumstances and the propagandized media. Fussell presents his thesis tacitly to the reader before the book is ever opened. The photo selected for the cover is an image exactly the opposite of the posed pictures used during the War. This photograph shows a man covering his head in terror. He is on the ground curled in the fetal position, perhaps crying “mother,” and has dropped his weapon in order to cover his head. His equipment and body are as one. He depicts a frightened young boy who was but another cog in the war machine. The photo represents any of the thousands of men who were never illustrated on a magazine cover. The man in the photograph and the text between the pages represent the truth of war.

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[[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:World War Two History]] [[Category:Military History]]