The Human Kind

Back in 1963, a Hollywood studio released The Victors, a WWII movie that focused on the various women the soldiers of a platoon meet as they fight their way through Europe. Nothing inherently wrong with that, until you consider the book that inspired the film, which consists of a lot more than a string of soporific romantic encounters.

An awful lot more.

It’s a collection of short stories, some very short, loosely following the lives of a group of British soldiers from training in England through to the invasion of Europe and up to the first days of peace after VE Day. There’s very little combat, but there is conflict: with other British soldiers, with civilians, and at the end with a Russian soldier in the ruins in Berlin. One in particular - about a simple soul who should never have been allowed to become a soldier in the first place, and who breaks down in a landing craft on its way to the Normandy beaches - packs more of a bitter emotional punch than many more conventional descriptions of fighting.

This, for me, is the key to book’s success. (And to its companion, From the City, From the Plough, which is even more harrowing.) It looks at war and soldiering from an unconventional perspective. It shows you the lives behind the moments that history highlights: the battles and campaigns and the medal-winning heroics. This is the war as experienced by ‘ordinary’ men and women, and there isn’t a single Hollywood cliche in sight.

No wonder Alexander Baron took his name off The Victors’ credits.