LINE OF DEPARTURE,

by Peter Viertel '41.Harcourt, Brace & Cos., 1947; 316 pages;$3.50.

I do not pretend to understand the current aversion to war books. Sebastopol was for Tolstoy the one great experience of his life, and later he wrote War and Peace. For many millions of young men the recent war will prove to have been their one great adventure, and for many, even the best time they will ever have. The uniform made them ipso facto heroes, they had expensive planes to fly, the world to see with everything paid, the adoration of the female. Not all hell by any means. Ask a lot of officers.

Peter Viertel, being a skillful writer, has had his war book published, but most of them will remain in manuscript. In his book two young people have fallen in love and married. Pat goes to war. Jane stays home. With honesty Viertel analyses their emotions. Almost casually Jane has an affair with a Lewis Gray but continues to write love letters to Pat. He, too, with clear conscience sleeps with other women. An infantry replacement officer, he finally catches up with his outfit in Europe, is wofinded, taken prisoner, and escapes.

The action scenes are extremely well done,

the confusion and hurry of modern fighting excellently drawn; only at the end is there a little too much confusion, and perhaps symbolism, when none is needed. And then at the very end, the only false note that I remember: "Why did it seem to her that they were well past noon" of their lives? I don't believe that either thought so, or felt so, but it is the way the young in a war are supposed to feel. None I know have felt this way; certainly it is not the rule. A competent job.