Journey with a Pen
Journey With a Pistol. By Neil McCallum. (Gollancz, 1.6s.) bkviousLy and brilliantly written, this is the war memoir of a very young officer very much alone in North Africa. War thoughts, rather, because there are no cheerful strategical prognostics or chronicles of the battalion's achievements. In fact there are no battles in the conventional sense: Mr. McCallum's grand advance from Alamein was an alternation of aching marches and intoler- able days lying in slits under bombardment. When he could, he thought about war and wrote his thoughts into a notebook, and this is it. Why am I killing? At home, people could offer ex- planations, but in Africa McCallum and Schmidt hanged away at each other because they were soldiers following their profession : the writer be- comes obsessed with the capacity of men to kill as a job, for no ideal. 'Is there any possible con- nection with what we are doing here in Africa, and the greatest freedom under law in an orderly society?' But if the enemy is just another profes- sional, why not play football /with him on Sundays? Or on every day of the week—why kill Your fellow-craftsman at all?
Caught between a proper horror of killing and a surly refusal to accept political justifications, Mr. 111cCallum chased his own mental tail night- marishly, sometimes tediously, until his soldier- ing was suddenly cut short in a Sicilian battle. There are many unforgettable passages----descrip- tions of the country near Mareth, or the final magnificent pages of Sicily under war. But it is an unsatisfactory book, confused with harsh self- Pity and circular arguments: deeply upsetting, it refuses all helpful suggestions. Still, the author has at least contrived to write about the only 1939-45 war book which renews the mood of
'14-18 trench literature. and reminds us that even the Eighth Army's conquest was not just a healthy outing of young gentlemen armed with machine- guns.
NEAL ASCHERSON
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