Customer Reviews

Before Their Time: A Memoir

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kotlowitz' memoir is just one bit of personal history that reflects the additutes and experience of a million privates during WWII. Filled with irony, this account vividly details what it was like for Kotlowitz, a nineteen year old grunt (and virgin) to train and participate in battle in the European theater. The first half of the memoir reveals the attitudes and personalities of the men of C company, as they are forced to live together, train together, and fight together.His describtions are so vivid, the reader becomes part of the company, and it becomes easy to imagine what it was like to live with these men. The second half of the book is the horrific account of the only battle of C company, of which there were just three survivors. It must have been painful for Kotlowitz, as he relives the night time attack by a German infrantry unit. Kotlowitz begins the battle playing dead, face down in the mud. He then spends the next twelve hours in cold black silence, as he listens to his buddies cry out for their mothers, get picked off by snipers, and slowly die screaming. All of this horror, and he never fired a shot. His guild of surviving has inspired this freightening and well written memoir. An excellent read for anyone who is interested in seeing the war through the eyes of a private.

In a society seemingly addicted (or at least benumbed by) on-line polls, the personal, written memoir is an all too often overlooked source of experience-- and wisdom. This compact volume is the wartime memoir of Robert Kotlowitz, who served with the 26th Infantry Division during the Second World War. Deeply (and appropriately) personal, it shares a place on my bookshelf with Mowat's, _And No Birds Sang_, and Sledge's _With the Old Breed_.

Even for those of us who have not served in combat, Kotlowitz's thumbnail word-sketches of his fellow soldiers and their dealings with one another have the hard edge of sometimes uncomfortable truth. Part of this story is untold, and cannot be told, but only lived. I deeply respect Kotlowitz as he tries, with each line, to be as scrupulously honest and accurate as he can be in conveying his experience.

Towards the end of this book, the author brings up the valid point that the majority of World War II veterans who survived the war have since died. As that generation passes, memoirs of the sort written by Kotlowitz are increasingly important. This is war, at the infantryman's level, and in our rush to embrace "smart weapons," we had best not neglect the voices, such as Kotlowitz's, that still resound from cramped, cold, filthy foxholes.

The candor Kotlowitz employs in this straight-forward narrative is in the best tradition of those combat veterans who, in the past 30 years, have tried to be forthcoming about their experiences.

"Before Their Time" by Robert Kotlowitz. Subtitled: "A Memoir".
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York, 1997.

In 1943, Robert Kotlowitz was in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) at the University of Maine when mounting casualties in the European Theater of Operation (ETO) required fresh men for the war. General George Marshall ordered the termination of ASTP program so as to release some 175,000 young soldiers to the battlefields of Europe. So, this young man from Baltimore found himself on the liner, "Argentina", at the city of Cherbourg, "...the old Norman city" in France. The soldiers of the 26th division, the old Yankee Division, had to climb down rope ladders, hanging on the hull of the ship, into Higgins boats below. The details of this relatively unimportant event... i.e. disembarkation, fill many pages in this small book of memories written many years after the war. In this small section, the recounts how his contemporaries reacted to the requirement of climbing down rope cargo nets into the boats below, and by so writing, analyzes those young men of the Yankee Division.

The author not only analyzes the men but also the 26th Division.
On page 8, he writes ...
"By 1944 there were no longer many true Yankees in the Yankee division. (O)ther ethnic and national groups had begun to infiltrate the roster:,, Italians, ... Armenians, Greeks" ... and so on. Then, Kotlowitz notes that there was "... a substantial cluster of despised WASPs, who didn't yet know that they were a symptom of the future, as well as a handful of isolated Jews, who were also despised; but the unlike the WASPs, the Jews were quite used to it".

The writing continues in this analytical tone until the day when his regiment, the 104th, was ordered to advance against the German lines. Almost everyone was killed or wounded. Kotlowitz was one of the few physically unharmed survivors; he spent the entire day under the sights of the Germans. He did not move and played dead. This affected his outlook on the war and on the army and on his future life. After this single day of terrible combat, where so many casualties were caused by incompetence, Private Kotlowitz was assigned to rear-echelon job. Safe for the duration. So, unlike many World War II memoirs, this book is not a bang-bang, shoot `em story. Rather, it is a sensitive and subtle analysis of the experiences of one American soldier.

For those of you considering this book, look past several of the one star ratings that others gave. I have been studying World War Two, with an emphasis on the European Theatre for well over 25 years. I have read tons of books written on the strategic and tactical level. I have read biographies and memoirs as well. Studs Turkell called this war "The Good War" and a book that he penned several years ago bears this same title, excellent book but not a good war by any stretch of the imagination.

As one of the victors of this global conflict we as Americans are so used to reading stories about a country gearing up for war, overcoming the odds and defeating the Axis powers and beating them back to within the borders of their own dark fascist countries. In the process of doing this, against popular belief, things did not always go well. Of the thousands of books available describing the chess game of men and machines that this war became, not many get deep into the platoon and squad levels or reveal the personalities and idiosyncrasies that existed. These subjects are often glossed over in favor of the "big picture". In the describing of strategic and tactical maneuverings of armies and equipment to achieve a planned objective the human element is usually absent.

What many readers don't understand is that the story that Robert Kotlowtiz describes to us is the experience that many a soldier had, especially replacement troops that were new to a theatre of operations. They went through training, landed on the continent and depending on which Division, Corps or Army they were to be attached to may have been slowly incorporated into the war. Many did not last long in combat when they did arrive. They were either killed, wounded or captured on their first day or week in action.


Unlike Dick Winters of the famed E Co., 506th P.I.R., 101st Airborne, Kotlowitz did not fight in Normandy or drop into Holland or endure the Ardennes or the Eagles Nest. He was in a green replacement division with no experience, and on his very first combat mission the world as he knew it came to an end. This story may seem tragic and unheard of and maybe a bit disappointing from a reader's point of view. But unless veterans like Robert Kotlowtiz tell their stories, we will never know what it was actually like. The official army "Green Back" histories although packed with detail and combat history writing do not describe the human emotion or personal mind-set of the individual combat soldier and the life that he had to endure.

I personally found the book riveting and could not put it down. Sure, since Kotlowitz eventually became a writer it reads well and in some areas may be a bit over some reader's heads. But these stories need to be told even if it's not to the sound of trumpets or victory parades. It's still a tale of personal victory.

The author of "Before Their Time: A Memoir" looks back at WWII from the perspective of 50 years and remembers. This is as excellent book, every bit as worthy of acclaim as Brokaw's The Greatest Generation" or Rustad's "The Triumph and the Glory".

This is a strange book. The author later went on to write novels so it isn't too surprising that this book is not really a memoir but a psychoanalytic, stream of conciousness paean to the life shattering memory of the author's one and only day in combat. The last 50 pages or so describe his slow re-discovery of himself after the trauma. Do not expect a literal description of Army life or battle. While there are some stunningly concrete details in this book they are almost always used to anchor a mental state or emotion the author says he was feeling. I am somewhat skeptical of the ability to remember how one would have felt a half a century ago but then again I didn't live through World War Two. This book falls in the camp of "Crossing the Sauer" and "Roll Me Over'. A work for meditation and introspection on memory. loss and World War II.

Very good narrative account of ETO private from induction through limited but well detailed battle action. Not heavy on tactics or technical detail. The platoon characters are well detailed. This book is probably typical of many combat veterans war experience through terrible conditions. Definately worth the read

Stephen Ambrose has awakened a deep - and justified - interest in the passing generation that fought the last great war. His works effect us because they are about real individuals and their personal experiences of battle. Robert Kotlowitz fought in the same theater that Ambrose can only touch through the stories of others. Kotlowitz delves deep into his own story and exposes universal and timeless fears, as he mercilessly recounts his modest role in the US liberation of France.

In so doing, he documents a seemingly futile and ephemeral contribution to the Allied war effort by one small company of men. At the age of 19 or 20, he almost lost his sanity and virtually all of his closest army buddies in the space of a few tortured hours in the combat zone.

This book is much more than a simple memoir of one man's war. It certainly was never intended as an adventure yarn. It will effect deeply anyone who has wondered what it is really like to be exposed to the horror of war. It is one more tremendous contribution to the storehouse of World War Two experiences that are being left to us by a passing generation.

In a manner akin to that of Paul Fussell--professor, writer (Wartime, 1989), and WWII combat veteran--Robert Kotlowitz shares his recollections of state-side training and deadly battle in Europe during the Second World War. In this poignant albeit unsentimental account, Mr. Kotlowitz gives faces and personalities to the young men of C Company, 104th Regiment of Yankee Division, from the vantage of 50 years of personal distance.

The mud and mundanity of infantry life provide an ever-present backdrop for boyhood dreams and urges, jovial conversations, and palpable, white-knuckled fear.

Word-painting with gray, impressionistic hue and technique, Kotlowitz breathes humanity into the machine-gunned teenage GIs in the horseshoe at Bezange, France. One man is whimpering into the mud, softly, without stopping. Another convulses from his wounds. And a third calls in sad, pathetic tones for his mother.

And we have come to know them before they are gone, if only on one or two dimensions.

Before Their Time is an important contribution to the literature on the human condition in the Twentieth century. It is highly recommended for all public and college/university libraries.

Robert S. Frey, M.A., Editor/Publisher, BRIDGES: An Interdisciplinary Journa

This book was written years after the events described occurred.Kotlowitz was obviously haunted by his brief but terrifying initiation as a combat soldier, only three members of his platoon survived a combat patrol in France.It took Kotlowitz fifty years to contact one of the other survivors, a man who was a close buddy.I think this book compares well with "Flights of Passage" by Samuel L. Hynes who was a Marine Aviator in the Pacific. Both gentlemen wrote their memoirs decades after the war,and even though both admitted that some memories were foggy ,they tell it the way they remembered it,warts and all.These books show if nothing else, the trauma of war is with its survivors for their entire lives. I highly recommend "Before Their Time" by Robert Kotlowitz and "Flights of Passage" by Samuel L. Hynes.