And No Birds Sang (The Farley Mowat Series) [Paperback]

Farley Mowat (Author), Charles Martin Smith (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: The Farley Mowat Series | Publication Date: August 18, 2004

In July 1942, Farley Mowat was an eager young infantryman bound for Europe and impatient for combat. This powerful, true account of the action he saw, fighting desperately to push the Nazis out of Italy, evokes the terrible reality of war with an honesty and clarity fiction can only imitate. In scene after unforgettable scene, he describes the agony and antic humor of the soldier's existence: the tedium of camp life, the savagery of the front, and the camaraderie shared by those who have been bloodied in battle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

There is a deceptive quiet to the beginning of this recollection by Farley Mowat of the hell he and his comrades endured in the bloody Sicilian and Italian campaigns of World War II. And the undersized, baby-faced young man the author was three decades ago, eager to "get a damn good lick in at the Hun," seems, in the first few pages, unendurably callow, striking attitudes as false and dated as his slang. But he grows up fast and the battles he survived as a second lieutenant in the Canadian infantry are clamorously, jarringly real - justifying epigraphs from Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden. In 1940 at age 19 Mowat joined his father's old outfit, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, known as the Hasty Pees and made up of men from southeastern Ontario. A bird-watcher and something of a loner, he ends up in command of a platoon of hard cases and misfits, a iamb among lions. They were thrown into the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 and Mowat soon loses the illusion that war is little more than an exciting form of battle game. "For the first time," he writes laconically, "I truly understood that the dead were dead." Then, as the Canadians are put through the meat grinder attempting to storm a German mountain-top fortress, he comes to know an unshakable fear; each time he finds it a little harder to blind himself to the death or mutilation he is certain awaits him. Mowat not only gets his emotional responses right, but he also makes the actual battle operations intelligible. A memorable book from a practiced hand. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

On September 2, 1939, Farley Mowat was painting the porch of his family’s home when his ebullient father drove into the driveway and shouted, “Farley, my lad, there’s big bloody news! The war is on!” Eighteen-year-old Farley responded with glee, but four years later, pinned down in the wintry mud of Italy, he saw a soldier “humping jerily away from his own leg, which had been severed at the thigh. In the instant I saw him, he gave one final bubbling shriek, collapsed and mercifully was still.” And No Birds Sang is Mowat’s gripping account of how a young man excited by the prospect of battle, is transformed into a war-weary veteran. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Stackpole Books; Revised Edition, 1st as such edition (August 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811731456
• ISBN-13: 978-0811731454
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #703,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Anti-War War Read, October 31, 2002

By 

C. Rule "coltman1" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And No Birds Sang (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was a great surprise for me. I picked it up at a local library because I saw the name Mowat and thought, "Funny, Isn't he a Canadian naturalist? What's he doing in the History section?" What followed was a fascinating voyage of war,adventure,hilarity and,ultimately,tragedy and pain. Walking into the experience of WWII with a completely innocent demeanor, anxious to get into a fight, this brilliant writer has many funny and almost fatal false starts. When the fighting gets serious, the glib descriptions of his units treacherous challenges are positively riveting. I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN. If you like your war personal, exciting and honest, get this book to a comfortable chair and be prepared to not move for a night and a day. A brilliant book by a Canadian national treasure.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF WAR, June 9, 2005

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And No Birds Sang (The Farley Mowat Series) (Paperback)

This is a much overlooked classic now days. Mr. Mowat has given us a vivid first hand account of his expierences during WWII and this book ranks at the top of such works. Not only do we get a first hand view of the actual fighting (found in many/most accounts), but we also see the other side of the war. The horrible loneliness and boredom. Mr. Mowat is an acute observer of human nature, something he uses with a cutting edge in this book. For this amature historian of this period, and those just passingly interested, this is a good read and I highly recommend it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Careful and accurate reporting, August 4, 2005

By 

Kurt Martin "kurt wallace" (Russian Hill, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And No Birds Sang (The Farley Mowat Series) (Paperback)

Mowat developed into a fine writer, and you can see that he was destined to record his generation's fight with the Germans. He's that classic "writer guy" immortalized in so many books and movies.

Unlike most of those, he is utterly real, and thus, believable. The result is that the non-battle portions of the book are just as gripping as the battle scenes, and there are plenty of fine examples of both.

When his unit is sent to scale the cliffs behind the Germans, it is fabulous reading. I had never heard of the assault on Assoro, so following Mowat as he leads the men climbing up the cliff, I had no idea how it would come out.

It's better than fiction - as it should be. I'm now going on to read more Mowat!