The Lieutenants, by W.E.B. Griffin
What can I say about this book? It is a bit of a challenge to describe. It is a novel of the men in World War II, but largely it isn’t about the war. Instead it is a series of stories, with characters who are all, at some point, Lieutenants. They might have started out at that rank, or ended there, or they may have just been passing through their time as a Lieutenant somewhere in the book. They got there in a myriad of ways, through West Point, or combat promotions, or the fluke promotion by a General who wanted a man for his polo team.
The stories start out as largely disconnected from each other, of men who are fighting in the war or who join after, but eventually their stories weave together, as they know each other, or have a friend of a friend, or a commanding officer who worked with one of the others. The reader learns that the Army can be a very small place indeed, as these happenstance connections continue to bring them together throughout the book.
There are likable characters and ones who aggravate with their bumbling. Griffin pokes fun of the Army with the absurdity of some of the situations. Such as 18 year old Lowell, who is promoted to Lieutenant because, as a rich kid, he learned to play polo. His assignment is gravy until his commanding General dies on the polo field, and another commander decides to get rid of him by sending him to the battle front in post-war Greece. The reader is privy to stories of their wives and sweethearts, and the complicated social structure that prohibits officers and their wives from fraternizing with enlisted soldiers and their spouses. The random nature of how decisions are made is also front and center in the novel.
It got off to a slow start, but I did begin to appreciate the characters, and the fact that most of them were trying to do the right thing, while looking out for themselves at the same time. Others didn’t have that same set of morals, and were only in it for themselves. Griffin does a decent job with his character development, creating a nuanced set of characters with the conflicting motivations that we all carry with us.
If you are turned off by bad language or racism, this will not be the book for you. It is set at the end of World War II, and the fact is, racist terms that we denounce today were still in widespread use. Anti-semitism was common, and it affects how a Jewish character is treated. The author could have avoided this language and not addressed it at all, and some other reviewers would have preferred that. However, the novel’s language is accurate for the time, and provides a sense of realism.
Overall, I didn’t love or hate this book. It held my interest, but wasn’t particularly memorable, and didn’t make me eager to pick up the next books in the series.
3 stars.
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