Tag Archives: WWII

The Beardless Warriors, by Richard Matheson

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Didn’t recognize the author by name when I saw this paperback on the ‘Free’ shelf, only later learned he was the author of ‘I Am Legend,’ ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ and ‘What Dreams May Come;’ all successful popular novels also turned into movies.  No, what drew me in was that Matheson had been among the many eighteen-year-old reinforcement troops sent to join U. S. infantry units as they moved into German territory in December of 1945 – which puts him in spitting distance and time of my father, who was also eighteen when he reported for duty, was trained, shipped over and served in combat until being seriously injured on April 11,1945, less than a month before the end of fighting in Europe.  Matheson took fifteen years to get this ‘memoir in the form of a novel’ (my characterization) written and published, so nearly as many years as those reinforcements were granted before being committed to the battlefield, and the time was well spent.  Despite my having previously read several other battlefield memoir/history/fictions, this one elevated by an order of magnitude my attempts to imagine what that experience must have felt like. 

From the first sentence, Matheson tells his story almost breathlessly, plunging the reader directly into the experiences of one Everett Hackermeyer, a motherless child and nearly fatherless too, with little to live for and few tools to do so.  We see the confusion and futility of war from his perspective and feel the importance of his developing relationship with a much older (all of thirty-eight years-old!) Sergeant, a no-nonsense nuts and bolts leader who has learned and accepted the hard truth that no matter how well he performs, many men will die under his command.  As is often prominent in memoirs of Vietnam, we see how senseless the orders from on high appear to those who must follow them – war, for an infantryman, is not geopolitical or strategic, it is only struggle. At times it seems the only thing that changes from day to day is the rolling succession of squad members, as one after another are injured or killed, replaced (though not in the same numbers at this late stage) and their replacements in turn are inducted and ground up by the coincidence and accident of chaotic violence.

The novel’s action covers only a couple of weeks, all centered on moving a few short miles to take seemingly one unimportant town, which could have made for monotony, but Matheson is a champ at finding new and creative words to describe similar battle scenes and the dull and dyspeptic interludes between them.  Hackermeyer’s evolving knowledge and emotions also give each skirmish the specificity to feel new. Approaching novel’s end the author gives us a skirmish only slightly more significant than the preceding ones, but with personal incidents that make it satisfyingly climactic, even as the reader understands that the hell these men have been living will go on and on until the day that awful war ends, even if they are lucky enough to live to see it.

It has been said that the experience of being in combat cannot be communicated to those who have not lived it, and I don’t doubt that that is true. The Bearded Warriors though, makes more progress in that direction than anything else I’ve encountered, helping me to understand (now that it is years too late) what my father must have experienced and how it probably transformed the bright-eyed young man he had been into the tightly controlled and deeply insulated veteran I knew as I was growing up.

Surviving battle is not the same thing as coming through unscathed.

This novel is a definite keeper and deserves to be read by anyone who claims that fighting for even the most just cause is a path to glory.

P. S. – As America’s leaders seek drama and ‘glory’ in wars of their own creation, the thrilling speculative fiction E Unum Pluribus explores one way in which their winner-take-all governance may bring about the end of the USA – and how very much we stand to lose if we allow that. The novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, for free, starting at https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

(Those who are wary of unfamiliar links can access it just by going to robinandrew.net and clicking on E Unum Pluribus in the menu at top of the home page.) 

Paris Undercover

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Paris Undercover – A Wartime Story of courage, Friendship and Betrayal, Matthew Goodman (2025)

At times inspiring, at others horrific, this is an impressive example of historical scholarship and its value in setting the record straight – as opposed to its all too prevalent effect of skewing history to the writer’s preferences.

In the midst of WWII the Etta Shiber’s purported memoir Paris-Underground is published in New York describing the exploits of herself and Kitty Bonnefous, two female resistance workers in Nazi-occupied France.  How that book came about, how much it was fact and how much fiction, and what were the effects its publication, are this current book’s subjects.

Part One of this volume gives us a factual record of the women’s actual lives and actions, up through Etta’s capture trial and imprisonment by the Nazis, thru her eventual release and arrival in New York. (At least I believe this is the factual version.  Given what follows, I do wish Goodman gave us a more explicit assurance to that effect.  In particular, his choice to open with the moment of Etta’s arrival in New York and then backtrack to their exploits confused me when, in Part Two, he informed us that is the way in which Etta’s book was structured.)

Readers looking for a pleasant and inspiring book could perhaps stop right here, and be somewhat satisfied.

Part Two is Goodman’s account of how Etta’s book came to be, how it was or was not written and by whom (there are differing accounts), and the impacts it had on her life..(This is where Goodman details that book’s departures from fact, and where I became a bit confused as to whether what I’d previously read was the true facts, or a replaying of the wartime book’s fabrications.  Perhaps a more diligent reader would not experience any confusion, but I did). What does seem clear though, is that Paul Winkler, himself a Jewish refugee from France, had the leading role as publisher and assembler and probably came out farther ahead financially than anyone else did.  Certainly the book sold well, and Etta Shriber did not get much for it.  What is also clear is that the book’s publication would certainly cause the Nazis to revisit Kitty’s case with even more sadistic vigor than before, likely with deadly consequences for her and others.

By the end of this section, one is angry with Winkler and others, but mostly on the edge of one’s seat, impatient to learn where Kitty has been imprisoned how she has fared while this profit-oriented sideshow was taking place in the safety of North America.  An excellent demonstration of how even a nonfiction book can be structured to maximize its suspense.

Part Three: Into the Night and Fog is the crux of Goodman’s work, a detailed account of Kitty’s imprisonment and mistreatment, the effect of Etta’s book on her such, the terrible  privations she and other prisoners of the Nazis had to endure to survive and even after being ‘freed’ by Soviet troops and, at long last, Kitty’s eventual return to the land of the living, where she lived to very nearly 80 years of age, at last enjoying some comforts and peaceful pleasures despite the debilitating effects of her ordeal.

(Given the chaos and destruction endemic to wartime, especially the end of a World War, it is amazing that Goodman is able to reconstruct this period in such detail and anecdote.  Since the overall purpose of the current volume is to expose the fabrications of Etta’s earlier book, it would have been worthwhile for him to address head on how he is able to be so comprehensive and how he avoided inserting his own imaginings in it, though the extensive Acknowledgements, Notes and Bibliography do help in this regard.)

As with other accounts of wars and particularly the Nazi Reich, one comes away from Paris Underground near despair at the eagerness of some men (and a few women, too) to inflict unnecessary pain and agony on other humans.  And, at the same time, amazed at the ability of many humans to survive mistreatment and hardships that would seem, if described in the abstract, unendurable.

A compelling and thoroughly worthwhile read, but not pleasant, and not for the faint of heart.