This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 16, 1998
.. V	-:"W	"	.
?
* *
ndispensable Travel Dress"
>ur Indispensable Black ravel Dress is 100% 'rinkleproof and icks snugly in a :>rner of your jitcase. Dress up with earls or dress it own with flats -looks great either e of over 350 helpful new catalog of el gear. The catalog satile, wrinkle-free, y-to-pack, quick-dr\ iany of which can me sightseeing or a vn. We also make ;age, totes, and he most comfort while away 1 now for your DG and
~riNG GUIDE packing lists advice for the ning!
Travel Dress1" etite #5183 J99 Plus 8s S&H 100% Guarantee ? Open 24 Hours
ATO, CA 94949 ? WWW.TRAVELSMtTH.COM
'-1600 Deft NY01847
ly from the id SAVE!!
California Almonds directly from e sun-drenched San Joaquin 3h from the tree, shelled, sorted ?ctly to you or your friends as ingredient in recipes. Choose mient sizes, atural Almond packs:
@ $29.90 (plus $8 shipping)
0 $14.95 (plus $5 shipping)
@ $74.75 (plus $15 shipping)
lawaii add 30% to shipping.
;ck or money order to:
irms, Dept. NY10
?rd Ave.,Clovis, CA 93611
DNEY BACK GUARANTEE
1 PHOTO ALBUMS
Holds net J20 4x6 prints on cram archival/w?es AVAILABLE IN HUNTER GREEN NAVY BLUE OR BURGUNDY HAND MADE IN ENGLAND $49.95 + $5.9535!
CATALOGUE AVAILABLE
1-800-322-5031
MRS 1800 MASS. AVE.. LEXINGTON MA 02420
FOR CHRISTMAS
remorable, Luxury Week at
?S ITALIAN TABLE
LTURAL HOLIDAYS IN ITALY Venetian Haud-cmfteJ Gift Certificate Dorsotluro 3441, Venice, Italy 30125
pilot killed in a training accident, he writes, were ?sent home in a coffin that had to be loaded with engine parts to give it sufficient weight.? Fussell and Hynes also choose not to evade the reality of class distinctions in this theoretically most democratic of armies. ?The wartime idolizing of the common man? particularly grated on Fussell. ?At OCS I made no permanent friends,? he writes, ?and indeed I made none in the army.? Nor did he find much to recommend about sleeping ?surrounded by thirty other people, twisting, turning, muttering, snoring, masturbating, and farting.? Hynes was similarly aloof. ?Just a responsibility, like relatives or debts,? he says of the two enlisted crewmen on his torpedo bomber. Fussell also admits that at times, out of ?sheer unofficerlike terror,? he was less martial than his battalion commander preferred. Like fear, atrocity was not unknown, nor was it unacceptable. Fifteen or twenty German soldiers, caught in a deep crater and trying to surrender, were shot to death by men in Fussell?s company, ?laughing and howling, hoo-ha-ing and cowboy and good-old-boy yelling,? an event recalled around company campfires as ?the Great Turkey Shoot.? Lingering on such behavior is anathema for Ambrose, who prefers the positive recall of the rifleman in the line. The stories he elicits reflect both his passions and the unconscious agenda of his interviewees. These veterans of the European war, the youngest of whom are now in their seventies and more than fifty years removed from the longest day or the Bulge or the Remagen bridge, are today not unaware of what they accomplished before returning to the normality of civilian life. The edges of their memories are softened by the knowl-
edge that they are the few, the happy few, and the spirit of Henry V at Agin-court resonates in their remembrances:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, Shall think themselves accurs?d they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin?s day.
In paragraph- or page-size bites that cut away before ambiguities need be seriously explored, ?The Victors? shifts among many small lives caught up in great events. The technique is as old as ?The Canterbury Tales,? but what ?The Victors? most recalls is a movie. The narrative speeds along with rapid cinematic crosscutting from action to action, unit to unit, individual to individual; incidents often end with a teaser that keeps the suspense taut until the story can be picked up again. The result is that there is little room to examine the corrosive effects of spontaneous wanton cruelty, little room for the nuances of personality or the parsing of fear.
The resemblance to a movie, however, goes deeper than crosscutting. Ambrose has a reflex for idealizing the common man that is Hollywood to the core. It is a sentiment available even in the work of a pantheon director like John Ford, notably in his cavalry classics, ?Fort Apache? and ?She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.? I confess that I have never been entirely enthusiastic about Ford?s Indian-war westerns. For all the extraordinary shot-making, Ford too often resorted to primitive storytelling props. He was Irish, as I am, and sentimentality is often what passes in the Irish for feelings; on every Ford parade ground, a choral group of troopers was ready to celebrate any occasion with a
?I do what they tell me, I eat what they give me. How do I know they're not a adt??