From the Old US Army to World War II

This book shines a light on an underexamined aspect of the Second World War by presenting the unique experience of a US soldier who was neither a senior officer nor a raw recruit.

This book shines a light on an underexamined aspect of the Second World War by presenting the unique experience of a soldier who was neither a senior officer nor a raw recruit.

Donald A. Barclay and Steve R. Corbett follow the Army career of Louis H. Barclay, a private in the tiny U.S. Army of the 1930s in the Pacific Theater. Starting with Barclay's birth in 1918, the authors provide an overview of the staid, underfunded inter-war Army and pre-war service followed by the rapid transition to the chaos and violence of the Second World War.

When the war started, Barclay was already a career non-commissioned officer (N.C.O.), making him part of a small, unheralded sub-culture within the wartime Army that was as important to the winning of the Second World War as the famous generals about whom hundreds of books have been written. By considering the war from the perspective of this underexplored sub-culture, One Soldier’s Service with the US Army provides a unique insight into both the bureaucratic mundanity of a U.S. Army at war as well as the traumatic physical and psychological impacts of combat on the individual infantry soldier.