Poignant portrait of war's emotional turmoil

Amy L. Stoll, Special To The News

Published February 11, 2005 at midnight

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Denver author Nick Arvin's new novel, Articles of War, is a poignant tale about a young man sent off to fight in World War II France.

Hailing from the farmlands of Iowa and strong from field labor, George Tilson, 18, is drafted into the Army in the summer of 1944.

While he holds little interest in going to war, he doesn't have any real plans for his life and, thus, is thrust into a situation he is ill-prepared to handle.

When he arrives at Omaha Beach, his Midwestern sensibilities - his unsophisticated language and quiet demeanor - earn him the nickname "Heck." The other GIs seem far more worldly to Heck, furthering his isolation and self-consciousness.

Before he's given orders, Heck finds himself with pockets of free time. Instead of playing cards and joining in the camaraderie, Heck wanders about the French countryside, seeking solace and perspective in a dangerous area.

During one of these outings, he sees a young boy step on a land mine and rushes to his aid. Along with the boy's sister, he helps the boy home to a dilapidated shed tucked in the woods, where this French family has been forced to relocate. The family invites Heck back for dinner the following night to offer him proper thanks.

Heck is smitten with the French daughter Claire and, although his advances are refused, she leaves "Iowa" with a memento: a pocket-size music box that will become significant to Heck as he is called for his first experience of combat.

Arvin expertly sets the scene. "The noise was like nothing he had ever experienced before, a noise such as might be used to herald the beginning of a terrible new world, and now, as he was bodily shaken and thrown by this wracking of the earth, there was no time, no memory, no future, no self, no control or sense beyond fear. He was reduced to the purest sensation of that single, awful fear."

Heck's instincts are for pure survival. Disregarding orders from his sergeant, he seeks safety and becomes separated from the rest of the infantry. As sniper shots fire overhead, Heck is paralyzed with terror and his fear moves him to sob like a child.

Even the comfort of the music box in his pocket fails to give him the necessary strength he once thought he held.

"Heck wound it and opened the lid. The notes moved within the random noise of the wind, the artillery and the truck's creaking and shuddering so that sometimes the music was submerged and sometimes several notes could be heard quite clearly. It sounded extraordinarily beautiful to Heck."

Insult becomes injury when Heck has to be rescued by a different infantry unit. Somewhere during his scurry for self-preservation, Heck has sliced his leg open, and while the other soldiers take notice of the decent-sized gash, in triage Heck can't help but notice it's embarrassingly minor compared to the other soldiers' wounds. Still, he isn't quick to rejoin his battalion.

It becomes apparent to the medics that Heck is physically healed, which subsequently outs him for his next orders - an assignment that once again shows Heck's true colors.

What Heck doesn't know is that following orders this time will require unfathomable mental fortitude.

Arvin's descriptions of war-torn France are vivid and not overly sentimental, reflective of the reckless abandon for the affected people, places and animals.

"And all around lay the detritus of war, scattered along the beaches and across the fields and into odd corners of the countryside: discarded gas masks, tires, gasoline cans, empty food tins and cartons, fallen telephone cables, parachute containers, deserted gun emplacements, overturned and exploded transports and boats and tanks, rolls of concertina wire, stacks of life belts, mildewed underwear. Homes reduced to door frames. Burned and abandoned bulldozers. The skeletons of goats, cows, dogs, horses. Plastic sheets and bags in all sizes. Paper handbills and flyers strewn amid smashed furniture, fragments of shattered glass. In town the treads of passing tanks were rapidly destroying the cobbled streets. The fallen shop buildings and churches and hotels and houses had the appearance of sand castles bludgeoned by a wrathful child."

Arvin's ability to capture the grim and fragmented atmosphere of war-demolished France parallels his deft hand in exploring the inner reverberations of Heck, full of unmatched hope and monumental insecurities. Such descriptions quake with enormity, and Arvin's handle on the psychological gravity is both immense and extraordinary.

Much more of a coming-of-age story than a straight wartime narrative, Articles of War explores the emotional turmoil of war, with the spin of an adolescent forced to reckon with the role he plays in an act of brutality and violence and to face its harrowing realities.

It makes for a gripping and moving, if unnerving, read.

Amy L. Stoll is a freelance writer living in Superior.

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