Copyright 2004 by Walter J Eldridge. Published by PageFree Publishing, Inc, Oswego MI.

Disclaimer: the author is a fraternity brother.

I have had this book in my to-be-read pile for over a year and, frankly, was dreading it a bit. I thought it would be a dry recounting of World War II history. Instead it turned out to be the a gripping, humanizing story of a chemical mortar battalion that was instrumental in winning the war.

To be honest, I had no idea that a “chemical warfare battalion” even existed in World War II. I had the mistaken impression that all kinds of chemical warfare had been banned after World War I. While certain kinds of chemicals – mustard gas, nerve gas, etc – had indeed been banned, use of incendiary chemicals like white phosphorus had not. A lot of white phosphorus mortars – useful as anti-personnel weapons and to lay down smoke screens – were used in the second World War. These mortars were highly accurate and became valued support weapons for infantry in Italy, France and Germany.

The technology of the chemical mortars and its successes and failures were fascinating (e.g., some men were killed, late in the war, due to “early detonations” – mortars exploding in the tube – due to cold and dampness). But the human stories – laboriously researched and documented by Eldridge – were even more fascinating. The action photo of the soldier taken a minute before a shell took his life. The two soldiers who reluctantly left their foxhole to move to a place deemed safer by their commanding officer, only to see their foxhole take a direct hit from a shell a few minutes later. The misery of a cold, wet winter in the mountains of Italy. The legendary direct hit – a mortar shell dropped through the open hatch of a German tank.

You can’t make this stuff up. This is the fog, the misery and the triumph of war recounted in a compelling way. More than any other book on war that I have ever read, this one put me there and made me understand the experience of the Greatest Generation.

8 out of 10.

Copyright 1999 by Tim Dorsey. Published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York.

About halfway through this book I thought “This is like reading an updated version of It;s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but with everyone high on drugs and lots of killing – not just one guy ‘kicking the bucket.'” Then, some time later, I noticed a capsule review by the Denver Rocky Mountain News on the back of the book: “An updated version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World told by an author who apparently learned his literary skills from Hunter S. Thompson.” I guess my thinking was pretty much in line with some others.

This is one crazy book and is just the first of a series – 25 at the present time – of crazy books featuring Serge Storms, a sociopathic killer who loves Florida and travels all around the state visiting historic sites and killing people in highly imaginative ways (e.g., injecting Fix-a-Flat into a victim’s lungs). It sounds grim, but the writing style is so light that it is like watching a crazed Harpo Marx dispatch people while playing the harp.

It is pointless to even attempt to summarize the plot. But let me list a few of the characters:

• A drugged-up stripper
• The CEO of a small fraudulent life-insurance company
• A orthodontist who engages Serge and a buddy to cut off 3 fingers so he can cash in on a $5M policy on his hands
• Two innocent buddies who get duped into absconding with that $5M
• Three biker enforcers who, for a time, protect residents of a mobile home partk from their predatory developer
• Four Ubekistanians who are the smallest known drug cartel in the world

All of these crazies come together, more or less, to make this book work. It is never dull. It may be hard to follow at times and difficult to believe most times. But never dull.

8 out of 10.