This page is part of the homeplace advertisement-free web portal. (It is pretty much politics-free too, except for 3 sections which are obviously not.)

In the larger context of memoirs, news accuracy, and truth versus truthiness,

you may want at some time to visit http://chasegalleryconnect.org/FNC_C/Data/Brain-Neural/Truthiness/ .

Forgotten Soldier (described on the cover as a "WWII MEMOIR" by Guy Sager) was recommended to me by a friend I trust.

I found it a compelling read.

The first sentence is "July 18, 1942."  Its no-nonsense, definitive, no-fluff nature confirmed my expectation that this memoir would be factual. It would give me an example of just how it really was, at least for one person, on the eastern front. The weather, for example, was apparently a constant adversity.  At the top of page 37 Sager notes that it was "twenty four degrees below zero".  On the same page he notes that on another horrifying day of wind the temp "fell to thirty-five degrees below zero".   Later (on page 46) he notes that on a certain clear night the temp "fell to twenty-two degrees below zero".

At some point, I began to be really distracted from the story, compelling though it is, and to wonder about how, under those awful circumstances, he was able to record/note these details.

That is, my mental CRAP DETECTOR went off. 

I had bought several copies of " The Education of Little Tree" intending to give them to grandchildren only to discover that, while the book is still in print, it is a fraud.
So perhaps I was perhaps quicker to be suspicious of Forgotten Soldier than most.

So I got onto the web and found --- an enormous controversy about this book.


THE CONTROVERSY IN BRIEF

Click:  "Forgotten Soldier"  by "Guy Sager"


THE CONTROVERSY -

MORE, AND MORE CONFUSING

Click here for more.

THE BOTTOM LINE

For me, Frederick N. Chase,  the bottom line is something like this.

• The Forgotten Soldier was written by Guy Mouminoux and first published some 30 years after the events as Le soldat oublié de Guy Sajer (1976) ISBN 2-221-03739-1.

• Guy Mouminoux's principal occupation as an adult was as a cartoonist, and he can be presumed to have a vivid imagination. He also must have exposed himself to numerous news articles and probably also fiction on WWII.

• Mouminoux probably was in the Wehrmacht and probably over half of the itinerary reported in the book was actually his. It should be assumed that the remainder of the itinerary was patched over his actual one in order to place him at battles or places of dramatic interest.

• Some passages in the book are certainly fabricated. Whether this is a handful or many cannot be determined. Whether readers make false generalizations by reading the book is unlikely to be determined. (For example, the impression from the book that German soldiers on the Eastern Front were in a near-constant state of hunger has been plausibly challenged (search for fed or foraging).)

• A few of the fabrications can be identified without any historical facts, since they describe events contrary to physical law. See this example.