THE BARREN BEACHES OF HELL

Andy Willy was 17 when he enlisted in the Marines to do his part in the war-- a fresh-faced high school senior, an orphan unwanted by his older brothers, in love with a girl who thought they were too young to marry. At 20 he returned home--a veteran who had fought in the Pacific from Tarawa to the occupation in Japan. Andy had lived through terrible physical ordeals and worse mental ones. He was going to be a scientist, for science seemed to offer a better explanation of what he had experienced than theology. All the cliches of a war novel and in particular of a novel about the Marines are here:- sadistic officers, top echelon callousness, foul-mouthed enlisted men, drinking sprees, the minutely detailed horrors of tropical warfare. But there is a difference that makes this overly long novel more effective as a whole than many of its kind--a naive sincerity, a youthful seeking of meaning typical of the book's young disillusioned protagonist: Andrew Willy half sad sack, half hero.