THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET

First hand experience may background this first novel by Ernest Hemingway's younger brother, but obsession with the sadistic rather than the realistic removes it from the category towards which it is aimed. Danforth Granham, U.S. Army cameraman, lands with fellow servicemen and British Royal Navy on the Normandy beachhead on D-day. He accompanied the Allied forces through the liberation of Paris, on almost to Dachau; he witnessed blood, guts and sadism; he restored Francesca, his self-doubting love, to a state of feminine wholesomeness -- and then on his return to Paris learned she had been killed in an auto accident. There is a group of strange characters,- a crooked colonel, a vain major, a psychoneurotic brother, brutal non-coms, unspeakable ""Krauts"", and homosexuals all over, but Danforth remains unsullied. Many descriptions of horrible sights and war atrocities, but all in all a slim plot, rambling and disorganized in the telling; puerile handling of human emotions and cardboard characterizations. Bowdlerization, chest-thumping and preachy observations hardly compensate enough to make this family reading. Public libraries- not for you!