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LOST SO by Stefan Olivier

LOST SO

By

Publisher: Doubleday

Sergeant Robert Altmann of the Foreign Legion is escorting three deserters to Alglers when a remark by one of them forces him to think back twelve years when he was a nineteen year old recruit in the S.S. Following the lead of his sergeant Kleiba he joined, at the war's end, the Foreign Legion to escape the punishment the French supposedly reserved for S.S. men. Robert is a good soldier and, sure that his mother and sister died in the bombing raids of Stettin, he comes to feel that the Legion is as it claims, his home. Experiences in North Africa and Indo-China only strengthen his feeling that war is the same no matter on whose side you fight. After Dien Bien Phu he returns to Algiers and the war there with its blatant disregard of the rules governing military conduct and prisoners of war. Suddenly, Robert the deserters, who are men from his squad disgusted with what they have been forced and see. He escapes and after further vicissitudes makes his way back to German and his family. An abundance of interesting and timely material presented in an uneven, almost amateurish fashion that might be the fault of the translation.