Merriam Press Military Monograph 58. Third Edition (February 2012).
"On the Road to Innsbruck and Back" is a product of the author's
long obsession with serving in Europe during World War II as a
member of the 103rd Infantry Division. He has always known that he
would have to write about that time. And it seemed useful to put
his overseas experience into the context of his Army years, from
his enlistment in October 1942 to his discharge from an Army
hospital in March 1946. His professional career as a Shakespeare
critic was a matter of diligence applied; his imposed career as a
soldier was a matter of mindless endurance. He was not a successful
soldier: He was the last private in his regiment to be promoted to
pfc. But then somebody must have thought the author was more
reliable than he was. Too often he was given a responsibility that
he neither deserved nor desired. But then he was in an Intelligence
and Reconnaissance platoon, at the service of a regimental
headquarters. "On the Road" is authentic. He has made every effort
to be faithful to the facts, as he remembers them. But he also
believes that the best way to give form and direction to the
reality of his experience was through a series of sixteen short
stories, presented more or less chronologically. Experience teaches
through insights, epiphanies, encounters. Ideally, a poem or a
short story is an idea at the moment of dawning. Each of his
sixteen stories has its theme, its ironies, its surprises. The
realities of combat are simple and stark, but circumstances change.
In his stories the events and incidents in one story are meant to
echo and mirror the events and incidents in other stories. If the
stories are read sequentially, as intended, certain metaphors and
notions are emphasized and thus have a cumulative effect: the road
as a metaphor for living; the Army as a metaphor for prison; animal
references; clothing imagery; despair; resignation. The stories are
meant to be considered, not for their individual merit, but for
their collected value. The chief model for On the Road is Stephen
Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," the best short novel about war
that he knows. Like Crane, he wanted, above all, to demonstrate the
moral cost of some months in combat upon a not-insensitive young
man. Contents: Preface; Poem: "Dog Tags"; Living with Violence: The
Making of an American Soldier; Losing It; Under Fire; Dogfaces and
Dogrobbers; Collaborating; Undercover; Delivering the Goods; The
Hero Syndrome; Gathering Intelligence; Off Limits and Out of
Control; Winding Down; On the Road to Innsbruck and Back; On the
Way Back; Double Solitaire on the Home Front; Crime and Punishment;
Period of Adjustment; The Author; 2 B&W photos. The Author:
William Bache's great-grandfather was a Methodist minister; his
father owned two grocery stores and ten farms. Bill was born in the
coal mining town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, in 1922. Bill is now
widowed and has one daughter. After getting a Ph.D. in English
Literature from Penn State in 1952 and then teaching there for a
year, Bill joined the Purdue English Department in 1953. Except for
a summer in Maine and one in Montana and except for two sabbaticals
in Oxford, Bill spent his entire career at Purdue. He has received
a large number of teaching awards. Bill retired in 1992. Bill's
specialties are Shakespeare and lyric poetry. He published "Measure
for Measure as Dialectical Art" in 1969; "Design and Closure in
Shakespeare's Major Plays" in 1992; "Shakespeare's Deliberate Art"
in 1996. Review by Paul Fussell, veteran and author: I've just
finished reading with intense pleasure and admiration... your
excellent book. Your having been in the pathetic 103rd Division
where I was was just a small part of the pleasure. Most delight was
in your clear critical intelligence, as well as your sensitivity
and wisdom.
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