Boys, Just Boys: Biography of a WWII Infantry Regiment

Through the voices of the men who experienced it, Boys, Just Boys relates the story of the 423rd regiment of the 106th Infantry Division during and after the Battle of the Bulge. In mid-December 1944, after rigorous training but no combat experience, the men of the 423rd, along with the rest of the division, arrived in the snows and forested ravines of the Ardennes/Schnee Eifel, the mountains straddling the border between Germany and eastern Belgium. As they dug into their positions, they were assured the Germans no longer posed much threat. A few days later, in the early dawn of December 16, massive German panzer divisions hit the American lines. Positioned at the center of the attack, the 423rd was hit head-on.

Few of the men had seen battle before, and they were vastly outnumbered by the enemy. Many died in the assault, and most of the survivors were taken prisoner. Only a handful of soldiers escaped the Germans; the 423rd was essentially destroyed.

Over 2,500 members of the 423rd were shipped as POWs to the east where they endured unimaginable hardships before the war in Europe ended. They were crushed for days onto trains without food, water, or sanitary facilities; they were herded into camps, where they were starved, beaten, and frozen; and they were sent to arbeitskommando work camps.

While some of the POWs died of disease and sepsis, many died from starvation, overwork, and exposure. Others were killed in Allied bombing and strafing raids, and a few by executions and illegal shootings. Then, in the final months of the war, as the Allies began to close in from east and west, the Germans grew terrified that the conditions of the POW camps and arbeitskommandos would come to light, and they herded the POWs across country on what amounted to death marches.

Boys, Just Boys draws upon the private accounts that some veterans wrote. Years later, the author, Kurt Vonnegut, who was among the POWs housed in Dresden's slaughterhouse and forced to collect the dead from the cellars of the city after the Allied fire bombing, wrote the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Through eyewitness recollections of his fellow POWs, as well as through records left with Vonnegut's family, Boys, Just Boys reconstructs the whole brutal chain of events.

Boys, Just Boys draws entirely upon the author's personal interviews with surviving veterans of the 423rd and their families, as well as upon their letters and memoirs, their obituaries, and US Army morning reports; each individual soldier in the story is unforgettable. From the prologue to the final page, it is a spellbinding and heartbreaking record of courage, loyalty, and friendship in the face of horror, degradation, and cruelty.