But in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, the gun-noise was authentic. The 333rd, unprepared and ill-equipped, was under attack…
Some three years ago, and nearly 70 years after their bloody capture, a House of Representatives Resolution finally gave the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion the “official” recognition it deserved. Even so, their story is rarely mentioned in World War II history.
It’s not much better told here. I had such high hopes for it. “The Lost Eleven” could have become a classic, a story that war buffs and historians might happily reference. Instead, it’s marred by pages and pages of fictionalized conversations, imagined emotions, and recreated actions that make this book more novel than not.
One could say that it moves the story along, but not very well; the conversations are borderline-insulting to a reader’s intelligence, and the imagined emotions felt like so much pandering.
Add that to the unnecessarily gory ending told (which felt out-of-place in the tone of the rest of the book), and I say “pass” on “The Lost Eleven.” If you want to learn about these brave African American soldiers, there are better ways to know.
(“The Lost Eleven” by Denise George and Robert Child, 2017, NAL Caliber, $28/$37 Canada, 416 pages.)
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