Airbursts Thank God for the Atom Bomb

By R.Z. Sheppard

Paul Fussell's collection of crusty essays covers a good deal of time and space, from Hiroshima, 1945, to the Indianapolis 500, 1982. Pieces about the fate of chivalry (linked to the decline of horse culture) and nudism in Yugoslavia (when the sun goes down, the naked dress up) range knowingly over such touchy subjects as taste and class. At his most potent, Fussell takes on two hazardous areas: meeting an enemy in battle and engaging the English language in single combat. He has had victories on both fronts, as an infantry officer in World War II and as a professor of literature and the author of literary and social criticism, including the much decorated The Great War and Modern Memory (1975).

In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in a division that "had been through the European war so thoroughly that it had needed to be reconstituted two or three times." He was wounded in the back and leg, but not seriously enough to lose his job. After Germany surrendered, the author and his unit were among the blooded troops scheduled to invade Japan. The ferocity of the recent campaigns on Okinawa and Iwo Jima was not lost on those who had survived the crusade against Hitler. Fighting the Japanese on their own turf promised to be the costliest effort of the war.

Fortunately, this estimate remains a matter of speculation. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki canceled Operation Olympic and delivered Fussell, reasonably intact, from his enemies. "For all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades," he writes, "we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all."

Hence, "thank God for the atom bomb," a phrase originally used by another appreciative combat veteran and writer, William Manchester, in his memoir of the Pacific war, Goodbye Darkness. As Fussell's title, T.G.A.B. is aimed at offending those who feel guilty about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He does not. The dramatic end of the war was both "horrible and welcome." Tens of thousands died, but more than a million Allies and Japanese could have been casualties of an invasion campaign. Because he knows the terror and brutality of combat, Fussell draws a sacred line between the men who were in the foxholes and those who viewed the war from behind desks. On John Kenneth Galbraith, a former member of the Office of Price Administration, who believed Japan would have surrendered in weeks even if the A-bombs had not been used: "I don't demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn't."

This is the sort of guff one can hear on The Morton Downey Jr. Show, yet it is one of the perverse pleasures of reading Fussell that he can play the loudmouth and the egghead with equal relish. One of his models is George Orwell, who hid his social pedigree and erudition behind a blunt style that shook comfortable perceptions with irony and contradictions. When Fussell goes to the races at the Indianapolis Speedway, for example, he begins with the standard derisive sociology about the "middles" in the reserved seats and the black-leather set that gathers in the muddy infield known as the Snake Pit. But by the time he leaves, Fussell is a fan of what he sees as a dangerous ritual that provides an outlet for an unruly national spirit.

A little pat and a bit condescending? Perhaps. The inconsistent style and tone of many of these essays reflect Fussell's own ad hoc approach. His true targets are insecure members of the middle class, who think that saying "home" rather than "house" and "rest room" instead of "toilet" - confers breeding. He spices up the gun-control issue with a modest proposal: all firearms owners should be required to enlist in a local militia for training. And he is contemptuous of authors who write letters to the editor complaining about unfavorable reviews: a "new prose genre, new because so perfectly in tune with contemporary tendencies toward thin-skinned neurosis, egotism, and the consequent demand for favorable personal publicity."

Fussell can be boorish, but he is never boring. Unpleasantness, as he sees it, must be faced; language needs to be shorn of euphemisms, and good reading is where you find it. When he quotes Orwell on back issues of the Girl's Own Paper, he could be talking about his own book: "For casual reading -- in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch." Bon appetit!