“Dogfaces.” “Dough feet.” “The poor bloody infantry.” Soldiers in Europe during the second World War called themselves a range of names, and neither knew nor cared much about their generals’ plans. But they filled their diaries with sensory descriptions of the front, like the sound of artillery shells, the taste of rations, and the sight of corpses. In Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII, Mary Louise Roberts, WARF Distinguished Lucie Aubrac Professor and Plaenert Bascom Professor of History, examines the physical and mental lives of infantrymen fighting on the Western Front from 1943 to 1945, offering a compelling account of the hardships that World War II foot soldiers bore, and offering historians stimulating new ways to think about wartime sources.
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