Vessel of Sadness

The title, which hints at the poetry that breathes life into this true story of the Allied invasion of the beach at Anzio, Italy, in 1944, comes from a passage within the book told by a man assigned burial duty: Quickly, the mound of earth disappears. A friend has gone. He has drunk his vessel of sadness. His battle is stilled.”

Woodruff’s technique is to show that bloody struggle through the eyes of soldiers, statesmen, and civilians involved. Privileged viewers from afar, we see officers shooting pool before a major conference; we come close, peer into the thoughts of a corporal just before a bullet takes the top off his head; as if we were walking past, we stop for a moment to watch a poker game among enlisted men; we see an ambassador fretting over artifacts and men riding headlong into a German machine-gun nest.

In Woodruff’s war there are no human villains, only madness, an abstract insanity, a waste of such huge proportions as to sober even a giddy man. A war.