Len Levinson's THE SERGEANT - Great D-Day Weekend Reading

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I am a huge fan of Len Levinson's THE SERGEANT, as well as his Pacific Theater series THE RAT BASTARDS, and the folks at Piccadilly Publishing were kind enough to work with Levinson and bring the former series to the Kindle. The WW2 European Theater exploits of Master Sergeant CJ Mahoney make for great, pulpy, Men's Adventure wartime action reading, at a price that just can't be beat.

So if this D-Day has you reflecting on those historic events from 70 years ago, instead of popping Saving Private Ryan in the DVD player for the umpteenth time, give THE SERGEANT a try. The first few volumes are available now, with more to come as time goes on.

Book Review: Doom Platoon by Len Levinson

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Originally published by Belmont Tower Books in 1978, this slim novel tells the story of one Sergeant Mazursky, as he leads 2nd Platoon on a desperate mission; to hold back an entire German Panzer division during the opening moves of the Ardennes Offensive, better known to most as the Battle of the Bulge. With only 29 men, can Mazursky and his unlucky few stand their ground and slow the Panzers for the few precious hours their division needs in order to fall back and regroup?

I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but the story takes more than a few twists and turns along the way, dividing itself into three pretty clear arcs. Even though this book was written years before The Sergeant or The Rat Bastards novels, you can certainly see the origins of Mahoney and Butsko in Sgt. Mazursky, as well as the sort of rogues gallery of other squadmates that pop up in those novels, and the sorts of conversations the characters engage in during down time. Writer/Blogger Hank Brown states, and I'll agree, that if you've never read Levinson before this might not be the best introduction to his WW2 fiction, but if you like his war stories already, this would be a neat look into the genesis of those stories.

Overall, this is a really quick read. I zipped through the book start to finish in a long evening's reading, most of it on my cell phone. Ben Bridges of Piccadilly Publishing has partnered with Levinson to publish a bunch of Len's old books under Bridges' own PULP HEAVEN imprint. Overall the ebook version is quite well done, with only a couple of minor formatting errors, probably due to OCR conversion. Other than that, the ebook is very nicely put together, and has a couple of essays at the end written by Levinson, discussing his life and career.

Len Levinson Discusses Writing War Fiction

Last week Len Levinson - the author of The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards series of WW2 men's adventure novels - wrote me a letter regarding an article he'd recently read, provided to him by fellow blogger Joe Kenney, owner of the excellent review blog, Glorious Trash. I asked Len's permission to repost his comments on the article, and he was gracious enough to oblige. I think readers of this blog will appreciate what he has to say.

Here's Len's email:

Blogger Joe Kenney tipped me off to a not very complimentary critique of some of my novels, in a book entitled PIONEERS, PASSIONATE LADIES, AND PRIVATE EYES edited by Larry E. Sullivan, PhD, and Lydia Cushman Schurman, PhD, published by the Haworth Press.  The book consists of essays by other PhDs about American popular fiction.

In other words, people who spend their professional lives studying the likes of James Joyce and Henry James, have turned their baleful vision to the likes of me.

The article mentioning my work is called WORLD WAR II COMBAT IN AMERICAN JUVENILE AND PAPERBACK SERIES BOOKS by M. Paul Holsinger, professor of History at Illinois State University.

In the article, I discovered to my amazement that my series THE RAT BASTARDS was the longest running war series in the spate of war series published in the wake of the movie PATTON.  I also discovered that Prof. Holsinger had no idea that the author of THE RAT BASTARDS, John Mackie, and the author of THE SERGEANT, Gordon Davis, were both the same person, who in real life was and remains a very peculiar form of life known as Len Levinson, or as my former boss Sheldon Roskin referred to me when I was a press agent: "schmuck!".

Good Prof. Holsinger doesn't think much of my novels.  Describing my soldier-characters, he says:  "Their morality and their language is, in almost every case, that of the gutter."

Evidently Prof. Holsinger never was in the Army.  Because the average Army barracks, or foxhole, were not exactly faculty tea parties.  I was in the Aramy 1954-1957, but never in a war.  However, many of my old sergeants were veterans of WW II and Korea, and one had survived the Bataan Death March.

Apparently Prof. Holsinger doesn't understand that in order to turn average American young men into soldiers, or to be blunt, trained killers, a certain amount of brutality is involved.  And this brutality inevitably coarsens the spirit.  When writing these novels, I wanted to be as realistic as possible.  My goal was not to please the English Departments of American Universities, or to glorify combat, but to tell realistic stories about the tragedy and comedy of war, with all its blood, guts, cruelty, irony, and occasional heroism.

Prof Holsinger decries "this commitment to utter violence without a spark of human decency."  Evidently he didn't read my novels very thoroughly, because human decency actually is shown occasionally.  The soldiers are loyal to each other when the chips are down, although admittedly they fight amongst themselves sporadically during their brief periods of leisure.

My impression is that Prof. Holsinger somehow believes that frontline soldiers should be social workers and philanthropists.  But social workers and philanthropists wouldn't last long on a battlefield, where it's kill or be killed by any means necessary.  Prof. Holsinger's utter lack of understanding of his subject is astonishing, but they don't call it the "ivory tower" for nothing.

Prof. Holsinger complains that my characters "are, at best, hoodlums," which again indicates that he really didn't read the series thoroughly, and probably just skimmed the contents and cover copy, because he didn't notice, situated among the criminal types, West Point graduates with noble hearts, one young man from the upper levels of New York society who got drafted, aristocratic Japanese and German officers, numerous other decent, high-minded characters who got drafted or enlisted out of patriotism, including many brave Army nurses, and even General Patton and Field Marshal Rommel themselves make in-person appearances.

But it's true, many of my characters tended to be tough guys.  Because if you're not a tough guy when you enter the Army, you must become one in order to survive.  There is no alternative except unrelenting bullying in the barracks, or certain violent death on the battlefield.

I confess that I hated the Army during most of the three years when I was a soldier, when I functioned in a state of simmering rage nearly all the time.  When I got out, I reverted fairly quickly to the mild mannered, half-baked intellectual that I always was, except for a tendency to lose my temper from time to time, after which I always feel deep-rooted self-loathing.

I've never forgotten those three years in uniform, age 19 to 22.  In a way they made me what I am today, for better or worse.  I very much admired combat veterans with whom I served, and still do.  Although they didn't know it at the time, and neither did I, they inspired my 30 war novels.  Since publication of these novels, many soldiers have written me letters or told me in person that they enjoyed my stories.  Their opinions are the ones I value most.

Book Review: The Sergeant #3 - Bloody Bush by Len Levinson

Now that I've read this most elusive of Sergeant titles, I think I know why it's hard to find and expensive when you find it. I've read the two before this, as well as #'s 6 and 9, and I think this is my favorite so far. While the first two books are good, they're really just set-up for this point in the story, and show Levinson getting his legs steady in terms of the characters and setting. In this volume, I think the author really hits his stride, and we see just how violent, crazy, and completely enjoyable this series can be.

The book starts off with Hitler and his senior staff trying to decide how to stem the Allied breakout in Normandy. Rommel, probably one of the few men there with a real understanding of the danger the Allies pose, makes the mistake of opening his mouth when he shouldn't and gets slapped down by Hitler. This becomes a running point throughout the book - Rommel repeatedly having to deal with "no retreat" orders that make no sense, and just result in the wasteful destruction of seasoned fighting men who could make a better contribution to the defense elsewhere.

After the war room scene, we find ourselves with Mahoney and Cranepool once again. The two have transferred out of the Rangers in order to avoid constantly being assigned high-risk missions, and get placed within the 33rd "Hammerhead" Division, a fictional division that landed at the Normandy beachhead. The two (former) Rangers quickly realize one of the down sides to joining a line infantry unit - you get stuck with a bunch of grunts who don't know the first thing about surviving combat. And of course, Mahoney and Cranepool's new company CO and First Sergeant are a couple of jackasses who take an immediate dislike to their newest additions, because of their impressive war records and "know-it-all" attitudes. And, of course, because Mahoney immediately insults them both and earns their enmity. The duo are split up into two different platoons and sent on their way.

Mahoney and Cranepool both discover that their platoons are filled with guys who would never survive a day in a Ranger unit, and bemoan their decision to transfer, fearing that the incompetents will get them killed once they make contact with the Germans. Unfortunately, that happens right away; the push into the French bocage begins, and Captain Tugwell, Mahoney's latest nemesis, decides that the company with his two newcomers is going to lead the way (in the hopes of getting them both killed in action). Unfortunately for Tugwell, Mahoney is just too good a combat leader to let that happen, and he gets his new platoon CO to do what it takes to survive contact with the Germans.

This is where the Sergeant series really begins to take off. Levinson has a great gift for writing combat from the front-line grunt's perspective, and although it is pulpy and gratuitous and messy, the action is also pretty raw and exciting. Men on both sides are slaughtered in the clash of armies, with death coming from bullets, bayonets, grenades, artillery, mortars, and hand-to-hand combat. The chapters cut back and forth, between Mahoney and Cranepool as they fight to survive the horrors of front-line combat, and the Germans commanding the defending forces as they try to hold back the Allied onslaught, maneuvering what little resources they have to plug an ever-growing number of holes in their defensive lines, all while trying (at least on the surface) to obey Hitler's insane "to the last man" orders.

One of Levinson's other great strengths is showing the human side of the dogfaces. There's a whole sequence involving Mahoney, Cranepool, and a hopeful chicken dinner that made me laugh, as well as the moment when Mahoney receives a care package from his mother from back home. The line soldier's constant struggle to find chow, a decent foxhole to catch a few hours of sleep, and the joy from an occasional front-line luxury - like a good cigar or a bit of local booze - is handled deftly in this series, and the way it is juxtaposed with the combat sequences is nicely done as well.

As mentioned above, this book really seems to find the correct footing for the rest of the series, and I am curious as to why the series suddenly switches publishers in the next volume. I'll get to #4, The Liberation of Paris, soon - stay tuned.

Book Review: The Sergeant #2 - Hell's Harbor by Len Levinson

The second volume in The Sergeant series finds Master Sergeant C.J. Mahoney and his loyal sidekick, Corporal Cranepool, attempting to make it to the Allied lines, three days after the events of the first book. Mahoney, wounded in the leg by a German bullet, decides to hijack a German motorcycle with sidecar, since Cranepool is familiar with motorcycles and claims he can operate one. What follows is a crazed, full-throttle ride through the enemy lines, zipping through the contested town of Carentan, and then through no-man's land and finally into the Allied lines. This is definitely an action-packed opening to the book, with Cranepool dodging artillery, mortar fire, and machine gun bullets, as well as jumping trenches, foxholes, and craters. Eventually the pair find themselves back inside the Allied lines, and once their bona fides are cleared (they're dressed in the German uniforms they "borrowed" from the motorcycle's previous crew), Mahoney is sent back to England to have his leg wound treated, while Cranepool returns to his Ranger battalion. A pretty solid start to the second book in this series.

At this point, things slow down a lot, and we spend the next fifty pages with Mahoney, as he recuperates back in London. Mahoney spends these chapters grumbling and grousing in the hospital, eventually sneaking out while wearing a stolen Captain's uniform with $1,800 in his pocket, earned from gambling with other patients. Mahoney is going to find a whorehouse and get himself laid, reasoning that he'll be sent to the front lines soon, where he'll not be able to chase any tail. Although I thought this was going to be an extremely dull section of the book, Levinson is able to make it almost poignant; Mahoney's wooing of a young American nurse comes off as heavy-handed and corny at times, but their reflections on the way the war torments everyone's emotions, not knowing from one minute to the next whether you'll live or die, even as far behind the lines as London, means people's priorities become seriously confused. Although Shirley - the nurse in question - has a fiance who is a Navy pilot in the Pacific, she has no idea whether he's alive or dead, and whether he is faithful or not. This all leads to several pages of raunchy sex, of course, but the character interaction plays out better than you'd expect.

Eventually Mahoney is returned to his unit, and he and Cranepool are reunited just in time to go and take out a German pillbox. This attack is an appetizer for the battles to come in later books, and showcases Levinson's ability to effectively show us the chaos and insanity of frontline combat. Guys have their faces shot off, get blown to pieces, cooked to death in the bellies of dying tanks, and killed in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. We also see that, although Mahoney and Cranepool were effective behind-the-lines soldiers, they really come into their own in a straight-up fight.

Finally, after a day's hard fighting, Mahoney is called back to HQ and given another behind-enemy lines mission (wah wah wahhhhhh); he is to sneak into the French city of Cherbourg and destroy the mechanism by which the Germans can detonate a huge number of jury-rigged torpedoes and other explosives, placed to utterly annihilate the city's harbor. Since the harbor is going to be one of the Allies' main pipelines of troops and supplies once the city is inevitably taken, losing the ability to use the harbor will be disastrous for future plans to push into France. As the back cover states, "If the Sergeant doesn't save the harbor, the Allied armies strangle to death...". I won't give away the rest of the plot, but Levinson has Mahoney, Cranepool, their Captain, and a number of other Rangers sneak into Cherbourg and meet up with the Resistance to carry out their mission.

To some degree in Death Train, but even more so in Hell's Harbor, Levinson cuts back and forth between the main character's point of view and that of several high-ranking Germans. It is made clear to us that the Wehrmacht generals and other officers find the orders of Hitler and his cronies to be utterly ludicrous. Time and time again they are ordered to "fight to the last man" and "not retreat one inch" against the Allied invaders. The more clear-headed officers try to argue that standing firm and losing men in unwinnable battles does nothing but waste resources of men and material that the Germans can't afford to replace, while the Aliies land more men and supplies all the time. On many occasions I found myself gritting my teeth and cursing Hitler and his cronies for their stupidity, and actually rooting for the beleaguered Wehrmacht officers, several of whom are just waiting for the time to be right so they can peaceably surrender to the Allies, fearing only that this will be discovered and cause their families back home to suffer the wrath of the SS. Levinson does a great job of showing us that not only did Hitler carry out an insane and atrocious war, but he allowed it to go on far past the point when it was clearly obvious to any sane person with an understanding of the realities of strategic warfare that the Germans could not help but lose.

All in all, a fun, fast read. As I type this, I'm about 50 pages into book #3, Bloody Bush, and enjoying it immensely.

Book Review: The Sergeant #1 - Death Train by Len Levinson

I'm a big fan of Len Levinson's two great WW2 Men's Adventure series, THE SERGEANT and THE RAT BASTARDS. The Sergeant is the first of the two written, and the shorter of the two series, with only 9 volumes to RB's 16. Still, since it covers the war on the Western Front, from the invasion on D-Day forward, It actually takes place later than the second series, which starts off during the US Army's landing on Guadalcanal.

Master Sergeant C.J. Mahoney, a "gorilla" of a man over six feet tall and weighing 240 pounds, is a hulking, brutish brawler who joined the army in the early 30's because it provided a steady paycheck and easy access to the whorehouses that existed near every Army base. Mahoney only really likes two things; fighting and screwing, and when he's bored he's going to do one or the other, come hell or high water. His sexual exploits throughout the series are cringe-worthy and entertaining in equal measures, because his standard courtship tactic is to almost immediately begin pawing and kissing the target of his affections despite her protests, until they inevitably give in to his fierce sexual magnetism. It doesn't hurt that Mahoney has an almost preternatural ability to find women who seem "proper" on the outside, but who are secretly sex-crazed banshees desperate for the embrace of a "real man". As unlikely as some of these dalliances might be, at least the Western Front gave Allied soldiers semi-regular exposure to women, either locals or female Army personnel, as opposed to the Pacific campaign (we'll focus on that more when we review the Rat Bastards).

Death Train is substantially different from the later books in the series.Mahoney and his sidekick, Corporal Cranepool, are a pair of Army Rangers who've been assigned the job of working with the French Resistance behind enemy lines in preparation for the D-Day invasion. We start the novel as Mahoney, Cranepool, and several partisans blow up a radio tower, then flee the Germans while being shot at and attacked by war dogs. This is actually the only time in the book that we have any bayonet combat, with Mahoney and Cranepool sticking a couple of mutts. Later on, incredibly vicious bayonet and close combat becomes a staple of the series and the source of much delightful carnage.

Eventually Mahoney and Cranepool make it back to their resistance HQ, and they're assigned the task of blowing up a railway bridge, in order to prevent the Germans from moving reinforcements toward the beachhead when the invasion takes place, less than two days away. Mahoney and Co. quickly realize they don't have the resources to blow up the bridge, but they eventually figure out that they can block the use of the railroad by blowing up a German train in a tunnel, preventing repairs long enough to neutralize the threat of reinforcements by rail.

I won't go into the plot much more than that, but suffice to say that the rest of the book involves a number of battle scenes as Mahoney and his band try to stay alive with an insane SS major on their tail. Major Richter, the officer in question, becomes Mahoney's nemesis for the rest of the series, the Ahab to Mahoney's Moby Dick. The action comes fast and furious through the last third of the book, which is one massive dust-up between Richter and his cohort of Waffen SS, versus Mahoney, Cranepool, and a bunch of fierce, desperate Resistance fighters. Even though the action is almost non-stop, Mahoney still gives you a chuckle as he keeps complaining to himself about his lack of cigars, booze, food, and of course, sex. He's a walking, talking, killing personification of a soldier's Id, and there's really nothing wrong with that in a full-bore wartime Men's Adventure series.

In later books, Mahoney and Cranepool find themselves part of the Hammerhead Division, a fictitious US Army infantry division battling across France as part of the invasion force. According to Levinson, his editor at the time was a veteran himself, and told Levinson that G.I.s such as Mahoney wouldn't be operating behind enemy lines like this. I suppose this could have been rectified by making Mahoney and Cranepool former Rangers who'd been recruited by the OSS, but frankly I prefer the series as it remained, going from an OSS / special ops series to a more straight-up grunt's eye view of the war. I feel this point of view is - despite the series' gratuitous nature - one of the strong suits in both The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards. Levinson is great at writing about grunts, whether they're fighting, trying to scrounge some hot chow, taking bets on fights, chasing tail, or generally causing a ruckus.

For more information about Levinson and his writing, please check out this essay written by Levinson, up on Joe Kenney's Glorious Trash blog.

COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead now Available on Amazon!

I'm happy to announce that my World War Two Commando novel is now available for the Kindle via Amazon. Within the next couple of days, I'll be setting up a Gumroad.com page where folks who prefer PDF or EPUB file formats can buy the book directly in a multi-format bundle. In the next week or two, I will have C:OA available in trade paperback via Amazon's Createspace publishing service.

To quote the product description from Amazon's website:

"Corporal Thomas Lynch won fame at the Battle of Arras, and felt the shame of defeat at Dunkirk. A year later, as a member of Britain's elite No. 3 Commando, Lynch wants nothing more than to go back over the Channel and kick open Hitler's Fortress Europe, guns blazing.

Introduced by his commanding officer to the enigmatic Lord Pembroke, Lynch is offered a chance to be part of a special team of hand-picked Commandos. Their assignment: sneak into occupied France and ally with the French partisans to fight back against the Nazis.

Lynch readily accepts the challenge, but when the mission goes awry from the very beginning, and the motives of the partisan leader become suspect, the Commandos begin to wonder about their role in the mission: trusted allies with the partisans, or worms dangling as bait for a hungry fish?

COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead is a military action - adventure novel written in the spirit of classic war movies such as The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, and Where Eagles Dare, mixed with military adventure fiction such as Len Levinson’s The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards series."

The Sergeant #9 Arrived Today

Although this is the last of the books in the Sergeant series, I'm really looking forward to reading and reviewing another Mahoney story - lots of butt-kicking, bayonet-stabbing, cussing and whoring adventure to be had here.

I ordered this book through Green Earth Books, a used bookstore that promotes "recycling" of books by buying used. Although we don't really think about it much, buying used books, as well as borrowing from the library and loaning to and from friends is a good way to save a tree, as is buying eBooks and reading them on a portable device or your home computer. While I'm far from being the best role-model for living a sustainable lifestyle, I think it's important that books don't just get read once and shelved forever. Books are meant to be read, not collect dust, so if you've got books you don't plan on reading again, consider selling them, donating them, or loaning them out to someone else who would appreciate them as much as you did.

Oh, and sadly, while this book was in rather excellent condition when I received it, in an attempt to remove the bookstore's ID sticker, I damaged the front cover. I'm kicking myself for doing that now, but I'm always annoyed by stickers and such on my books. C'est la vie, I suppose.

I hope to get you this review sometime soon, but my dance card is filling up fast. When I'm done with it, y'all will be the first to know.

Book Review: The Sergeant #6: Slaughter City by Gordon Davis

Although post-modern pulp fiction is dominated by the serial vigilante novel, closely followed by the serial spy thriller / anti-terrorist kill team / gaggle of badass mercs adventures, there have been a couple of solid World War II post-modern pulp titles. The most notable of these is The Rat Bastards, which have at least 16 titles and possibly more (if anyone can give me a more accurate count I'd much appreciate it).

I've been recently directed towards another World War II title - The Sergeant, by Gordon Davis (the pen name of Len Levinson). This is a series of nine titles following the exploits of Master Sergeant CJ Mahoney, a real rat bastard himself, a thug and miscreant who enjoys screwing and fighting in equal measures, and apparently has to get some of each in each of the novels. I will direct readers to pulp blogger Henry Brown's excellent reviews of Book 1 and Book 4 - this is a review of Book 6, the crossing of the Moselle River and the assault on the city of Metz by Patton's 3rd army.

First off, I will mention that I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. It's not terribly written; although it isn't prosaic it is very readable, no better or worse than a lot of PMP fare. Levinson must have watched Patton about twenty times, because his depiction of Patton in this book is so spot-on with how he is portrayed in that film, especially during his morale speech before the crossing of the Moselle, that I could hear George C. Scott's voice practically reading the dialog to me.

Beyond the serviceable writing, this book reminded me a great deal of Bernard Cornwell's utterly awesome Sharpe series of Napoleonic War novels. I am a huge fan of this historical military action-adventure series, and so I was pleased to discover that in reading Slaughter City, the feeling was quite similar; a tough, no-bullshit lead character and a handful of repeat offenders who always get stuck with the dangerous important jobs because they've got the rare misfortune of being really good at what they do. Cornwell's sly mix of history and fiction allowed him to backdrop a lot of great fictional adventure with the history of the Peninsular Campaign, and I can see a similar feel in this book. Patton, Bradley, Hitler, Himmler and such are of course real characters fighting a real war, but interacting with Levinson's fictional creations to create a fictitious story loosely set within a number of facts.

And a bloody fiction it is. There is some real brutal violence in this book, which is fine by me, since, well - it's friggin' World War II. Bazookas, hand grenades, machine guns, high-powered rifles, tanks, artillery - it all makes for messy fighting. The most brutal examples of this combat take place during the Moselle landing, the house-to-house combat during the battle for Metz, and a desperate German gamble to use a rail line to punch deep into the Allied lines. Foremost in the insanity is the use of the bayonet in close combat.

Now, I won't argue that the bayonet was never used in WW2 - I'm sure it was. And I'm sure there were a few "bayonet duels" during that war, here and there. But at one point in the book it's as if every single soldier on the battlefield forgets he's carrying a repeating-fire (if not semi-automatic or selective fire) weapon, and resorts almost entirely to bayonet duels. At one point, a character even lays about himself with an engineer's hatchet, splitting German skulls and severing limbs by the sackful. Although Cornwell is guilty of an over-abundance of bayonet fighting in his Sharpe novels, at least the soldiers have a plausible excuse; the men of the 95th Rifles are carrying single-shot muzzleloaders, not M1 Garands.

Overall though, the action is fast and furious, the writing doesn't over-scrutinize the weapons and bullet trajectories a la The Death Merchant or other "gun porn" series, and there's enough amusing sexual content (a certain bet worth five hundred dollars comes to mind...) to remind ourselves that this is definitely "men's adventure" and not 196 pages of who shot who where with what caliber weapon. If you get a chance, pick up a copy if you come across it in your local used book store.