28 July 2005  AN INNOCENT SOLDIER by Josef Holub, translated by Michael Hofmann, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books, October 2005, ISBN: 0-439-62771-0

"Amazing. In spite of the thousands of dead bodies all around me, I have a dreadful idea. There are so many trousers lying here, some bloody, some clean. Depending on whether the soldiers were shot in their upper or lower halves. All I need to do is take them away from a dead man. Simple.

"Then I suddenly feel my body heave. I sit down on an empty spot on the battlefield and vomit up half my stomach.

"For his part, Konrad Klara can hardly walk, but he helps get me back on my feet.

"Bare and naked we stumble about among the mutilated heroes.

"I narrow my eyes to the merest slit. So that I don't see everything. I'm only out for suitable trousers. Most of them are no use at all. They are slashed, holed, or sodden with blood. But here's a pair that might do for my lieutenant. Their wearer has been shot in the chest. The trousers didn't take any damage. Now's not the time to hang around. Yes or no. Stay naked or rob the dead. I drop to my knees in front of the dead soldier, and pull at his trousers. I'm in a hurry. I want it to be over. Fortunately, it's pretty dark. That way I can't see the dead man's face. The trousers are fashionably tight. I can't get them over the shoes. So shoes off, too. They are good shoes. They might fit me. I try them on. They're still warm. Why warm? The soldier twitches. He's alive.

"My head spins and everything goes black. I throw the shoes down and crawl away."

Adam Feucher is a sixteen-year-old orphan working as a stableboy in Germany in 1811. He's great with the horses. Never in his life has he been as far as town; he truly is an innocent. Then the farmer, to whom he essentially belongs, awakens him in the middle of the night, brings him to town, and dupes both he and the conscription commission into taking Adam as if he were actually the farmer's real (and only) son Georg. Such is the manner in which Adam becomes one of the nearly half-million men (and boys) heading for Russia in Napoleon's Grande Armee.

Konrad Klara is the young aristocratic lieutenant who eventually takes on handy-with-the-horses Adam as his personal servant, saving the stableboy-turned-reluctant soldier from the sadistic Sergeant Krauter.

The pair are extremely different in some ways, surprisingly similar in others. Together they watch each other's back and repeatedly save each other's life. Together they develop the sort of closer-than-brothers relationship that is so intense and intimate in its power that it transcends the book's historic fiction elements and war-as-insanity theme.

Of the many great things to be said about Mildred Taylor's THE LAND, it is the relationship between Paul Edward Logan and Mitchell Thomas which cements that book as one of my all-time favorite reads. There are far too few such intense guy relationships in YA fiction. AN INNOCENT SOLDIER is certainly one for my list.

Which is not to say that the gruesome and engrossing historic details of the march to Moscow (and back from Moscow for the few "lucky" survivors) are not thoroughly engaging. I knew next to nothing about Napoleon, his ill-advised strategy, and how many countries were involved in sending young men to their deaths. I am certainly glad that I've read it during sunny summertime, for I've shivered enough through the book as it is.

Adam Feucher's coming of age in the shadow of Napoleon is an immensely valuable picture of war, history, and friendship.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com