Books: The Battle Is the Payoff

YOUR OWN BELOVED SONS (230 pp.) —Thomas Anderson—Random House ($3.50).

Ever since Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage it has pleased critics to believe that it was not necessary to be a soldier to write a good war novel. It is true that a soldier who is also a bad writer will invariably write a bad war novel, as a dreary succession of them has amply proved. But it is equally true that a good writer who is also a soldier is apt to write a better war novel because he knows what he is talking about. Young (26) Thomas...