About the Author

Gregory Orfalea was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and educated at Georgetown University and the University of Alaska. He has held teaching positions at Georgetown, The Claremont Colleges, and at Westmont College. Orfalea is the author and editor of eight books, the most recent of which are the short story collection The Man Who Guarded the Bomb and Angeleno Days, which won the 2010 Arab American Book Award and has been named a Finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction.

Reviews

To help come to terms with his father's life-and with his death in 1985 at the hands of his own daughter, the author's schizophrenic sister-Orfalea (Before the Flames) undertook this work. Service as a paratrooper in WWII was the older man's defining experience, yet he never spoke of it with his son. In exploring that experience, Orfalea reconstructs the story not only of his father but of one of America's lost battalions of WWII. Aref Orfalea served in the 551st Parachute Infantry, an independent battalion that first saw combat in the 1944 invasion of southern France. Committed to the Battle of the Bulge at the turn of the year, the 551st suffered such heavy casualties that it was disbanded. Orfalea brilliantly evokes the dynamics of a small elite unit, lost in a war of divisions, corps and armies. The battalion took its tone in particular from its charismatic and aggressive commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Wood Joerg, an archetype of the airborne officer, who died at the battalion's head in a suicidal attack on the German-held Belgian village of Rochelinval on January 7, 1945. The author's bewildered search for meaning in the expending of his father's battalion leads him to focus on General James Gavin, who is presented as having a kind of paternal relationship with the men of the 551st, at once loving and expecting too much of them. This interpretation seems unfounded, however. War is a process of destruction, and there was nothing exceptional in the fate of the 551st. Orfalea's account stands as a compelling witness to the consequences of that grim fact. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Mar.)

Yet another fragment in the intricate mosaic of World War II, this book is part battle history and part detective story but mostly an angst-ridden memoir to a troubled father. The 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion fought its way across Europe until it was nearly annihilated in a heroic assault during the winter battle in the Ardennes. Years later, Orfalea, a poet and the son of one of the survivors, became aware of the lost outfit and set out to uncover its story. In a sensitive and deeply introspective narrative, he has pieced together the experiences of his father and explores the "mystery" of the heroic unit's present obscurity. This conspiracy angle is somewhat overblown, but the story of the 551st needed to be told, and Orfalea does it better than most of the official unit histories. His narrative is enlightened by numerous deft character sketches, vivid flashbacks, and poignant anecdotes gleaned from army reunions. Recommended for military collections and larger public libraries.‘Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Edwards AFB, Victorville, Cal.