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Salinger never spoke of what he saw and did during the war, but Slawenski's use of military records is revelatory. Salinger landed on Utah Beach on D-Day. Serving with the 12th Regiment, he fought at the freezing bloodbath of Hürtgen Forest in the winter of 1944. Of the regiment's 3,080 original soldiers, only 563 survived what Slawenski argues was "the most senseless carnage" on the Western Front. Later, as an intelligence agent, Salinger interrogated captured enemy soldiers and French and German citizens. He spoke fluent German, a skill he picked up in 1937 while living for 10 months with a Jewish family in Austria. After the war, he searched for the family - which included a daughter, thought to be his first love - only to discover they had all died in concentration camps.

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8y ago

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