The Last of the Seven

Slow Start Builds To Action-Packed Finish. This book is one that starts with an intriguing mystery - a man shows up at a British post in the northern Africa desert during the Africa Campaign of WWII wearing a German uniform and claiming to be British - and builds a bit slowly and at times seemingly disjointedly - random flashbacks to this soldier's memories from Jewish persecutions in Berlin - to a bit of a romance middle and then an action packed final mission reminiscent of most any WWII movie. Overall a solid war tale for guys, with a lot of the emotional punch of women's fiction WWII historical fiction largely removed in favor of showing people actively being blown apart or shredded by machine gun fire. Recommended.

This book. The opening sequence, describing Bernard Froehlich's desperate trek across an unforgiving desert hoping against hope for rescue, is brutal. I'm not super squeamish, but some of the descriptions almost put me off the book.

I'm so glad they didn't.

Bernard Froehlich is found near a British outpost in the north African desert, wearing a German uniform. The Brits want to, if not shoot him on sight, at least capture him. But he convinces them he is, in fact, one of them. He tells a remarkable story, of being the lone survivor of a group of German Jewish soldiers going undercover as Nazis. As it turns out, he is not yet done serving for Britain.

I've never been in the military. I've certainly never been an undercover commando training for vital missions. But Steven Hartov writes in such a way as to make it clear how challenging such a task, such a role must be. We've all heard it said that war is hell, and so it is here.

I've read a fair amount of World War II historical fiction told from the perspective of women. The Last of the Seven is not that. It's much more descriptive in its scenes of battles and wounds, of the training Froehlich and his men endure. But while it doesn't focus on the more emotional side of war stories as seen from a woman's point of view, it is not without emotion. Froehlich earnestly desires vengeance on the Nazis for what they did to his family. Deaths of comrades are truly mourned. War romance is bittersweet. The story runs the gamut of emotion and does an excellent job drawing the reader into each scene.

I knew nothing about the “X Troop,” the German Jews who fought for the Allies and used their heritage and native language against the Nazis. I can only imagine that imitating those who they most had cause to loathe brought an extra layer of difficulty to their service.

I found The Last of the Seven to be an engrossing, well-written, well-researched work of historical fiction, and I appreciated the fact that it taught me something new about World War II history.