After Hemingway talked him up so much, I had to check dos Passos out myself, so my dad got me a collection of his first three books, starting with this one, which is really more a novella. It follows Martin Howe, an ambulance driver in France.
Dos Passos describes the war from a limited view. Brief, personal scenes, mostly before or after battles. Martin and his friend Tom exploring the abbey where they're stationed. Watching a sergeant debate taking the new boots off a dead soldier before he's buried. Trapped in a single dugout, gas mask on during a shelling. Martin's words suggest he sees the wider scope of the war, the stupidity that drives it on, but we only see bits and pieces. His weariness and despair are the evidence left behind.
His closest contact with battle in the story is when the stations he's at are being shelled. Which is, as he notes, is still more than close enough to kill you, but not really in the trenches. He only encounters enemy soldiers when they're prisoners, and they're marched past him as muddy, dead-eyed puppets. The soldiers in charge of them don't know or care how many prisoners they have. It doesn't matter, there'll be more.
Dos Passos is very fond of metaphor and simile. He really enjoys describing the colors of the sky or comparing the clouds to the ruffles of a woman's dress. I don't know that it's necessary; it feels more like someone writing that way because that's how they were taught to write, and this is their first attempt. Describe the sky! Paint a picture with your words! Never really been my thing. Just describe what I need to know is there, and I'll fill in the background myself. But maybe that's just how dos Passos writes.
'How silly that he might be dead any minute! What right had a nasty little piece of tinwire to go tearing through his rich, feeling flesh, extinguishing it?'
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