The Volunteer- Not For Glory by Jason Morwick and Robert Nelson is about a young man named Hans Sterling. He was only a child when Germany fell at the end of WWII and his family was killed by fleeing Nazis for celebrating the end prematurely. Almost a decade later he is still haunted by that day when he accidentally runs across the man who ordered their deaths. Determined to kill him the man commits suicide to escape his cancer before he has the chance. However, he does learn that the man who pulled the trigger also escaped justice and is serving in the French Foreign Legion. Wishing to find justice, however that may happen, Hans leaves Germany and enters France to join the legion and try to find the soldier. Though he never loses sight of his goal he does end up slowly moving on as he makes new connections amongst the other soldiers.
I did enjoy reading this book as it felt incredibly realistic and I can easily see similar events actually happening. The book was also incredibly sad and sobering as it covered events that many people tend to want to forget ever happened and this book could probably help us remember why we don’t want to do that. The plot was nice and well developed with great pacing and I greatly enjoyed meeting the different characters. I felt like they were pretty well fleshed out overall though I would have liked to know a bit more about some of the other characters. We really only get to see what Hans relays to us about them but considering the overall focus of the story that does make sense. The one issue I had a problem with was the timeline of the story. There were several times, especially earlier in the story, where it seemed the timescale of events was wonky. I noticed that it seemed to imply a decent length of time had passed but then almost implied hardly no time had passed between events. There was also at least one instance where it implied something had already happened but then discussed it as if it had not yet happened. Neither of these were big issues but taken together they did cause some confusion for me over the course of the story. The story overall was still pretty good outside of that and I did enjoy reading it despite the slightly sad tone. I am giving this story three out of five stars.
This is a decent piece of historical fiction and one that would probably hold the most appeal to readers who enjoy military fiction, more specifically those who enjoy reading about WWII and Vietnam in particular. I highly doubt that it would appeal to readers outside of that niche. It does contain some rather graphic and gruesome descriptions, especially towards the end of the novel in the midst of the fighting. I would recommend caution for any reader who might have difficulty with that regardless of their age. There are also some minor adult references but nothing overly explicit as well. Still worth reading though so I hope you will consider it anyway. If you do, consider sharing your thoughts in the comments. This book was acquired through the Reedsy Discovery program and you can find a copy of my review there as well.