Unlike many soldiers who had been impatient for the invasion, Salinger was far from naïve about war. In short stories he had already written while in the army, such as “Soft-Boiled Sergeant” and “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” he expressed disgust with the false idealism applied to combat, and attempted to explain that war was a bloody, inglorious affair. But no amount of theoretical insight could have prepared him for what was to come. Salinger would count among his most treasured belongings a small casket containing his five battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation for valor.

Salinger fought, but he also wrote—wrote constantly, from war’s start to war’s finish. He had begun to write seriously in 1939, as a student at Columbia, under the guidance of a professor, Whit Burnett, who also happened to be the editor of Story magazine, and who became for Salinger a mentor and near father figure. By 1941, Salinger was producing stories in rapid succession, each an experiment to find his own writing style. “Slight Rebellion off Madison,” written that year, is the story where Holden Caulfield makes his debut—Salinger described it as “a sad little comedy about a prep school boy on Christmas vacation.” It was spiritually autobiographical, he admitted. Holden is the first character in whom Salinger embedded himself, and their lives would be joined: whatever happened to Salinger would, in a sense, also happen to Holden. Whit Burnett pushed Salinger repeatedly to place Holden Caulfield into a novel, and he kept prodding him even after he was drafted, in 1942.

Burnett had reason to be nervous. Salinger was a short-story writer who was unaccustomed to longer work. To overcome his possible difficulties with length, Salinger chose to construct the novel by writing it in segments—as a series of short stories that might eventually be strung together. By March 1944, he had completed six stories in this manner, most of them somehow featuring Holden Caulfield and other members of the family. There would be nine such stories altogether. Among the Holden stories from this time was one called “I’m Crazy,” which eventually was incorporated wholesale into The Catcher in the Rye, becoming the chapters in which Holden visits Mr. Spencer and leaves Pencey Prep.

Salinger wrote much that has not survived—there are tantalizing references in his letters—and he also produced much work that never appeared in print. A week after D-day, he sent a three-sentence postcard to Whit Burnett saying that he was O.K., but also explaining that, under the circumstances, he was “too busy to go on with the book right now.” The truth, however, is that Salinger never stopped writing. Of all the Salinger stories to remain unpublished, perhaps none is finer than “The Magic Foxhole,” the first story he wrote while actually fighting on the front line, and the only work in which he ever depicted active combat. “The Magic Foxhole” is angry, verging on the subversive.

The story opens days after D-day on a slow-moving convoy. It casts the reader as an anonymous hitchhiking G.I. picked up by the narrator, a soldier named Garrity. Addressing the G.I. only as “Mac,” Garrity recounts the events of a battle fought by his battalion right after the invasion. His tale focuses on the company point man, Lewis Gardner, and the experiences that cause him to lose his mind. The most powerful portion of “The Magic Foxhole” is the opening scene, which describes the landings at Normandy. Among the dead bodies on the beach is a solitary living figure—a chaplain crawling around in the sand, frantically searching for his glasses. The narrator, as his transport nears the beach, watches the surreal scene in amazement, until the chaplain, too, is killed. It was no accident that Salinger chose a chaplain to be the only living man among the dead in the heat of war. It was also no accident that the chaplain should be desperate for the clarity his glasses would provide. A man who believed he held the answer to life’s great questions suddenly discovers that he doesn’t—just when he needs an answer most. It is a critical moment in Salinger’s writing. For the first time, he asks the question: Where is God?

A Nightmare World

On August 25, 1944, the Germans surrendered Paris. The 12th Regiment was ordered to flush out resistance from one quadrant of the city. As an intelligence officer, Salinger was also designated to identify Nazi collaborators among the French. According to John Keenan, his C.I.C. partner and best friend throughout the war, they had captured such a collaborator when a nearby crowd caught wind of the arrest and descended on them. After wresting the prisoner away from Salinger and Keenan, who were unwilling to shoot into the throng, the crowd beat the man to death. Salinger and Keenan could do nothing but watch.