Sebastian Westland graduates from the Hitler Youth to the SS in the summer of 1944 and is sent with other teenagers into the Battle of the Bulge, where his unit is wiped out, he participates in the executions of prisoners, and he experiences total disillusionment with the war This first novel is the story of a 17-year-old who joins the Waffen SS in the summer of 1944. It follows him through the rigors of boot camp and into the horrors of combat. His unit is one of those spearheading the desperate Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). There is the material for a memorable novel here, but, despite some powerful and vivid battle scenes, 23-year-old Watkins doesn't quite carry it off. Too often characters and incidents seem as if they have been recycled from formula war movies, and the narrator sounds as if he has come from a novel about disgruntled and angry postwar (Vietnam) adolescents. Only for collections where war novels are popular. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.