The Atrocity

The Atrocity, first published in 1961, is a World War II novel centering on an American ordnance company stationed in Italy near the end of the war. Following a night of heavy drinking in a nearby town, a group of soldiers rape and brutally beat an Italian woman. The woman refuses to name the men, and an investigation follows by Sgt. Robbie Merrill, the story's main character. As he pursues his investigation, the men of the company turn against him, and eventually, he too becomes discouraged and demoralized at what he perceives to be the army's indifference to the situation. After pressure from Merrill to name her attackers, the woman breaks down and takes matters in her own hands by setting fire to a store of harvested wheat located near the company's ammunition dump. Author Jackson Burgess (1927-1981) was an English professor at the University of California-Berkeley.