Yancey's War — William Hoffman

Declared the "best novel of the year" by the Cleveland Press when first published in 1966, Yancey's War is the story of ordinary men in an extraordinary off-the-main-track war. Marvin Yancey -- short, fat, over forty, sloppy, sycophantic, cowardly -- is the most unlikely recruit at a Virginia training camp during World War II. He is called a bootlicker and a toady to the army system, which he is, and all the men in his platoon find him disgusting. Yancey's upset of well-planned military maneuvers by overseeing a party that becomes an orgy and by spinning a laundry unit askew are some the novel's funniest moments. In the end, this pocket-size Falstaff finds himself in actual combat across the ocean -- quivering, frightened, jelly-like -- blundering his way to an irritating act of heroism.