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” and Babe’s appreciation of beauty. Added to Holden’s experience is an almost spiritual unity with his sister that the “Furlough” scene lacks. In that scene, Babe explained at length the reasons for his connection with Mattie, as if the reader needed to be convinced. In “I’m Crazy,” there is no explanation because none is needed. Readers instinctively feel the connection between Holden and Viola without the need for persuasion. Here Salinger displays a gift for connecting his characters directly to the reader, an aspect that will prove fundamental to the success of The Catcher in the Rye.

“I’m Crazy” is tender, authentic, and even sensitive in its ending, but it lacks the spiritual force of Catcher that makes the novel so compelling. Holden’s acknowledgment of beauty at Viola’s crib side is gentle, yet profound; but it falls short of revelation. The bond that will connect Holden to Phoebe and Allie in The Catcher in the Rye, and will join closely so many of Salinger’s future characters, has yet to develop fully. Before it does, it will require a spiritual transformation and revelation within the author himself.

*No one was officially held responsible for events at Slapton Sands, but the admiral in charge took his own life and some argue that responsibility must be borne by the RAF Coastal Command, for failing to protect the flotilla, and by its commander in chief, William Douglas.

*The eight stories Salinger listed as being his best to date were “The Young Folks,” “The Long Debut of Lois Taggett,” “Elaine,” “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” “Death of a Dogface” (“Soft-Boiled Sergeant” in the Post), “Wake Me When It Thunders” (“Both Parties Concerned” in the Post), “Once a Week Won’t Kill You,” and “Bitsy.”

5. Hell

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

• • •

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears;

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

—William Blake, “The Tyger”

Tuesday, June 6, 1944, was the turning point of Salinger’s life. It is difficult to overstate the impact of D-Day and the eleven months of continuous combat that followed. The war, its horrors, agonies, and lessons, would brand itself upon every aspect of Salinger’s personality and reverberate through his writings. Salinger frequently mentioned his landing at Normandy, but he never spoke of the details, “as if,” his daughter later recalled, “I understood the implications, the unspoken.”1 This “unspoken” element has hindered researchers for decades. Salinger’s reluctance to recount events, combined with the secretive nature of his wartime intelligence duties—which could have drawn him to unknown locations at any time—has tempted biographers to treat his war years clinically, to cite impersonal statistics and place-names before hurrying to periods more substantially documented. Even without Salinger’s firsthand account, it is better to draw on the testimony of those around him who may have shared his experiences than to diminish them out of convenience.

By the end of May 1944, the Allies had amassed an invasion force incomparable in human history. They divided this force into three groups, each assigned a letter designating their projected landing point. Salinger’s 4th Infantry Division was appointed as Task Force U—for Utah Beach—and was made up of three infantry regiments, the 8th, 12th, and 22nd, joined on D-Day by the 359th and 70th Tank Battalions. These units were themselves divided into twelve convoys for the cross-Channel voyage and were to storm the beach in waves.

Salinger spent days confined on board his troopship, docked most likely in the port of Brixham in Devon, awaiting departure for Normandy. Each day brought fresh rumors of imminent departure, only to prove false as favorable launching conditions slipped away. With little to do but anticipate what was to come, the wait was excruciating. Finally, on the night of June 5, the men were given a steak dinner—a sign, perhaps, of building