With some of Ernest Hemingway's simplicity and clarity, Heinrich Böll writes several vignettes about a segment of the German army as it disintegrates in World War II under the Russian advance into Hungary. His stories at times separate into dry and toneless fragments, but often they come together magnetized in some fierce, ironic little catastrophe. A young, frightened corporal at a partially evacuated German hospital goes out into the garden with a Red Cross flag to meet the Russian tanks; he trips on a buried dud bomb, which explodes, kills him, and alarms the Russians into demolishing the defenseless hospital. An efficient engineering officer, by encouraging his men with friendship rather than with fear, gets a bridge rebuilt two days ahead of schedule, just in time to blow it up as the Russians arrive.

Such ironic catastrophes have been the substance of many war stories; they are...