"The Children’s Echelon" is an unpublished work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger written in 1944 when the author was serving in combat during World War II.
(Bernice recalls the time at the carousel when "one darling little boy in a navy blue suit and beanie...nearly fell off the horse once and I nearly screamed.")
Salinger struggled to write “The Children’s Echelon.” while he was stationed in England with the 12th Infantry Regiment during preparations for the D-Day invasions.
[2] Alternating between a first-person and third-person narratives while writing the work, Salinger had grave doubts as to the worthiness of the piece, which he initially attempted to model on Ring Lardner’s “I Can’t Breathe.” Biographer Kenneth Slawenski notes that “the work ran to twenty-six pages and 6,000 words, by far the longest story he had ever written.”[3] When Salinger submitted the work for consideration to editor Whit Burnett at Story, Burnett delivered “the most scathing critique ever suffered by a Salinger work.”[4] Though Burnett acknowledged that the work had some merits, a Story interoffice memo registered: “In these times it would be a waste of paper to print the story.”[5] Salinger personally attributed the story’s failure to its length.
[6] Biographer Kenneth Slawenski remarks upon the story’s “overdrawn length and aimlessness…”[7] Salinger, an author who produced short fiction that typically did not run over 12 pages, “The Children’s Echelon” is exceeds two dozen.