favorite wartime literature...
In no particular order:
Slaughterhouse 5 - Semi-autobiographical novel by Kurt Vonnegut, partly describing his time in Dresden as a POW during the huge fire-bombing raids that devastated that city late in WWII.
Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall + <series> - Spike Milligan's autobiography of his time training for and serving in Italy in WWII, spread across several short books. The surreal humour is a hilarious counterpoint to his raw to the bone description of his subsequent PTSD, and the indifference of the army to his mental state.
Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes' visceral description of futile missions, rank and racial tensions in a Marine unit in Vietnam, based on his own time there. The best novel about the Vietnam conflict I've read, hands down.
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller's satirical novel about a bomber crew that would rather do anything than fight, and the shenanigans of their superior officers who are really just as cowardly.
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card's sci-fi novel set in a future where children are prepared for war against an alien invasion before they're old enough to know what war is. Few sci-fi books get into the mind of the characters like this one does, IMHO.
The Diary of Anne Frank - The real day to day life of a Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazis with her family. A stark reminder that wars are not only fought on the battlefield.
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell's account of joining the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Despite his well known socialist leanings, he doesn't hold back from criticising the in-fighting and power-broking between the socialists, anarchists etc. that undermined the resistance to Franco's take over of the country.
Rising '44 - Norman Davies' history of the destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis in 1944, and the struggle of the local people to fight back against huge odds, while the Red Army stood by and allowed it to happen out of spite for the anti-communist Polish resistance.
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When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.
The Winds of War/War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk. Except for the several fictional characters, very historically accurate.
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AQ 34
Your Aspie score: 104 of 200
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DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
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There Are Four Lights!
"The Diary of Pelly D" and "Cherry Heaven" by L.J. Adlington
The "Tomorrow, when the war began" series by John Marsden
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BOLTZ 17/3 2012 - 12/11 2020
Beautiful, sweet, gentle, playful, loyal
simply the best and one of a kind
love you and miss you, dear boy
Stop the wolf kills! https://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeact ... 3091429765
1. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
2. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
3. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Those, plus the "Iliad" by Homer are probably the gold standard.
Two tales of war at sea are in the same league IMHO :"The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat , and Das Boot (forget the author). The former written right after the war about British sailors in small surface warships guarding merchant convoys from German U boats. The other came out in the 1980's is about the crews of the U boats themselves.
The Cruel Sea especially is quite good.
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