strange books about war

[sab]

My old shrink, in LA, told me that my current fascination with war meant something bigger and different, something about this world always in opposition to me, and me hiding out in foxholes, me with a gun.

so I've been reading a lot about the Asian theatre, this last year or so. Books on Korea, Vietnam, Pacific-stationed forces in World War II.

guess it only makes sense that Nanci found Vietnam too, somewhere in her ex-husband, and her work with anti-landmine groups, and a song about Dickey Chappelle, the only female photojournalist to die in Vietnam. makes sense that it should come now, convergence, clash, conflict.

I'm reading a lot of books. learning about war. I'm not sure why yet.

• American Daughter Gone to War, memoir about an army nurse in Vietnam. made me cry on an airplane, she goes crazy at the end. Why wouldn't she?
  
• Highways to a War is a novel, which is different. Australian journalist goes up to Cambodia in 1976, infiltrates the Khmer Rouge, tracing the journey of his buddy who disappeared a POW at the end of the war.
  
• A Rumor of War is apparently the classic Vietnam memoir, and they're marines, don't call them soldiers
  
• but read Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign first, because it's the same marines, years earlier, in Korea, the famous retrieval sweep, where no man has gone before.
  
• Strange Ground is the best. "An Oral History of Americans in Vietnam," it's called, covers 1945-1976. do you realize, guys, I was born in 1976?
  
• I won the battle of Pork Chop Hill in Korea, lost it, won it, lost it again.
  

and a thousand thousand more. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have their Band of Brothers on HBO soon (does anyone know when?), another tribute to WWII.

We all have our pet wars, now, safe at home when we can look back and we don't go crazy like Winnie Smith, we don't trip a land mine in Chu Lai like Dickie Chappelle. we're the entire 8th Army, this man's Army, this man's marines, don't call them soldiers.

I'm not sure where I get these strange dreams about war. I just know it started about a year ago, over a year ago, and I'm not done with it yet.

"I used to love reading Hemingway, you know. Because he wrote so well. But now I don't understand why anyone would willingly go to a war." - Hawkeye

"I'm a temporarily misassigned civilian." - BJ

and what's most interesting, to me, about America, is that a lot of things happened in July. If you believe we put a man on the moon...

Comments

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

I meant to ask - what do you know, about war? do you have books I should read? favorite battles, soldiers, corps, infantry division? I'm near the end of my latest, When All the World Was Young and looking for the next book to pick up...

hm

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

probably a fairly mundane answer....but all quiet on the western front just became my one and only war book last semester. fiction, sort of, based on the author's actual WWI experiences.

chances are, you've read it, but if not, do pick it up.

movie (the 1930's one) is excellent as well.

-M

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Are fiction and poetry okay? If so, then there's a bunch of WWI stuff I'd recommend:

Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy -- Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. (Though her contemporary novels about working class women in Northern England are even more depressing.)

Wilfrid Owen's poetry

Probably Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Robert Graves' Good-bye to All That (both memoirs), though I haven't read them yet and can't absolutely vouch for them.

There's always...

[(Anonymous)]

Stephen Ambrose's books on WWII history. He did a lot of talking to vets, getting them to talk to him about their experiences.

Nestra

[cofax7]

"They Were Soldiers Once and Young", which is the story of the first major battle of the Vietnam war, written by a participant. Said to be excellent, currently being made into a movie by Mel Gibson.

I was on the set last February -- they're filming it at Fort Hunter Liggett in Monterey County (a gorgeous area), and the commander's briefing room has been redone in circa 1963 material as the War Room. Simply remarkable. So I can say I've been in the same room as Mel Gibson, though he wasn't there at the time *grin*.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

Hah! Actually, it's "WE Were Soldiers Once and Young," and I bought it last week. fancy that. *g* Oh, I also recommend "The Women Who Wrote the War," which is WWII and spectacular. While I'm recommending things.

[cofax7]

I sit corrected. I'm surprised I remembered it at all, because it's a terribly awkward title. Everytime I asked about it, it was like, "the soldiers were once them? No, no, We Young Soldiers?" and so forth.

At any rate: Mel Gibson. Tom Skerritt? Sundry others. Lovely countryside, which was chosen because it looks just like the Vietnamese highlands where the battle took place.

ack

[cofax7]

I was wrong. Not Tom Skerrit:

Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear, Madeleine Stowe, Keri Russell, and (for the Buffy fans) Marc Blucas (aka the unlamented Riley Finn).

IMDB doesn't say when it will be done.