The Soldiers' Tale : Bearing Witness to Modern War

Reflecting the fact that this has been the century of the literate soldier, and drawing upon servicemen's memoirs from the two World Wars and Vietnam, Hynes shows us how war looks to a soldier in the field and eloquently conveys how cruel, disgusting and terrifying war is for the individual. Focusing on the soldiers of the two world wars and Vietnam, and on the accounts written by victims of war - survivors of POW camps, the Nazi death camps, and the atom bombs - Samuel Hynes shows us how war looks to a soldier on the field at the Somme, or Khe Sanh, or the Salerno beachhead, to a pilot in a Spitfire over the Channel or a B-17 over Schweinfurt, or to a sailor in the Coral Sea. He draws from accounts recorded under fire and from memories that look back over decades, by both unknown authors whose battle memoirs are their only published work and literary memoirists like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, Elie Wiesel and Tim O'Brien. The author examines accounts written by both victims of war and by soldiers and "illuminates the crucial points of change in this century's war story--and that story's consequences for our culture."--Jacket Shows us how war looks to soldiers of both World Wars and Vietnam Title from e-book title screen (viewed on June 21, 2005).