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When War Becomes Personal: Soldiers' Accounts from the Civil War to Iraq
Donald Anderson, a former U.S. Air Force officer, has compiled a haunting anthology of personal essays and short memoirs that span more than 100 years of warfare. Alvord White Clements—himself a veteran of the Second World War—introduces his grandfather Isaac N. Clements’s Civil War memoir; the novelist Paul West writes of his father, a British veteran of World War I, as well as of his own boyhood recollections of the London Blitz. John Wolfe details the life-changing and life-threatening injuries he sustained in Vietnam and the hallucinations he experienced afterward. Second Gulf War veteran Jason Armagost traces his journey to Iraq through the history of literature and the books he brought with him to the war zone.
The thirteen essays in When War Becomes Personal tell the enduring truths of battle, stripping away much of the romance, myth, and fantasy.
Soldiers more than anyone know what they are capable of destroying; when they write about war, they are trying to preserve the world.
The thirteen essays in When War Becomes Personal tell the enduring truths of battle, stripping away much of the romance, myth, and fantasy.
Soldiers more than anyone know what they are capable of destroying; when they write about war, they are trying to preserve the world.
258 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 11, 2009
During the Jewish holiday of Succoth, mythical guests (the ghosts of the forefathers) are traditionally invited each night: Abraham on the first, Isaac on the second, Jacob on the third and so on. One year, for the second night, a member of our synagogue invited my father to participate in a ritual he observed each year. For the second night, he would invite the men of the synagogue to his hut, and tell them stories from the wars he had fought in (which was seemingly every Israeli war since before the state was founded). My father came back afterward and retold our family what stories he remembered.
As immigrants, this experience was an initiation into one of the fundamental aspects of Israeli culture. Israel has mandatory army service for men and woman when they turn eighteen (with exemptions for religious reasons), and one subconsciously knows that everyone has participated, or will participate, in a war at some point. This had never been never mentioned to me until then.
In the United States, even in a state of war, the surface remains phlegmatic, and it is almost comforting that on occasion the meniscus bursts. The ripple is a reaffirmation of humanity, the ability to connect to experiences other than our own. Reading the introduction to and the accounts in When War Becomes Personal, it is clear that an explosion of the surface was the aim; unfortunately, the target was missed.
Too rambunctious almost, the assortment lacks a narrative, and seems to be a collection of what the editor found at hand. Ranging from the Civil War to the current war in Iraq, it seems that depth was sacrificed for breadth. The accounts are mostly the product of his own corps of the Air Force, and his own generation of Baby Boomers. Even so, they are unlimited to a single army or a single war.
Since wars have traditionally been fought by men, it is no surprise that the majority of the accounts provided were the experiences of men; all of them in fact, excepting the first. The first account is an interview with Joan A. Furey, who served as a nurse in Vietnam. Although her story is moving, in a competition with much more prominent and eloquent narratives, the conversation is eclipsed. Lamenting how the contributions of women to the effort, even if not by fighting, are often marginalized, this piece itself is marginalized, and so war seems to remain the province of men for the time being.
Review by Elisheva Zakheim
As immigrants, this experience was an initiation into one of the fundamental aspects of Israeli culture. Israel has mandatory army service for men and woman when they turn eighteen (with exemptions for religious reasons), and one subconsciously knows that everyone has participated, or will participate, in a war at some point. This had never been never mentioned to me until then.
In the United States, even in a state of war, the surface remains phlegmatic, and it is almost comforting that on occasion the meniscus bursts. The ripple is a reaffirmation of humanity, the ability to connect to experiences other than our own. Reading the introduction to and the accounts in When War Becomes Personal, it is clear that an explosion of the surface was the aim; unfortunately, the target was missed.
Too rambunctious almost, the assortment lacks a narrative, and seems to be a collection of what the editor found at hand. Ranging from the Civil War to the current war in Iraq, it seems that depth was sacrificed for breadth. The accounts are mostly the product of his own corps of the Air Force, and his own generation of Baby Boomers. Even so, they are unlimited to a single army or a single war.
Since wars have traditionally been fought by men, it is no surprise that the majority of the accounts provided were the experiences of men; all of them in fact, excepting the first. The first account is an interview with Joan A. Furey, who served as a nurse in Vietnam. Although her story is moving, in a competition with much more prominent and eloquent narratives, the conversation is eclipsed. Lamenting how the contributions of women to the effort, even if not by fighting, are often marginalized, this piece itself is marginalized, and so war seems to remain the province of men for the time being.
Review by Elisheva Zakheim
September 18, 2009
Decent collection of military literature. Some good, some great, others... merely okay.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews