War Literature Megathread: slightly above the eighth grade level

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > War Literature Megathread: slightly above the eighth grade level

«‹›3 »

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

War is a loving annoying thing to explain to civilians, so most of us either skip the subject entirely, bury our personalities in internet forums, or drink to excess. A few nerds throughout history have taken, in their quest to make sense of the senseless, to the literary arts: poetry, fiction/novels, and even the occasional memoir or research project. These are their�stories.

The following list is delineated by genre and war. If you�d like a contribution of your own added to the OP, please make a note in your post. Otherwise, discuss!

Fiction

The Things They Carried
Tim O�Brien
(Vietnam)
Taught in high schools, this novel is made up of several chapters of close-strung short stories involving the same characters and a fictional narrator that closely resembles the actual author, who was an infantryman in Vietnam. This �realistic� fiction is commonly deployed in war literature, for one or more practical reasons: protecting identities/actions, filling gaps in memories, �improving� the point of a story, etc. TTTC has given us several famous lines including, �There�s no such thing as a true war story.�
It�s a quick read, and highly recommended.

Dispatches
Michael Herr
(Vietnam)
Michael Herr was a journalist who covered Vietnam and traveled around the country, putting himself at the sort of risk that many journalists notoriously avoided during the war. He saw just about everything the regular line troops saw, and wrote it honestly. Dispatches is not journalistic nonfiction or literary journalism, it is fictionalized (this is not immediately apparent to some readers, including myself). But if you have spent any time in a war, it rings drat true. Michael Herr contributed to the writing of Apocalypse Now, and it shows in both the tone of the film and the tone of the book.
Fun fact: Next on my reading list is The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer and is a Vietnamese-American�s response to the single-sided narrative at work in Apocalypse Now.

Redeployment
Phil Klay
(GWOT/Iraq)
US Marine Corps public affairs officer pulled out all the stops for this National Book Award winning collection of short stories about shooting dogs, taking credit for your buddy�s kill, loving strippers, the Vietnam-whorehouse-burning-stack-of-quarters urban legend, and more. The stories are hit or miss, and he isn�t shy about redeploying the stories and legends (see above) we’ve all heard a million times over for a fresh, civilian audience. He�s at his best when he writes about a chaplain advising a company of Marines that have lost themselves in the killing, or about a Foreign Service Officer navigating the corrupt (on both sides) system of aid-giving in Iraq.

Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut
(WWII/Europe)
Kurt Vonnegut writes about farts, poops, time travel, musty basementy mushroom smells of a wet-dream cleanup, tits, and dry-heaving oneself to literal death in the scorched basement of post-bombing Dresden wreckage. A quick read, and a good read. Vonnegut doesn�t waste your time getting to the point too quickly (so that you might make sense of things before they�ve time to sink in) or spoon-feeding you the point. His moves and their aftereffects sneak up on you, ripping the foundation out from your smirk like it was a barn in Dresden. So it goes.

Catch-22
Joseph Heller
(WWII/Europe)
Another quintessential WWII novel. The Air Force pilot Yossarian realizes he�s going to die if he keeps flying bomber missions, but his only way out is to fake severe insanity so they�ll take him off the line. But it doesn�t work so easily as he�d like, hence the book title�s survival into present vernacular. Anyway, the moments of comedic idiocy familiar to anyone who�s had to sweep snow, paint rocks, shine something shiny, or whatever like that will be very clear, and enjoyable.

Nonfiction

Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
(Spanish Civil War, expat perspective)
George is at it again. This time he drags his wife with him to Spain so he can cover the war as a �journalist� and is given a soldier�s outfit and command of a squad as soon as they realize he�s not an idiot. He writes the war as a soldier on a foggy front line with a bunch of fascist-hating rebels, the losing minority within the losing side of a proxy war (communists vs. fascists) in the years preceding WWII. Orwell�s own side is forced out by Russian-supported communists, and he barely escape a purge that several of his friends do not. He also gets shot in the neck. Orwell�s plain-spoken prose does a great job here, and contemporary editions of this book shift his two long-winded chapters on the political nuances of the war into an appendix (a mistake, in my opinion).

Where Men Win Glory
Jon Krakauer
(GWOT/Biography)
Jon Krakauer squeezes his political agenda into a Pat Tillman biography. No doubt, Tillman is polarizing and generally a badass at whatever he did � including pissing off his team/squad/platoon. The truth that might resolve all of the conspiracy theories about �what really happened� will probably die with the Rangers who were there. So it goes. Tillman�s death was mishandled at multiple levels, and Krakauer definitely goes a step too far in making it the fault of the entire Bush administration AND the military-industrial-congressional complex, but whatever. That stuff is so transparent that anyone fooled by it deserves it. The book is still good, and Krakauer can still report like nobody else. Worth a look into why some crazy rear end dude would leave a multi-million NFL contract to fight dirt farmers for freedom and fratricide.

On War
By Carl von Clausewitz
(Europe/philosophy/whatever)
War is an extension of politics, or so people say after reading this. That�s not quite accurate, but close enough to fool most people into believing you�ve read Clausewitz. It�s sort of the Western answer to Sun Tzu�s Art of War, perhaps in conjunction with Machiavelli�s The Prince.
I�ll be honest, I last read this over 10 years ago. It uses historical examples to explain important military stuff like flanking good, logistics good, fog of war bad. Wikipedia does a better job than this.

Poetry
Brian Turner is an Iraq war veteran and poet with a strong body of work published to date. He wrote �Hurt Locker� which lent its name to the award-winning Kathryn Bigelow trainwreck about superpowered EODs that lose themselves in stateside grocery stores.

The coolest poets in my opinion were minted in the WWI trenches (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon), with notable mention going to Vietnam (Bruce Weigl, Yusef Komunyakaa). Yusef Komunyakaa wrote the most gut-wrenching poem I have ever read. It�s about the Vietnam Memorial in DC:

code:

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn�t,
dammit: No tears. 
I�m stone. I�m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I�m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap�s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman�s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird�s 
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet�s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I�m a window.
He�s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman�s trying to erase names:
No, she�s brushing a boy�s hair.

Brian Turner�s �Here, Bullet� is pretty metal:

HERE, BULLET

code:

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta�s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you�ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel�s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue�s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Stuff I have kinda read, heard is good, or have had recommended to me:

All Quiet On the Western Front
(WWI, German Perspective)

You Know When the Men Are Gone
Siobhan Fallon
(GWOT, Dependent perspective)
Rarely, a dependent writes about what it�s like, well, when the men are gone. This is the best known book out there about the contemporary state of it. On my bookshelf, still unread.

Zinky Boys
Svetlana Alexievich
(Soviety-Afghanistan war, Soviet perspective)
Translated into English. A series of interviews with Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan. Supposedly depressing and typically Russian and very well regarded.

On Killing
David Grossman
(WWII/Vietnam)
How we used psychological studies from WII to improve line soldiers� firing rates for the Vietnam war. Many soldiers were not actually firing their weapons (according to the studies), and psychological studies were applied to military training to improve soldiers� engagement on the battlefield. Hence, On Killing. It gets deeper than that, I�m told, but I haven�t read this one yet.

The Forever War
Joe Haldeman
(Vietnam)
All I know is this forum loves this book, and I need to stop loaning out my copy. It�s a sci-fi book about future soldiers losing their contemporary lives to time-space dilation in order to fight a war light-years away, and returning to a society that literally doesn�t understand them (because they�re all old and weird or something). The metaphor is fairly straightforward.

Afterwar
Nancy Sherman
(GWOT/Veterans)
Nancy Sherman is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown. She has worked with the Navy and DoD to figure out that gosh darned Moral Injury thing people keep talking about. I had the chance to interview her recently for a piece of my own, and she is smart and cool, but I am not entirely sold on the whole moral injury concept. I think it needs to mature a little further (which could be read as a comment as much on the mental health profession and society as a comment on veterans) before we can prescribe fixes. No doubt, investigating the concept of moral injury will probably get us further into understand that civil-military divide. The problem is we don�t all digest the philosophical realities of our lives in the same way, so it�s pretty damned hard if not impossible to diagnose (let alone solve) the issues at hand.

The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
(Civil War)
Classic civil war novel about regaining honor on the battlefield.

Sebastian Junger
(multiple GWOT books)
Pop culture slobbers all over Junger, and he makes some cool points. He also skips over a lot of the ugliness of war that other writers aren�t shy of. He doesn�t receive a lot of criticism for that, but he should. There is a strong cultural appetite for band-of-brothers platitudes about the honor of service, the unique and everlasting bonds forged overseas with battle buddies and how it just makes us so drat different (implicitly better) versus civilians. He also spins PTSD into an argument about tribalism and how disjointed modern society is, but the intellectual rigor is lacking in his work. Take it for what you will � it�s a voice lacking in previous wars� cultural discussions, so it could be worse.

Thank You For Your Service
David Finkel
(GWOT/society)
David Finkel tells post-war pornographic tales of hell at the VA, suicidal veterans, and people whose lives were awful before they joined staying awful or getting (surprise) even worse afterwards. People eat it up in the absence of more honest investigation into the causes of why veterans are having a poo poo time at readjustment. See: Sebastian Junger. This book wouldn�t be on the list if it weren�t well recognized and lauded, which forces it into the conversation.

Claimed/Upcoming

Waroduce:
Sympathy for the Devil
Matterhorn

Zeris fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Aug 17, 2016

# ? Aug 17, 2016 04:25

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 30, 2024 04:05

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

You should add Sympathy for the Devil as well as Matterhorne for Vietnam. I am drinking and not going to write a summary now cause they are classics and deserve good ones but if you really want one I will tomorrow at some point

E: Fallen Angels
Great childrens book on Vietnam. Or well teenage. I read it in sixth grade...idk.

The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama Paperback � March 12, 2013
by Michael R. Gordon
Good Iraq overview

Tiger Force
Some dirty poo poo Tiger Force did in Nam
TIGER FORCE is the searing story of a group of elite army soldiers in Vietnam who spun dangerously out of control and went on a horrific seven-month rampage. It is also the story of how these crimes, buried by the army for decades, at last came to light through the heroic persistence of a few individuals who could not forget.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Book by Thomas E. Ricks
How we hosed Iraq up

Cobra II
Great examination of the opening ground war of Iraq

Waroduce fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Aug 17, 2016

# ? Aug 17, 2016 04:34

elite_garbage_man: Apr 3, 2010; I THINK THAT "PRIMA DONNA" IS "PRE-MADONNA". I MAY BE ILLITERATE.

Stephen Pressfield has some cool rear end books that take place in Ancient Greece and Rome. I've read a couple of his fictional works, and they're sick as gently caress. He's done some non-fictional books about war as well.

Taken from Tides of War by the above mentioned author:

quote:

Chapter 10: The Joys of Soldiering

The rhythm of the mercenary's life is a narcotic, as the passion of the whoremonger or gambler, which careers the shield for hire,if he answers truly to that name, collaterally pursues. Its current efface all that went before and all that will come after. First, and beyond all, fatigue. The infantryman breathes exhaustion night and day. Even in a gale at sea the soldier, returned from retching over the rail, drops to the planks and corks off with ease, beard buried in the bilges.

Second stands boredom and third hunger. The soldier is foot�weary. He treks, ever upon the march, advancing toward some object which draws near only to be superseded by another,equally bereft of meaning. The earth endures beneath his tread, and he himself stands ready to drop upon it, if not in death, then exhaustion. The soldier never sees the landscape, only the burdened back of the man trudging in column before him. Fluids dominate the soldier's life. Water, which he must have or die. Sweat, which drips from his brow and drains in runnels down his rib cage. Wine, which he requires at march's end and battle's commencement. Vomit and piss. Semen. He never runs out of that.The penultimate, blood, and beyond that, tears.

The soldier lives on dreams and never tires of reciting them. He yearns for sweetheart and home, yet returns to the front with joy and never narrates his time apart.

Spear and sword, the manuals tell us, are the weapons of the infantryman. This is erroneous. Pick and shovel are his province, hoe and mattock, lever and crowbar; these and the mortarman's hod, the forester's ax, and, beyond all, the quarryman's basket, that ubiquitous artifact the rookie learns to cobble on�site of reeds or faggots. And get her to set aright, my fellow, tumpline upon the brow, bowl across the shoulders with no knot to gouge the flesh, for when she is laden with rubble and stone to the measure of half your weight, you must hump her. Up that ladder, see? To where the forms of timber await to receive the fill that will become the wall that will encircle the city, whose battlements we will scale and tear down and set up all over again.

The soldier is a farmer. He knows how to shape the earth. He is a carpenter; he erects ramparts and palisades. A miner, he digs trenches and tunnels; a mason, he chisels a road from a sheer face of stone. The soldier is a physician who performs surgery without anesthetic, a priest who inters the dead without psalm. He is a philosopher who plumbs the mysteries of existence, a linguist who pronounces �pussy� in a dozen tongues. He is an architect and a demolition man, a fire brigadier and an incendiary. He is a beast who dwells in the dirt, a worm, owning a mouth and an anus and aught but appetite in between.

The soldier looks upon horrors and affects to stand indifferent to them. He steps, oblivious, over corpses in the road and flops to wolf his gruel upon stones painted black with blood. He imbibes tales that would bleach the mane of Hades and tops them with his own, laughing, then turns about and donates his last obol to a displaced dame or urchin he will never see again except cursing him from a wall or rooftop, hurling down tiles and stones to cleave his skull.

elite_garbage_man fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Aug 17, 2016

# ? Aug 17, 2016 04:37

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

Achilles in Vietnam is an interesting look at PTSD in Vietnam vets btw written by a VA doctor

https://www.cwu.edu/~garrison/Achilles_in_Vietnam.pdf

quote:

Every instance of severe traumatic psychological injury is a standing challenge to the rightness of
the social order.
� Judith Lewis Herman, 1990 Harvard Trauma Conference
We begin in the moral world of the soldier � what his culture understands to be right � and
betrayal of that moral order by a commander. This is how Homer opens the Iliad. Agam�mnon,
Achilles' commander, wrongfully seizes the prize of honor voted to Achilles by the troops.
Achilles' experience of betrayal of "what's right," and his reactions to it, are identical to those of
American soldiers in Vietnam. I shall describe some of the many violations of what American
soldiers understood to be right by holders of responsibility and trust.

=Now, there was a LURP [Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol] team from the First Brigade
off of Highway One that looked over the South China Sea. There was a bay there. . . .
Now, they saw boats come in. And they suspected, now, uh � the word came down
[that] they were unloading weapons off them. Three boats.
At that time we moved. It was about ten o'clock at night. We moved down, across
Highway One along the beach line, and it took us [until] about three or four o'clock in the
morning to get on line while these people are unloading their boats. And we opened up
on them � aaah.
And the loving firepower was unreal, the firepower that we put into them boats. It was
just a constant, constant firepower. It seemed like no one ever ran out of ammo.
Daylight came [long pause], and we found out we killed a lot of fishermen and kids.
What got us thoroughly loving confused is, at that time you turn to the team and you
say to the team, "Don't worry about it. Everything's loving fine." Because that's what
you're getting from upstairs.
The loving colonel says, "Don't worry about it. We'll take care of it." Y'know, uh, "We
got body count!" "We have body count!" So it starts working on your head.
So you know in your heart it's wrong, but at the time, here's your superiors telling you
that it was okay. So, I mean, that's okay then, right? This is part of war. Y'know? GungHO!
Y'know? "AirBORNE! AirBORNE! Let's go!"
So we packed up and we moved out.
They wanted to give us a loving Unit Citation � them loving maggots. A lot of medals
came down from it. The lieutenants got medals, and I know the colonel got his loving
medal. And they would have award ceremonies, y'know, I'd be standing like a loving
jerk and they'd be handing out loving medals for killing civilians.=

This veteran received his Combat Infantry Badge for participating in this action. The CIB was one
of the most prized U.S. Army awards, supposed to be awarded for actual engagement in ground
combat. He subsequently earned his CIB a thousand times over in four combat tours.
Nonetheless, he still feels deeply dishonored by the circumstances of its official award for killing
unarmed civilians on an intelligence error. He declares that the day it happened, Christmas Eve,
should be stricken from the calendar.
We shall hear this man's voice and the voices of other combat veterans many times in these
pages. I shall argue throughout this book that healing from trauma depends upon
communalization of the trauma � being able safely to tell the story to someone who is listening
and who can be trusted to retell it truthfully to others in the community. So before analyzing,
before classifying, before thinking, before trying to do anything � we should listen. Categories
and classifications play a large role in the institutions of mental health care for veterans, in the
education of mental health professionals, and as tentative guides to perception. All too often,
however, our mode of listening deteriorates into intellectual sorting, with the professional
grabbing the veterans' words from the air and sticking them in mental bins. To some degree that
is institutionally and educationally necessary, but listening this way destroys trust. At its worst
our educational system produces counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists who
resemble museum-goers whose whole experience consists of mentally saying, "That's cubist! . . .
That's El Greco!" and who never see anything they've looked at. "Just listen!" say the veterans
when telling mental health professionals what they need to know to work with them, and I
believe that is their wish for the general public as well. Passages of narrative here contain the
particularity of individual men's experiences, bearing a different order of meaningfulness than
any categories they might be put into. In the words of one veteran, these stories are "sacred
stuff."
The mortal dependence of the modern soldier on the military organization for everything he
needs to survive is as great as that of a small child on his or her parents. One Vietnam combat
veteran said, "The U.S. Army [in Vietnam] was like a mother who sold out her kids to be raped
by [their] father to protect her own interests."
No single English word takes in the whole sweep of a culture's definition of right and wrong; we
use terms such as moral order, convention, normative expectations, ethics, and commonly
understood social values. The ancient Greek word that Homer used, th�mis, encompasses all
these meanings. A word of this scope is needed for the betrayals experienced by Vietnam
combat veterans. In this book I shall use the phrase "what's right" as an equivalent of th�mis.
The specific content of the Homeric warriors' th�mis was often quite different from that of
American soldiers in Vietnam, but what has not changed in three millennia are violent rage and
social withdrawal when deep assumptions of "what's right" are violated. The vulnerability of the
soldier's moral world has increased in three thousand years because of the vast number and
physical distance of people in a position to betray "what's right" in ways that threaten the
survival of soldiers in battle. Homeric soldiers actually saw their commander in chief, perhaps
daily.

# ? Aug 17, 2016 04:43

Zeris: Apr 15, 2003; Quality posting direct from my brain to your face holes.

Cool, anyone who "claims" a writeup (or wants to improve on mine) is welcome to do so, and I will add to the OP.

I humbly request we err on the side of writing effortposts of our construction, in the spirit of being literary nerds.

I forgot about graphic novels, but would be willing to throw in a White Donkey writeup if anyone is interested. I'm not sure what else is out there and fits the genre - Maus, maybe?

Zeris fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 17, 2016

# ? Aug 17, 2016 04:43

pantslesswithwolves: Oct 28, 2008; Ba-dam ba-DUMMMMMM

For Vietnam, "Matterhorn" by Karl Marlantes is a viciously despairing yet great read.

For nonfiction WWII, Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy" is great.

# ? Aug 17, 2016 05:02

The Rat: Aug 29, 2004; You will find no one to help you here. Beth DuClare has been dissected and placed in cryonic storage.

"Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman is probably the most significant piece of literature I've ever read. Grossman himself was a Soviet war reporter who lived through Stalingrad and was one of the first with the Red Army to see the death camps. The book itself follows members of a Russian family. It's primarily centered around the battle of Stalingrad, but also shows glimpses of life in Moscow and in the death camps themselves. The book is extremely critical of Stalin's totalitarian regime, and as such was "arrested" by the KGB. It only got published after it was smuggled out to the west.

It's a loving long book. I've read it twice, both times in Iraq when I had few distractions. But it is absolutely a worthwhile read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_and_Fate

Some excerpts of the writing (because the last time I read it, I marked some passages to copy down in a Word file):

quote:

�The life that had reigned hundreds of millions of years before, the terrible life of the primeval monsters, had broken out of its deep tombs; howling and roaring, stamping its huge feet, it was devouring everything round about. The fire rose thousands of feet, carrying with it clouds of vaporized oil that exploded into flame only high in the sky. The mass of flame was so vast that the surrounding whirlwind was unable to bring enough oxygen to the burning molecules of hydrocarbon; a black, swaying vault separated the starry sky of autumn from the burning earth. It was terrible to look up and see a black firmament streaming with oil.� p39

�Yes, of course. What saves people when their bovine melancholy, their mute fatalism yields to a piercing sense of horror � what saves people then is the opium of optimism.� p198

�Sofya now understood the difference between life and existence: her life had come to an end, but her existence could drag on indefinitely. And however wretched and miserable this existence was, the thought of violent death still filled her with horror.� p198

�Similarly, when people are to be slaughtered en masse, the local population is not immediately gripped by a bloodthirsty hatred of the old men, women and children who are to be destroyed. It is necessary to prepare the population by means of a special campaign. And in this case it is not enough to rely merely on the instinct for self-preservation; it is necessary to stir up feelings of real hatred and revulsion.� p213

�Another fact that allowed Fascism to gain power over men was their blindness. A man cannot believe that he is about to be destroyed. The optimism of people standing on the edge of the grave is astounding. The soil of hope � a hope that was senseless and sometimes dishonest and despicable � gave birth to a pathetic obedience that was often equally despicable.� p215

�Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone's right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.� p230

�Man never understands that the cities he has built are not an integral part of Nature. If he wants to defend his culture from wolves and snowstorms, if he wants to save it from being strangled by weeds, he must keep his broom, spade and rifle always at hand. If he goes to sleep, if he thinks about something else for a year or two, then everything's lost. The wolves come out of the forest, the thistles spread and everything is buried under dust and snow. Just think how many great capitals have succumbed to dust, snow and couchgrass.� p443

�The Germans were simply unable to believe that all their attacks were being borne by a handful of men. They thought the Soviet reserves were being brought up in order to reinforce the defense. The true strategists of the Soviet offensive were the soldiers with their backs to the Volga who fought off Paulus's divisions. The remorseless cunning of History, however, lay still more deeply hidden. Freedom engendered the Russian victory. Freedom was the apparent aim of the war. But the sly fingers of History changed this: freedom became simply a way of waging the war, a means to an end.� p488

�It obviously wasn't just a matter of experience, but of a man's nature. You can give a man all the experience in the world, but you can't change his nature. It was no good trying to make a sapper out of a fighter pilot.� -p497-498

�All his life as a soldier he had been afraid of having to account for lost ammunition and ordnance, lost fuel, lost time; afraid of having to explain why he had abandoned a summit or crossroads without permission. Not once had he known a superior officer show real anger because an operation had been wasteful in terms of human lives. He had even known officers send their men under fire simply to avoid the anger of their superiors, to be able to throw up their hands and say: 'What could I do? I lost half my men, but I was unable to reach the objective.'� p501

�He had also seen officers send their men under fire out of pure obstinacy and bravado � not even for the sake of covering themselves by formal compliance with an order. That was the mystery and tragedy of war: that one man should have the right to send another to his death. This right rested on the assumption that men were only exposed to fire for the sake of a common cause.� p501-502

�There were all sorts of people here. Before the war, the State had somehow kept them apart; they had never sat down at one table, clapped each other on the shoulder and said: 'No, you just listen to what I'm saying!' Here, though, beneath the remains of the burning power station, they had become brothers. And this simple brotherhood was so important that they would happily have given their lives for it.� p522

�People are able to overcome fear: children pluck up their courage and enter a dark room, soldiers go into battle, a young man can leap into an abyss with only a parachute to save him. But what about this other fear, this fear that millions of people find insuperable, this fear written up in crimson letters over the leaden sky of Moscow � this terrible fear of the State?
No, no! Fear alone cannot achieve all this. It was the revolutionary cause itself that freed people from morality in the name of morality, that justified today's pharisees, hypocrites and writers of denunciations in the name of the future, that explained why it was right to elbow the innocent into the ditch in the name of the happiness of the people. This was what enabled you to turn away from children whose parents had been sent to camps. This was why it was right for a woman � because she had failed to denounce an innocent husband � to be torn away from her children and sent for ten years to a concentration camp.� p528

�A man may be led by fate, but he can refuse to follow. He may be a mere tool in the hands of destructive powers, but he knows it is in his interest to assent to this. Fate and the individual may have different ends, but they share the same path.� p537

�You may live, but you won't love.� p599

�'That's woman's logic for you,' said the first gunner. 'There she is, sitting in the rear, and she hasn't got a clue what it's like at the front. All she knows about are your rations.'� p601

�His body was still like any other body; his thoughts and movements were still like anyone else's thoughts and movements; but his essence, his freedom and dignity had disappeared.� p623

�Katsenelenbogen was wrong to envy Dreling his strength. It was no longer a human strength. What warmed his empty, desolate heart was the chemical warmth of a blind, inhuman fanaticism.� p634

�There is one right even more important than the right to send men to their death without thinking: the right to think twice before you send men to their death.� p644

�But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated itself into his past; into his childhood memories. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.
�Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment � with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.� p672

�One thing was plain: he had lost his peace of mind forever. Whatever happened, he would never know peace. Whether he hid his love for the woman beside him or whether it became his destiny, he would not know peace. Whether he was with her, feeling guilty, or whether he was apart from her, aching for her, he would have no peace.� p707

�This incident, however, didn't open his heart. On the contrary, it was as though he'd quite exhausted his store of kindness.� p714

�The light of evening can reveal the essence of a moment. It can bring out its emotional and historical significance, transforming a mere impression into a powerful image. The evening sun can endow patches of soot and mud with thousands of voices; with aching hearts we sense past joys, the irrevocability of loss, the bitterness of mistakes and the eternal appeal of hope.� p730

�'Zhenevyeva, we often make fun of intellectuals for their doubts, their split personalities, their Hamlet-like indecisiveness. When I was young I despised that side of myself. Now, though, I've changed my mind: humanity owes many great books and great discoveries to people who were indecisive and full of doubts; they have achieved at least as much as the simpletons who never hesitate. And when it comes to the crunch, they too are prepared to go to the stake; they stand just as firm under fire as the people who are always strong-willed and resolute.� p748

�It was as though the State, in its fury, was able to take away not only his freedom and peace of mind, but even his intelligence, his talent and his belief in himself. It had transformed him into a grey, stupid, miserable bourgeois.� p757

�How very strange! The weaker and more helpless he became, the nearer he seemed to a state of complete entropy, the more of a nonentity he felt he had become in the eyes of the caretaker and the girls in the rations office, in the eyes of passport inspectors, personnel managers, laboratory assistants, scientists and friends, even in the eyes of his family, perhaps even in the eyes of Chepyzhin and Lyudmila � then the more certain he felt that Masha loved and treasured him. They didn't see one another, but he knew this for sure. After each new humiliation, after each new blow of fate, he would say, 'Can you see me, Masha?'� p761

�It was impossible to imagine that these corpses with their sunken mouths and eye-sockets had, until not long ago, been living beings with names and homes; that they had smoked cigarettes, longed for a mug of beer and said: 'My darling, my beautiful, give me a kiss � and don't forget me!'� p804

�Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed � while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.� p840

�The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip into it; as for the red, bloody meat, the steaming innards � they were being thrown onto the scrapheap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution � and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who then slipped into it spoke the language of the Revolution and mimicked its gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different.� p841

�Yes, I believe in God. I'm an ignorant, credulous old man. Every age creates the deity in its own image. The security organs are wise and powerful; they are what holds sway over twentieth-century man. Once this power was held by earthquakes, forest-fires, thunder and lightning � and they too were worshiped. And if I've been put inside � well so have you. It was time to replace you too. Only the future will show which of us is right.� p846

# ? Aug 17, 2016 05:38

iyaayas01: Feb 19, 2010; Perry'd

Brian Turner's stuff is real good.

Re: On War, if you want to sound smart in your IR class (or with your fellow officers if you're one of those), just read Book I. It's the one everyone quotes from that has "continuation of politics by other means" and "fog, friction, and chance." I will say that it is worth reading in its entirety.....but that it has diminishing returns as you go on. Books I-III are probably required reading if you plan on seriously reading it (as opposed to just getting a few pull quotes to impress that 20 year old in your International Relations 201 class), the remaining Books are more of that "using historical examples to make a point," which requires a fair bit of transposition since he's using direct tactical situations from the early 1800s to make his point. Not the most direct analogy to modern warfare. If you do read it, get the Howard/Paret translation (or if you can find it, the Matthijs Jolles translation), the Rapoport one is hopelessly flawed. Seriously, it's terrible and completely misses the point (it was composed in the '60s, and Rapoport was trying to make a point about how bad the "neo-Clausewitzian" Kissinger was...I don't even know what the gently caress)

Also On Killing is underpinned basically by bullshit, as the studies by SLA Marshall showing US soldiers in WWII weren't firing their weapons were........not historically accurate (by that I mean they were more or less made up). Grossman's response when this was pointed out was basically "well none of his critics are published anymore, he's still revered in the Army, and I'm on the Commandant's Reading List and getting all sorts of speaking engagements, so suck it." Also Grossman has a hard on for saying that violence in our culture (specifically video games, more specifically first person shooters) is directly influencing kids to kill, to the point where he's in the pearl clutching camp of arguing that Doom was directly responsible for Columbine. I think it would be an understatement to call that line of thought problematic. On Killing is still worth reading, but go into it with eyes open and I wouldn't recommend his other stuff.

Couple others, these are non-fiction

The Village
Bing West
(Vietnam)
This is arguably the definitive account of the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam. The tl;dr is this was what we tried (briefly and incompletely) in Vietnam along the lines of COPs and local partnering before we said gently caress it and went full blown search and destroy. Fifteen Marines, a bunch of ill-equipped but (mostly) determined villagers, and the fight to keep their hamlet free from the VC. The book has been on the Commandant's Reading List for a long time, largely for its supposed counter-insurgency lessons. You'll notice that the operational approach pursued (local partnering + COP like strongholds) hasn't really worked out well in our current wars either because who knew, good tactics and operational art without a valid overarching grand strategy is pissing in the wind. Anyway, I'm not recommending it based on the COIN piece, I'm recommending it because I don't think there's been a book that has better captured the personal and often agonizing nature of that kind of way of fighting a war. The Marines suffer a 50% casualty rate...I won't spoil the end but I imagine you can guess how it turns out.

When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra
Ed Rasimus
(Vietnam, Air War over North Vietnam)
Ed Rasimus was a fighter pilot who did two tours in Vietnam, both flying over the North during heavy US airstrikes. His first one, When Thunder Rolled, is about him flying Thuds (big-rear end F-105s) during Rolling Thunder. More than any other book I've read, this book encapsulates the pointlessness of Vietnam at a higher level. Obviously all the books about infantry slogging through the jungle have a strong component of that, but for most of them it's a bigger leap between that and the overall strategic failure in the war. Rasimus makes that link much clearer....he has the means, himself, to destroy the SAM sites, AAA emplacements, and airfields that are responsible for shooting down his friends and killing them or consigning them to years of captivity, but he can't do anything about it in a lot of instances because it's against "the rules." And he and his buddies continue to fly North every day so they can blow up a "truck park" (jungle canopy likely without anything underneath it.) There's other books on the same subject that also make this point (Thud Ridge comes to mind), but none of them write as well as Rasimus. It's probably the single best account of flying a Thud in combat (really one of the best accounts of air combat, period), and Rasimus also gets into the dichotomy of the air war in Vietnam (or really most air wars in history)...launching out of a base in Thailand, flying north, risking his life in rather high-intensity aerial combat for 30 minutes, and then returning to a base where there's booze in the air-conditioned o-club and there's plenty of whorehouses just outside the gate.

Palace Cobra is his book about his second tour, flying F-4s during Linebacker. Lots of the same stuff as When Thunder Rolled, with the added twist of being in an aerial campaign where the gloves are finally (mostly) off....but everyone knows the war is lost anyway, which is almost more depressing than the first one. However, they know they're bombing in part to get the POWs home. Those two together lend a certain heroic pathos to the whole thing. If you like When Thunder Rolled, pick up Palace Cobra, it's a short read and just as good.

Also I mentioned Thud Ridge...

Thud Ridge
Jack Broughton
(Vietnam, Air War over North Vietnam)
Like I said, it's not written quite as well as either of Ed's books. However, there's a reason for that...the author was extremely pissed off while writing it. He was a Thud Vice Wing Commander during Rolling Thunder, couple of his pilots strafed a AAA emplacement that was firing on them, arguably in violation of the published ROE due to its proximity to a Soviet cargo ship. In order to prevent his pilots from being court-martialed for the ROE violation, he destroyed the gun camera footage. He admitted to the "crime" to avoid his guys going down for it, so he was convicted of destruction of government property, which was subsequently over-turned. However, by then he'd been relieved and banished to a do-nothing job in the Pentagon. He used that time to write Thud Ridge, which was subsequently published when he retired in 1968. So like I said, he was extremely pissed off while writing it, and it shows...which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Here's a quick write-up for Matterhorn (fiction)

Matterhorn
Karl Marlantes
(Vietnam)
If I had to sum up Matterhorn, I'd say it's the best book about Vietnam. Period. Fiction or non-fiction. Sebastian Junger called it "one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam�or any war." Marine Company builds a firebase, defends it, abandons it, and then has to retake it. But the strict story isn't the point....all the characters will probably be familiar to anyone in here, probably more than you would originally think. The writing is evocative in the best/worst ways...this was a 30 year labor of love for Marlantes, and it shows through on every page. He was a Yale graduate, Rhodes Scholar, Marine officer, and was awarded the Navy Cross, Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and a whole bunch of other poo poo. The book reflects that pedigree.

And I'd just like to say that the US Air Force in TYOOL 2016 is arguably closer to making Catch-22 a reality than it has been at any time in its history (including the USAAC/USAAF)

e: haven't read it yet, but might want to add Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk for consideration. Basically a satirical take-down of the support are troops phenomenon

iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Aug 17, 2016

# ? Aug 17, 2016 06:23

EBB: Feb 15, 2005

I've been reading Shake Hands With the Devil on your guys' suggestion. I've gotten through the first 6 parts so chronologically I'm at New Year's Day 1994. I'm understanding now how Dallaire was screwed operationally before any of it kicked off- didn't have enough of anything to work with really. I'm not even at the gory parts of the book yet and I'm cringing at the disparity in quality of life between troops from rich/poor nations and the lack of basic logistics like rations.

# ? Aug 19, 2016 01:31

Barrakketh: Apr 19, 2011; Victory and defeat are the same. I urge you to act but not to reflect on the fruit of the act. Seek detachment. Fight without desire.

Don't withdraw into solitude. You must act. Yet action mustn't dominate you. In the heart of action you must remain free from all attachment.

The High White Forest by Ralph Allen is a pretty good book if you have the chance to pick it up,

Allen was a war correspondent for the Canadian Army during WW2, and some 20 years after it all went down he published a fiction novel about the Battle of the Bulge from 3 POVs

The first is Franz Kroener, a German-American from New York who joins the American Bund and enlists in the German Army before hostilities broke out between the USA and Germany. He goes on to serve in the 12th SS Hitler Jugend during the Normandy Campaign. Thanks to his American background, he is hand-picked along with a few others to disguise themselves as Americans and disrupt as much as possible the enemy before and during the German attack as part of Operation Greif.

The second is David Kyle, an American conscript from New York as well. His family is horrified that he won't file for conscientious objector status . Part of the 106th Division, he and his friends are sucked in the general American retreat during the opening phases of the battle, getting gang-pressed from one retreating unit to the next culminating in a desperate last stand at St-Vith of a mixed force of cooks, clerks, drivers, combat engineers and a few infantrymen like himself.

The third, and definitely my favourite, Henry Whelan, a Canadian veteran of the Dieppe raid, whose actions earned him a few medals and a shower of shrapnel during the raid. His account is the most realistic and I think the most personal of the trio. Wounded and considered a bit of a hero, he gets transferred to the Forestry Corps for the duration of the war. Pulling some strings, he arranges to have his younger brother get transferred to the Forestry Corps with him rather than get drafted into the infantry like the rest of Canada's "Zombies". His company of foresters inadvertently find themselves at the front when word never reaches them of the German offensive barrelling straight at them.

The book has some memorable moments like Whelan sitting on the cliffs of Dieppe after taking out a 20mm cannon, watching the raid unfold catastrophically, Kyle arguing from inside his foxhole with a irate Panther crew commander who just wants to get on with the show, but can't leave this GI behind him to shove a home-made bomb up his exhaust, or Kroener's account of escaping the Falaise Pocket barefoot, burnt, and starving with the remnants his child-soldier division.

Barrakketh fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Aug 7, 2017

# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:27

piL: Sep 20, 2007; (__|\\\\); Taco Defender

Recommending Starship Troopers
Robert Heinlein manages to both invent Robotech and extol the virtues of hybrid facist-democracy in the same book published in 1959. Read about smart bombs and flamethrowers from supersonic powerarmor just pages away from cognizant arguments for selective franchise and corporal punishment. This book is about the ethical responsibilities of the soldier, the citizen, the student and the mentor. It can pace slowly at times and is littered with multiple page-spanning author's diatribes, but ultimately was a forward-thinking book that is both smart and entertaining to read.

Heinlein was an American treasure whose works argue a number of (likely competing) political view points bouncing between conservative and liberal viewpoints. He served as a naval officer in the 30s until he was discharged for tuberculosis after five years. Considered one of the 'big three' science fiction authors alongside Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, his works promote more than anything, the values and importance free-thinking of individualism.

# ? Aug 19, 2016 04:17

BlueDiablo: Aug 15, 2001; Slippery when sexy!

Granted, I'm a civvie puke, but I have my students read (sections of) these two books for my section on WW1:

Under Fire by Henri Barbusse
If you want to get an idea of the psychologically crushing weight of fighting an industrialized war, look no further than Under Fire. It is THE WW1 anti-war novel, published during the war after Barbusse was discharged for TB in 1915/1916. Great, great stuff.

Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger
Basically this is the antidote to Under Fire, and the anti-All Quiet on the Western Front. Compared to Junger, who served on the front lines from 1914-1918 (and arguably one of the first storm troopers), Remarque is a cry-baby bitch who spent the war digging trenches and maybe two weeks on the front line in total. Described as psychopathically brave, Junger's memoirs of the war are a unique perspective to say the least. Spoiler alert: despite all of Junger's statements on war being a means of purging weakness from the body, surprisingly he's not much of a nazi supporter during WW2, to the point that Hitler stashes him away in Paris as a cultural attache since he can't kill him outright.

BlueDiablo fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Sep 6, 2016

# ? Aug 19, 2016 04:23

Handsome Ralph: Sep 3, 2004; Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!

iyaayas01 posted:

Also On Killing is underpinned basically by bullshit, as the studies by SLA Marshall showing US soldiers in WWII weren't firing their weapons were........not historically accurate (by that I mean they were more or less made up). Grossman's response when this was pointed out was basically "well none of his critics are published anymore, he's still revered in the Army, and I'm on the Commandant's Reading List and getting all sorts of speaking engagements, so suck it." Also Grossman has a hard on for saying that violence in our culture (specifically video games, more specifically first person shooters) is directly influencing kids to kill, to the point where he's in the pearl clutching camp of arguing that Doom was directly responsible for Columbine. I think it would be an understatement to call that line of thought problematic. On Killing is still worth reading, but go into it with eyes open and I wouldn't recommend his other stuff.

Echoing this. SLA Marshall's data was always suspect, and someone here (can't remember who) put it best that his studies were less about showing men weren't killing and more about getting the archaic leadership of the U.S. Military to revise and revamp it's combat training methods instead of just doing a shitload of PT and shooting at square targets as it had been done for the previous 50+ years.

Also bears repeating that Grossman's takes on psychological stuff is mostly good in On Killing, sociological stuff, not so much. Blaming rap music, violent movies and video games for inner city violence is pretty :allears:

Anyways, some recommendations of my own

Crucible of War
A fantastic book on the Seven Years War(AKA The French and Indian War) and the effects that helped to bring on the American Revolution. The book is extremely well written (as well as concise) and doesn't feel like a chore at all to read through. Also the prologue opens up with a pretty :black101:

story about one of Washington's first forays into the Ohio River Valley as a militia officer.

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
Probably the best book written about the Battle of Midway and it does a pretty awesome job destroying a ton of myths surrounding the battle, including the "lost squadron" allowing the SBD's to bomb the Japanese without coming into intense AA fire and Japan being on the verge of launching a fatal strike against the American carriers.

Barrakketh posted:

The High White Forest by Ralph Allen is a pretty good book if you have the chance to pick it up

This sounds good, gonna grab it at the library tonight or tomorrow. Thanks!

# ? Aug 19, 2016 17:28

Seizure Meat: Jul 23, 2008; by Smythe

I would do a write up for the 13th Valley but I haven't reread it in a few years.

Excellent book about the life of a grunt in Vietnam

# ? Aug 19, 2016 21:13

Motorola 68000: Apr 25, 2014; "Don't be nice. Be good."

I grew up with my grandparents. My mom was sick and my dad was addicted to speed at the time. My grandfather was in Vietnam and I grew up hearing things here and there. Not much. He told me more about my great uncle's experiences who was airborne and got his leg real hosed up by machine gun fire. I never really got into reading war literature until my first year at University, when I picked up the The Things They Carried. Since then I've read war literature pretty much exclusive to the Vietnam war. I'm not sure if its been mentioned but I recommend Fields of Fire by James Webb. I can't really summerise it too well since most of the stuff I've read kinda merges together. Too be honest its all kind of the same. Another book I recommend too and I remember more vividly is Going After Cacciato by Tim Obrien. This one isn't everyone's cup of tea due to it being very surrealistic. You have to take it with a grain of salt. Basically, a platoon chases after one of their men after he goes AWOL and heads for Paris. Very interesting and a good read in my opinion.

# ? Aug 20, 2016 12:48

Stultus Maximus: Dec 21, 2009; USPOL May

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

The Navy's Chosin Reservoir moment. During the invasion of the Philippines, the Japanese navy successfully deceived Admiral Halsey into taking nearly the entire U.S. fleet on a wild goose chase. This left 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, and 3 destroyer escorts to guard MacArthur's landing force against the Japanese fleet consisting of 4 battleships (including the biggest, most powerful battleship ever created), 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers.
The Americans won.

# ? Aug 20, 2016 16:10

UP THE BUM NO BABY: Sep 1, 2011; by Hand Knit

Stultus Maximus posted:

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

The Navy's Chosin Reservoir moment. During the invasion of the Philippines, the Japanese navy successfully deceived Admiral Halsey into taking nearly the entire U.S. fleet on a wild goose chase. This left 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, and 3 destroyer escorts to guard MacArthur's landing force against the Japanese fleet consisting of 4 battleships (including the biggest, most powerful battleship ever created), 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers.
The Americans won.

Cannot recommend this book enough

# ? Aug 20, 2016 17:25

Steezo: Jun 16, 2003; Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

Just here to recommend Phillip Caputo's A Rumor of War. Vietnam as seen by a Marine LT who was there from the start of guarding an airbase to patrolling the jungle dealing, to being the Officer in Charge of the Dead and back to patrolling. If you were there for the invasion or early parts of Iraq it's eerily Deja Vu.

# ? Aug 20, 2016 22:41

Suicide Watch: Sep 8, 2009

EVA BRAUN BLOWJOBS posted:

I've been reading Shake Hands With the Devil on your guys' suggestion. I've gotten through the first 6 parts so chronologically I'm at New Year's Day 1994. I'm understanding now how Dallaire was screwed operationally before any of it kicked off- didn't have enough of anything to work with really. I'm not even at the gory parts of the book yet and I'm cringing at the disparity in quality of life between troops from rich/poor nations and the lack of basic logistics like rations.

Wow, this was an exhausting read

# ? Aug 21, 2016 00:14

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Steezo posted:

Just here to recommend Phillip Caputo's A Rumor of War. Vietnam as seen by a Marine LT who was there from the start of guarding an airbase to patrolling the jungle dealing, to being the Officer in Charge of the Dead and back to patrolling. If you were there for the invasion or early parts of Iraq it's eerily Deja Vu.

This was one of my favorites as a teenager reading as much Vietnam memoir poo poo as possible. One of the few that I kept.

# ? Aug 21, 2016 00:23

Steezo: Jun 16, 2003; Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

Godholio posted:

This was one of my favorites as a teenager reading as much Vietnam memoir poo poo as possible. One of the few that I kept.

I especially like the part where the BC cares more about a football betting pool than actually doing his goddamn job, that's when it hit me that he wasn't embellishing poo poo.

# ? Aug 21, 2016 09:23

Burt: Sep 23, 2007; Poke.

The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk.

Fisk is probably hated by more than a few goons in this forum and it's not as accurate as it could be but if you want a very long read about just why the Middle East is as hosed up as it is I can't recommend it enough.

Don't read it if you are feeling sad though.

# ? Aug 21, 2016 15:19

Burning Beard: Nov 21, 2008; Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

Afghansty by Rodric Braithwaite

Pretty much the definitive history of the Soviet invasion. Very depressing in the most Russian of ways.

Tommy by Richard Holmes

Want to know more about the Western Front? About how lovely it was? Bust some WWI myths? This is the book for you. Holmes breaks down the experience into sections covering weapons, the soldier and others. Highly recommenced (and cheap).

The Last Fighting Tommy: Harry Patch and Richard Van Emden

Great, great, great read. Harry was pretty awesome and near the end of his life grew to accept his role as the representative of Britain's WWI Tommy.

Zulu Rising by Ian Knight.

The definitive history of the Zulu War. Watch Zulu then read this. Knight has been writing about the war for decades and is considered the authority on it.

War Nerd by Gary Brecher

A collection of Brecher's articles from The Exile, a underground paper by American expats in Moscow. He's funny, vulgar and discusses things that are obscure but interesting. He makes war fun again. And he fits the GiP mold.

Harvest of Barren Regrets by Charles Mills

The life of Frederick Benteen, the guy who save the remains of the 7th Cav at Little Big Horn. He hated Custer, drank lots, and hated the Army while serving in it. Basically GiP incarnate. I love Benteen because he is a larger than life character who didn't give a flying gently caress, which got him in trouble in later years.

# ? Sep 5, 2016 01:09

MikeCrotch: Nov 5, 2011; I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

The Beauty and the Sorrow is a collection of diary entries from people from all countries throughout WWI, both military personnel and civilians. What is great about it is that it tells you up front a certain number of the people die, survive, are wounded etc. but doesn't say who up front. The entries are also done chronologically with all the people mixed together, so sometimes people disappear for months on end and you aren't sure if they are dead or just stopped writing. Great book that really brings the reality of World War One home.

# ? Sep 5, 2016 15:01

Handsome Ralph: Sep 3, 2004; Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!

Burning Beard posted:

Tommy by Richard Holmes

Want to know more about the Western Front? About how lovely it was? Bust some WWI myths? This is the book for you. Holmes breaks down the experience into sections covering weapons, the soldier and others. Highly recommenced (and cheap).

Echoing this. He also wrote a similar book called Redcoat about the life of a British infantryman from the American Revolution through the Napoleonic Wars. I've yet to read it but I hear it's really good.

# ? Sep 7, 2016 16:05

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

elite_garbage_man posted:

Stephen Pressfield has some cool rear end books that take place in Ancient Greece and Rome. I've read a couple of his fictional works, and they're sick as gently caress. He's done some non-fictional books about war as well.

Gates of Fire is an excellent read. Thermopylae stuff had been done to death a few years ago when the 300 movie came out, but this is a legit good read. It takes the perspective of both a dying Greek survivor and the Persian scribe who records his tale.

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels covers the day-by-day Battle of Gettysburg from the perspective of the two sides' commanders. It includes some good maps of troop movements to help visualize how the battle unfolds.

I've already plugged George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman a few times because it's funny as hell, but it's also a historically accurate representation of the 19th century British Army and East India Company in and around the First Anglo-Afghan War.

e: These are all historical fiction.

Naked Bear fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Sep 7, 2016

# ? Sep 7, 2016 17:21

McNally: Sep 13, 2007; Ask me about Proposition 305

Do you like muskets?

Naked Bear posted:

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels covers the day-by-day Battle of Gettysburg from the perspective of the two sides' commanders. It includes some good maps of troop movements to help visualize how the battle unfolds.

It's important to bear in mind that The Killer Angels is a novel.

I was doing some research and stumbled into an article written an Army MAJCOM's historical office that apparently used it as a source and ended up citing a fictional character as a real person.

# ? Sep 7, 2016 21:11

Naked Bear: Apr 15, 2007; Boners was recorded before a studio audience that was alive!

Good point, I should have noted that.

# ? Sep 7, 2016 21:32

Sad King Billy: Jan 27, 2006; Thats three of ours innit...to one of yours. You know mate I really think we ought to even up the average!

McNally posted:

It's important to bear in mind that The Killer Angels is a novel.

I was doing some research and stumbled into an article written an Army MAJCOM's historical office that apparently used it as a source and ended up citing a fictional character as a real person.

I came across an old Italian campaign book which cited Sven Hassel as a authentic source. As soon as I saw that, I threw the book into a dusty cupboard.

# ? Sep 7, 2016 23:31

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

Just ordered like ten books from this list. Thanks thread

# ? Sep 8, 2016 05:14

Diabeesting: Apr 29, 2006; turn right to escape

I picked up Shake Hands With the Devil on the recommendation of this thread and I've been reading it all morning thanks to a thunderstorm knocking out my internet.

This is the most horrifying thing I have ever read, it has made me feel physically ill a couple of times. To make matters worse, I'm ashamed to admit that I thought the Rwandan genocide happened in the 70s or 80s, we literally never read a word about this in any textbook in school, or even heard a single blurb about it as it was happening from any teacher. The most I remember from childhood was my mother talking about taking care of a refugee at the free clinic who had machete cuts all up and down get legs that were totally healed over but horribly disfiguring... I just never knew a time frame for it. A great success of the education system in the 90s.

Vietnam was covered by one paragraph in US history as well.
Speaking of, I just bought my dad a copy of The Village. How is No True Glory, Bing's other book on Fallujah? That's been sitting in my pile for a few years now waiting to be read.

# ? Sep 11, 2016 20:53

Burning Beard: Nov 21, 2008; Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

More fodder

Browned off and Bloody Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945

loving excellent book. A social history of the British Army in WWII. Every page earns my respect for those guys even more. One small story is a mutiny when guys come back from training and are given two small grey potatoes, a small rectangle of meat and weak-rear end tea. They literally mutiny over the poo poo food and it's wonderful.

Shattered Sword

I think this was mentioned upthread but it's worth the read. Humanizes the Japanese and details how they lost. The definitive book on Midway.

In Custer's Shadow

Ron Nichol's book on Marc Reno, the scapegoat for the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Nichols paints Reno in a new light and makes him seem exactly as he was: a pragmatic officer given an impossible situation. Reno also drank an estimated 11 gallons of whiskey in 20 days in the aftermath of the battle. A GiP hero.

The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War

If you really like the South, you'll hate this book. Basically the author shits on Southern tactics and generalship while praising how certain Northern Generals learned and adapted. The hero of the book, for me, is George Thomas who essentially invented modern warfare with the Battles of Franklin and Nashville.

Ivan's War

A women delves into Russian veteran meetings and is met with silence and hostility until one vet opens up and makes sure she gets her story and then emerges with a great book on the average Soviet soldier in WWII. The absolute destruction of entire divisions of conscripts as the German invasion progresses is bad enough but stay for how Stalin downplayed the average soldier's involvement because, after all, Papa Stalin won the war, not Ivan.

# ? Sep 12, 2016 00:19

Handsome Ralph: Sep 3, 2004; Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!

Burning Beard posted:

More fodder

Browned off and Bloody Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945

loving excellent book. A social history of the British Army in WWII. Every page earns my respect for those guys even more. One small story is a mutiny when guys come back from training and are given two small grey potatoes, a small rectangle of meat and weak-rear end tea. They literally mutiny over the poo poo food and it's wonderful.

Totally picking this up. Since Richard Holmes died before he could do another book like Tommy but for WWII and beyond, this seems exactly up that same alley. Thanks!

Burning Beard posted:

Ivan's War

This book is really loving good too.

# ? Sep 12, 2016 15:47

Smiling Jack: Dec 2, 2001; I sucked a dick for bus fare and then I walked home.

Dispatches and Matterhorn are loving amazing.

Also it is not war literature and its 25 years old but Homicide and then The Corner by David Simon are some of the greatest works of non fiction ever. Period.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 04:35

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

I'm phone posting, so I'll keep it brief:

The book of Pentagon Wars is pretty incredible. It covers the politics of procurement of the Sergeant York, Bradley, and F-111. The falsified testing, changing requirements to suit the preferred bid, cramming in untested technology, it's really incredible.

It also talks about the Fighter Mafia and the teams behind the F-16 and F-15 and how they fought tooth and nail to keep their designs intact. The interaction between generals who were with bombers and WW2 and guys who were the early jet fighter pilots was pretty interesting too.

I have shelves and shelves of this stuff, so I'll see what I can get around to. Anything by David M. Glantz is pretty good. One of the first western historians to read the Russian archives and write histories of the Ostfront not based on Wehrmacht memoirs. Stumbling Colossus is fantastic and explains the state of the Red Army on the eve of Barbarossa. The fact that for all the Tank Fright of KV's and T-34's in German accounts, many Russian crews had spent at most a few hours with the new machines after training on tankettes and that there was essentially no 76mm or 152mm ammunition outside of Moscow.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 09:58

Burning Beard: Nov 21, 2008; Choking on bits of fallen bread crumbs
Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone
It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone
Bugger dumb the last of academe

Frosted Flake posted:

I have shelves and shelves of this stuff, so I'll see what I can get around to. Anything by David M. Glantz is pretty good. One of the first western historians to read the Russian archives and write histories of the Ostfront not based on Wehrmacht memoirs. Stumbling Colossus is fantastic and explains the state of the Red Army on the eve of Barbarossa. The fact that for all the Tank Fright of KV's and T-34's in German accounts, many Russian crews had spent at most a few hours with the new machines after training on tankettes and that there was essentially no 76mm or 152mm ammunition outside of Moscow.

I really like Glantz. He can be a bit dry at times. Here, have a free PDF of his work on the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/LP7_AugustStormTheSoviet1945StrategicOffensiveInManchuria.pdf

Great read. The Japanese fought like hell but were absolutely no match for the Soviet Army transported from Europe.

The Combat Studies Institute has a number of decent reads for free.

Also, more content:

Hew Strachen's The First World War

A great intro to the war. Strachen is also still writing a mammoth three volume history of the war. The first volume is thicker than my head but it's still really accessible.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 15:25

Third World Reagan: May 19, 2008; Imagine four 'mechs waiting in a queue. Time works the same way.

A book I read years ago and still seems ok.

https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mom-Joseph-T-Ward/dp/0804108536
Dear Mom: A Snipers Vietnam by Joseph T. Ward

In between stories of him doing neat poo poo are letters he sent home to mom around the same time, full of lies of what he was doing.

From a review

quote:

Two months in-country, Ward was present when a company of about 100 Americans, swarmed into a little village and killed every person-even the animals-sixteen women and children, chickens and water buffalo. What did Ward write to Mom about this incident? "We've had a lot of casualties from booby traps and made contact with the enemy five times."

Third World Reagan fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Sep 13, 2016

# ? Sep 13, 2016 15:48

Handsome Ralph: Sep 3, 2004; Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!

Smiling Jack posted:

Dispatches and Matterhorn are loving amazing.

Also it is not war literature and its 25 years old but Homicide and then The Corner by David Simon are some of the greatest works of non fiction ever. Period.

David Simon could probably write the phone book, and I'd still probably read it cover to cover. Homicide is really really loving good.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 15:48

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Burning Beard posted:

I really like Glantz. He can be a bit dry at times. Here, have a free PDF of his work on the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/LP7_AugustStormTheSoviet1945StrategicOffensiveInManchuria.pdf

Great read. The Japanese fought like hell but were absolutely no match for the Soviet Army transported from Europe.

I have a paper copy. Highly recommend!

What stands out to me is the Soviets moving armoured formations through terrain that everyone thought was impassable. Mountains, deserts, swamps. The kind of stuff that most officers even now would shake their heads at and say was no-go or at best slow-go terrain. They achieved strategic, operational, and tactical surprise and then encircled an area larger than Western Europe, while destroying the last intact units of the Japanese Army.

Really amazing stuff.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 16:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 30, 2024 04:05

Godholio: Aug 28, 2002; Does a bear split in the woods near Zheleznogorsk?

Third World Reggin posted:

A book I read years ago and still seems ok.

https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mom-Joseph-T-Ward/dp/0804108536
Dear Mom: A Snipers Vietnam by Joseph T. Ward

In between stories of him doing neat poo poo are letters he sent home to mom around the same time, full of lies of what he was doing.

From a review

That's actually a really interesting idea, but I'm not sure how to even pursue it. So much of what we know about historical battles comes from official histories written based on commanders' reports, and surviving letters from troops is often used as a reality check to see if the official documents were accurate.

# ? Sep 13, 2016 16:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > War Literature Megathread: slightly above the eighth grade level

«‹›3 »