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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to a Modern Wardi Samuel Hynes
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. My grandchildren frequently ask me why I read military history, especially memoirs written by servicemen and women. My explanation has been that because of when & where I was born, I never had to go to war and I try to imagine how I would have reacted to some of the situations soldiers find themselves in. Of course I do not know how I would have behaved so I read how others faced the dangers. In this volume, Mr. Hynes tries to explain how how soldiers have gone to war and how they have reacted to what they faced. He explains that there is always a war going on somewhere but he chose to centre his research on three main conflicts- WW I, WW II and Vietnam. Using excerpts from memoirs, letters and books written by ex-servicemen, he tries to answer the question I have been asked by my grandchildren. He does a remarkable good job. He is also very qualified to write this having been a Marine bomber pilot in the Pacific Theatre and now a professor of literature. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Appartiene alle SerieAlexander Lectures (1994) Premi e riconoscimenti
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. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)355.0092Social sciences Public Administration, Military Science Military Science Biography And History BiographyClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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In this book Samuel Hynes uses the letters, memoirs, and diaries merging autobiography, history and literature, to inform us what war was really like for those who actually fought it and how modern warfare has evolved. Hynes focuses on the soldiers of the two world wars and Vietnam, taking the reader to the Somme, the Salerno beachhead, the Egyptian desert, Khe Sanh, a Spitfire over the Channel and a sailor on the Coral Sea: as well as the victims of these wars- the POWs, the survivors of the Nazi death camps and the two atom bombs.
Hynes writes that the prospect of excitement and great danger have always driven young men to volunteer. However, the romance has been considerably diminished as the last century progressed as war became ever more dependent on lethal technology, where men are maimed or killed in shocking numbers without ever seeing an enemy. Often, they returned home disillusioned about the real reasons behind them being there, but many also admitted that they wouldn't have missed it for the world.
In this book Hynes gives a voice to the vast majority of the combatants who are never normally heard from. Hynes has obviously trawled through an awful lot of British and American literature in particular to find his material, but for me has produced a well written piece of prose that felt more novelistic rather than academic. As an ex-serviceman myself, although I hasten to add that I didn't serve during any of these wars, I found this an interesting and thought provoking read that has made me question my own reasons for joining up. ( )