The Soldiers'' Tale is the story of modern wars as told by the
men who did the actual fighting. Hynes examines the journals,
memoirs, and letters of men who fought in the two World Wars and in
Vietnam, and also the wars fought against the weak and helpless in
concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and bombed cities.
Interweaving his own reflections on war with brilliantly chosen
passages from soldiers'' accounts, he offers vivid answers to the
question we all ask of men who have fought: What was it like? In
these powerful pages the experiences of modern war, which seem
unimaginable to those who weren''t there, become comprehensible and
real. The wide range of writers examined includes both famous
literary memoirists like Robert Graves, Tim O''Brien, and Elie
Wiesel, and unknown soldiers who wrote only their war stories.
Using these testimonies, Hynes considers each war in terms of its
special circumstances and its effects on men who fought. His
understanding of the psychology of warfare--and of each war''s role
in history--gives this study its intellectual authority; the voices
of the men who were there, and wrote about what they saw and felt,
give it its powerful dramatic impact.
目錄:
Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Actual Kilting
oNE The Man Who Was There
Two ''Fourteen-''Eighteen: Civilian Soldiers
THaSE ''Fourteen-''Eighteen: The War Elsewhere
FOv Everybody''s War
FIvE, What Happened in Nam
slx Agents and Sufferers
An Epilogue on Epilogues
Notes on Sources
Personal Narratives of Modern War:
A Selected List
Index