About Writing War Stories (an upfront article)

About Writing War Stories


I have written many war stories, to include the Korean War, having a close friend in that war. Also World War One, the one my grandfather was in, and World War Two, the one my Uncle Frank died in, and Uncle Wally was a POW in. I even wrote a few things about the civil war, but mostly the Vietnam War, the one I participated in, in 1971. My son Cody was involved with the Bosnia war in the early 1990s; I have yet to write about that. War participation, seems to run in the family, as much as it runs in the blood of the United States, always sticking their nose in to someone else’s business. It would do well if we stop fighting for everyone else, and just for our own country; in that case, our youth would have time to blossom.
Anyhow, I thought about this article for a very long while, if indeed I should write it, and never got around to it, wasn’t sure how to write it, and then I figured, do it the way you usually do, be up front, it is just your opinion, and we all have them, right?
Here is what I got to say about writing war stories: a writer who has the experience of war under his belt has one of the major subjects and certainly one of the hardest to write about. Sincerely those writers who have not seen it are jealous, and have tried to make it seem unimportant to others, if not abnormal or a negative as a subject, while in reality it is part of our global history, a fabric of the human race (like it or not, right or wrong), and perhaps irreplaceable and something they have missed.
You don’t forget war, if you’re in it. You remember near everything, even the songs being played, and replayed, and the smells, and the heaviness of the rain, and the championship boxing matches going on back home, the heat and the big bull mosquitoes, and the incoming rockets, their sounds and so forth and so on.
Writes are often times made by being sent to wars: such as Hemingway, Manning, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, and so on.
There are no real great writers today, worth quoting, and surely no war writers worth their salt, I’ve read.

5-9-2009