“WAR IS AT best barbarism,” the Civil War general William T. Sherman once said; “its glory is all moonshine.” Some of the most eloquent voices in literature have emerged from their war experience, exploring that “barbarism”—the darkest corners of human nature—and attempting to describe the unspeakable with words. See if you can identify these poets and novelists, all of them soldiers or combat veterans.
1. Probably the best-known poet of World War I, this Englishman wrote “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est.” He was killed one week before the armistice was declared in 1918.
2. In 1932 this author fled Nazi Germany, where copies of his novel about the horrors of World War I were burned in public bonfires.
3. This author’s most famous novel is based on his experience of the Dresden firebombing during World War II.
4. This author, a B-25 bombardier during World War II, wrote his greatest novel about the question, “What does a sane man do in an insane society?”
5. Though opposed to the Vietnam War, this author reported for duty; he served as an infantry foot soldier in the American division involved in the 1968 My Lai massacre.
ANSWERS
1. Wilfred Owen.
2. Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
3. Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, who was in Dresden as a POW during the air attack.
4. Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22.
5. Tim O’Brien.