Thought this thread would be incomplete without asking for a personal listing of, say, the top three war books (fiction or non-fiction) you've ever read. Here's mine:
1. All Quiet on the Western Front -- Erich Maria Remarque -- I must've read this astounding novel 4 times by the time I was 14! Having the common WWI German foot soldier presented as a vulnerable human being who despised war as much as anybody (and from their viewpoint yet!) totally negated all the war-is-cool garbage we saw growing up in post WWII America...John Wayne movies, TV show fluff like "Combat!" (a good show for what it was however) and "The Gallant Men." And, of course, Remarque's powers as a novelist and wordsmith surpassed my infatuation with an anti-war message from a German point of view, and the grisly details of war life and combat that made war uncool for me very early. This book should be required reading for all middle-schoolers...then no one would ever have a notion that war was cool, again!
2. Brave Men -- Ernie Pyle; non-fiction -- More than a journalist, Pyle was able to put a human face on the WWII infantryman, showing all the foibles and courage of daily combat existence in the European theatre.. Affectionately known as "G. I. Joe" to US servicemen he met his fate at Okinawa, ambushed in a jeep on the small island if Ie Shima a few weeks before the war's end. And his last ship was my father's (a Navy corspman with the 1st Marine Division) troop transport, an LST named the U.S.S Charles Carroll. My Dad took some of Pyle's last shipside photographs after meeting him, and still has them. Ernie Pyle will finally get some of his due when he's featured on a C-SPAN American Writers segment in a few months...watch for it!
3. The Killer Angels -- Michael Shaara; novelization. -- A moving and poignant account of the battle of Gettysburg from a Southern point of view. And it was also the basis for the TNT film, "Gettysburg."
