From Poets to War

 I was trying to remember just where my interest in WW1 came from. Like a lot of interests, thinking back, it grew organically. A lot of my reading has always been of biographies and autobiographies, of people in the concrete, of how they dealt with this rather strange thing called "life". More often than not the particular people I was attracted to were literary figures like John Keats, Shelley and William Blake. Hearing of the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen, I dipped into his life story, which obviously included episodes of life in the trenches. This led to me reading "Goodbye To All That" by Robert Graves, an autobiography of his early life and his service as an Officer in the War. 

Over the top

Wilfred Owen

Browsing one day in the local library I picked up a copy of a WW1 diary written by one of the rank and file Tommies, not a literary figure, just one of the many who lived through the war. I found it engrossing. The rest is history!

Since then my interest in the experience of war has broadened. Vietnam, WW2, even the Korean War (I would really recommend "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason, a pilot of a Huey helicopter, who flew over 1000 missions in his one year stint in Vietnam - just how he survived is a mystery!) The special relationship and bonding of soldiers facing danger and possible death on a daily basis can be inspiring and gives insights into the whole human experience of faith and trust.