My War (1982)

https://harpers.org/archive/1982/01/my-war/

by Michelangelo11 • 2 years ago

99 59 2 years ago

harpers.org

mitchbob• 2 years ago

Author of The Great War and Modern Memory [1], an amazing history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_and_Modern_Memor...

Michelangelo11• 2 years ago

Yeah, war is one of the most frequent topics of his books: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell#Works

Which actually surprised me, because I first learned about him through his book on class (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-fussell-on-clas...).

gumby• 2 years ago

A week ago I referenced this book in a HN discussion of Tolkien: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40573023

hilbert42• 2 years ago

You're right, The Great War and Modern Memory is not only an amazing history but it's also a remarkable bit of writing in its own right. It's one of those exceptional books on war and the history of warfare and up there with the likes of John Keegan's The Face of Battle and others that comprise the main text corpus about warfare. It's an essential read for anyone who's interested in the subject.

It's author, Paul Fussell, an educator in English, was a WWII veteran and in that nightmarish push across the border into Germany and so had firsthand experience of what it's like to be in battle. Fussell not only looks at the horrors of The Great War but also at those who participated in it, and of the social milieu that surrounded it.

Fussell not only speaks from experience but also from the heart, he dedicates the book to the memory of a companion who was killed nearby him. It's a very moving piece of writing.

I came to the book just by chance, I saw it on a pile of old books on a table outside a secondhand bookstore around two decades ago. My eye was drawn immediately to the remarkable photo of a tragic figure of a young soldier on its cover. The lost and dejected look on that soldier is forever fixed in my memory.

I doubt if that cover photograph could be bettered, it foretells the book's contents to a tee.

dang2• 2 years ago

The Real War 1939-1945 (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33184040 - Oct 2022 (161 comments)

Book Review: Fussell on Class - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32188044 - July 2022 (1 comment)

Book Review: Fussell on Class - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26351913 - March 2021 (75 comments)

The Real War 1939-1945, by Paul Fussell (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4027749 - May 2012 (78 comments)

Paul Fussell, Literary Scholar and Critic, Is Dead at 88 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4019325 - May 2012 (3 comments)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

philipkglass• 2 years ago

To this I will add two more longish, striking, compulsively readable pieces about World War II:

Thank God For the Atom Bomb (also by Paul Fussell): https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/unde...

Losing the War by Lee Sandlin: https://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm

0823498723498723• 2 years ago

Travail...Famille...Patrie (Work, Family, and Patriotism)

the opposition of these values to liberté égalité fraternité doesn't seem to have changed much in the intervening eight decades

a-french-anon• 2 years ago

"Patrie" is "Fatherland", not "Patriotism".

0823498723498723• 2 years ago

My bad; I should've known better from « Allons enfants de la patrie » !

0823498723498723• 2 years ago

Found an image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France#/media/File:Monet...

Having reflected, the general problem with "homeland" vs "patriotism" is that the narrower focus might lead to silliness such as the overseas francophonie getting textbooks speaking about "our ancestors, the celts".

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls_nVMZK3rM (Euh les filles, are-you sure that the problem of inégalité as posed is, in fact, soluble by radicals?)

(at least Vichy France left things at « Famille » and didn't go so far as the teutonic triple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_Küche,_Kirche#Third_Re... )

Animats3• 2 years ago

It's worth re-reading works from the trenches of WWII. US troops haven't had to fight a war like that within living memory. Ukraine and Russia are fighting one now.

The clouds of war are gathering. Germany is making plans for a draft. Poland tried a small-scale test mobilization of civilians. Poland and Latvia are planning to send back Ukrainian males who dodged the draft there. Sweden and Finland never stopped having a draft.

Russia is currently spending over 7% of GDP on its military. The EU averages around 1.5%. US around 2.9%. Russia supposedly lost 40,000 soldiers in Ukraine last month alone, although nobody has solid numbers. That's about 4x the losses on the Allied side for D-Day in 1944. Big wars kill large numbers of people.

aebtebeten3• 2 years ago

Big wars kill large numbers of people

(Leaving NBC for a different comment:) Stalingrad had more Allied deaths alone (in ~half year) than Union and Confederate deaths combined of the US Civil War (in ~4 years).

To be fair, that was (part of) a big war without medevac, but given (a) the determination of modern actors to ignore Geneva Conventions, and (b) the tech level of the RU/UA war, I'm not sure medevac is still a thing.

Animats3• 2 years ago

I'm not sure medevac is still a thing.

Not the way it was for US troops from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Getting injured people out of the combat zone is much tougher. The combat zone is deeper. The first kilometer is now about as tough as it was before helicopters. Doing something major for a patient in the "golden hour" after injury is often not possible.[1]

[1] https://journals.lww.com/journalacs/fulltext/2023/08000/putt...

_carbyau_5• 2 years ago

I am always amazed by the sheer ego of the "Geneva conventions" or any other "rules of war".

Maybe I don't understand how the mentality works but for me, once you are at the point you are killing people - and killing them in the thousands - you are already either crazily desperate and/or have a complete loss of empathy for your opposition.

Once you are in this alien mindset, why would you pay attention to any "rules" that might limit your murderous psychopathy?!?

And this worries me. Seeing the world increasingly brace itself for war I fear there will be someone who thinks COVID was a great trial run for a bioweapon.

And that is my simple unimaginative first grab at horror. I am sure smarter minds than me can think up worse.

jajko• 2 years ago

If 1 good thing will come out of this russian war is the firm realization globally that russia is a solid dictatorship still/again actively opposing democracy anywhere in the world, with absolutely 0 regard for its own population and generally being very, very far from typical western values on which they frown as subpar, weak and a threat.

There was some solid naivity not only in EU in past few decades, merkel et al completely ignored warnings from baltic members or Poland that russia can't be trusted yet. Current german leadership still doesn't treat this as their top urgency, they naively hope russians will get bored or scared from human losses and do just tiny glacial moves. This won't ever happen, just look at WWII, they still have the same mentality. They have to literally run out of equipment to stop at this point, they won't run out of men, not a country of 150 millions of which many are barely literate and fed propaganda every day.

baud147258• 2 years ago

solid naivity not only in EU in past few decades

I think there were some naïveté on the US side of thing, just like both were naive on how mainland China would turn to democracy as it opened to outside trade and industry

mistermann2• 2 years ago

If 1 good thing will come out of this russian war is the firm realization globally that russia is a solid dictatorship still/again actively opposing democracy anywhere in the world...

"Realization" implies truth. I bet you couldn't even try to prove your theory.

...not a country of 150 millions of which many are barely literate and fed propaganda every day.

Pot, meet kettle.

matthewaveryusa2• 2 years ago

I think it's more nuanced than naivety. Germany was willing to turn a blind eye for the cheap energy their powerful industrial economy relies on. I don't think it's wrong to take the cheap energy knowingly from your enemy -- you just can't lose sight of it.

Fundamentally it's ok to arbitrage with your opponent if it means more prosperity for you -- it gets complicated when you're doing it on the back of large deficits, and do it for long enough that you forget it was a gambit to begin with and now it's a dependency. Oops.

llm_trw3• 2 years ago

There were not trenches in WWII.

It was a war of maneuver from start to finish, which is why it was so much more destructive than WWI.

Russia supposedly lost 40,000 soldiers in Ukraine last month alone

Do not believe Ukrainian numbers any more than you believe Russian numbers.

One thing we have learned from this war is that a core of genocidal right wing nationalists makes you country extremely difficult to defeat. With the current recruitment crisis in the West I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a push from the agencies to make future generations more right wing.

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

There were not trenches in WWII.

Not WWI-style, but I think there were a number of trenches. For example, Fortress Europe (Germany's efforts to secure Europe), consisted of a number of Maginot Line-style entrenchments and tunnel complexes.

I think that the Eastern Front also had a lot of that stuff.

I believe that the Ukraine War is now featuring trenches, and I know that the Ethiopia/Eritrea War featured classic WWI-style trench warfare.

WWII was real bad, and was one of the first modern wars to claim more civilian lives, than military. I think that's sort of become a standard feature of most wars, these days; even the small ones.

I'm currently trying to figure out how my father[0] got a Silver Star, in Belgium, in WWII. He never told us, and the St. Louis fire destroyed his main records.

It affected him badly. I think he fought in a similar fashion to this story. He was in mechanized artillery, but saw plenty of bad stuff, and was wounded twice.

[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm

kmt-lnh• 2 years ago

The Battle of Kursk (for example) would like to have a word:

The Central and Voronezh Fronts each constructed three main defensive belts in their sectors, with each subdivided into several zones of fortification.[148][149][150] The Soviets employed the labour of over 300,000 civilians.[p] Fortifying each belt was an interconnected web of minefields, barbed-wire fences, anti-tank ditches, deep entrenchments for infantry, anti-tank obstacles, dug-in armoured vehicles, and machine-gun bunkers.[151] Behind the three main defensive belts were three more belts prepared as fallback positions; the first was not fully occupied or heavily fortified, and the last two, though sufficiently fortified, were unoccupied with the exception of a small area in the immediate environs of Kursk.[150][152] The combined depth of the three main defensive zones was about 40 kilometres (25 mi). The six defensive belts on either side of Kursk were 130–150 kilometres (81–93 mi) deep.[152] If the Germans managed to break through these defences they would still be confronted by additional defensive belts to the east, manned by the Steppe Front. These brought the total depth of the defences to nearly 300 kilometres (190 mi).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk

pjc503• 2 years ago

core of genocidal right wing nationalists makes you country extremely difficult to defeat

The opposite lesson from WW2, where having genocidal right wing nationalists tended to start the wars which you would then lose. The RWNs in Ukraine are even cited in the Russian causus belli (yes, obviously that's BS and it's an unjust invasion).

RWNs in Europe also tend to be pro-Russia. Possibly because Russia is paying them, possibly sheer contrarianism. Either way it's going to be difficult to divert them from divisive, fictional "enemy within" anti-immigrant discourse to the real threat from Russia.

talkingtab• 2 years ago

Perhaps in the narrow definition of "trenches" your first statement is true. However, a ".. war of maneuver from start to finish ..." is certainly not true. I suspect the combatants in the house to house fighting in places like Stalingrad and Leningrad, did not consider that as "maneuver". Nor did the Americans & Japanese soldiers at Okinawa.

Certainly there was much more maneuver in WWII - blitzkreig - but it lasted a long time and armies were not in constant motion all that time.

rightbyte3• 2 years ago

One thing we have learned from this war is that a core of genocidal right wing nationalists makes you country extremely difficult to defeat. With the current recruitment crisis in the West I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a push from the agencies to make future generations more right wing.

Ye see Alternative for Germany. Providing weapons for Azov et al. removed alot of social dogma around supporting those kind of movements that NATO would bomb "becouse nazis" if they were not picking on the right ethnicity.

Dunno why 'people' pretend this is not a thing. There are more or less fascist paramilitaries roaming around and collecting men for the trenches. Men who btw also are barred from fleeing the country.

Tade0• 2 years ago

Poland and Latvia are planning to send back Ukrainian males who dodged the draft there.

That's inaccurate - Poland at least declared that it will cooperate with Ukrainian authorities in this matter should they decide to recall their men.

So far the only thing that happened in this direction is that the Ukrainian consulate in Poland stopped providing services for adult Ukrainian men.

harkain• 2 years ago

Sweden and Finland never stopped having a draft

Just for anyone interested: Sweden actually stopped conscription in 2010, switching to a fully volunteer-based professional force. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, opinions began to change and conscription was reintroduced in 2017. The number of conscripts per year is much lower than it used to be (~5K last year compared to ~27K in 1997), but is planned to increase to ~10K/year by the early 2030's.

ajuc3• 2 years ago

Russia is currently spending over 7% of GDP on its military. The EU averages around 1.5%.

GDP of Russia was about 2 trillion USD in 2023. GDP of EU was about 18 trillion USD.

1.5% of EU GDP is still double the russian military budget.

euroderf• 2 years ago

But is there an accurate PPP-type measure for military spending worldwide ?

voiceblue• 2 years ago

within living memory.

People who are in their 90s: “Guess I’ll just die then.”

ggm• 2 years ago

John McCarthy (LISP) wrote on USENET about his emotions as a draftee hearing the A-Bomb had been dropped and he wouldn't have to storm the beaches of Japan.

jcynix• 2 years ago

Interesting article. This reminds me of Peter Cawdrons Sci-fi (sic) book "The Anatomy of Courage" which I finished recently. It related to WW I, not II, but also to the ugly truth about war. To quote from its "Afterword":

"This story is based on the non-fiction book The Anatomy of Courage by Charles McMoran Wilson, 1st Baron Moran (1882-1977), who was also known as Lord Moran. He served as the personal physician to Sir Winston Churchill. As a doctor in World War I, Lord Moran had no knowledge of concepts such as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), but he was a keen observer of human nature and captured the heartache of that tragic war. I’ve drawn from the examples he cataloged from the trenches of World War I and expanded on them in this novel, wanting to keep his insights alive."

And, of course, he talks about Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" too …

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

War is horrible, and fought for very stupid reasons - at least on one side, and often both.

That said... this guy joined the ROTC because it got him out of gym class in high school. That put him on the path to being a lieutenant in WWII, for all the wrong reasons. Sure, it's a crazy system that makes a person like that a leader of soldiers in the first place, but I also don't consider him likely to be a clear-eyed observer of it all.

I mean, the horror he experienced is real, and he describes it eloquently. The larger picture... that's where I don't trust him so much.

pjc503• 2 years ago

A personal account is by nature personal. The historians are there for big picture.

it's a crazy system that makes a person like that a leader of soldiers in the first place

You go to war with the people you have available, few of whom are ideally suited to it.

sdwr• 2 years ago

He talks at the beginning about how people who saw the larger picture with clear eyes escaped the front lines:

shrewder friends were enrolling in Navy V-1 or signing up for the pacific exercises of the Naval Japanese Language Program or the Air Corps Meteorological Program

eleveriven• 2 years ago

War leads to significant loss of life. It's horrible indeed.

My War (1982)

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