Veteran's Day and Books about War

I found a book meme blog that asks questions for bloggers to answer on Thursdays called Booking Through Thursday. I really like the idea, so thought I'd answer last Thursday's question today and start with regular Thursday posts on Thursdays in the future. The question was: It is November 11th, known here in the U.S. as Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day to remember the end of WWI but expanded to honor all veterans who have fought for their country, so …

Do you read war stories? Fictional ones? Histories?

I'm a pacifist who hates war, and I find it difficult to celebrate most any holiday that has a military flavor. When I was 11, my father (who is a Protestant minister) exchanged pulpits with a minister in Scotland for 6 weeks. We started our trip in Geneva, Switzerland, where I celebrated my 11th birthday with Andre and Magda Trocme, who served me a traditional Swiss birthday meal and ordered an almond torte instead of a birthday cake. Later, I was given a tour of a church in Geneva where priests used to collect penance tax from people and we saw a room filled with bones of dead priests. This tour left quite an impression of Andre Trocme at age 11, but it wasn't until 30 years after I met him, that I learned through the book "Lest Innocent Blood be Shed" by Philip Hallie about the role the Trocmes played in rescuing Jewish children in the village of Le Chambon. They never said a word.

We saw parts of Europe that had yet to be cleaned up from the intense bombing in England and Germany. We saw unexploded bombs in cathedrals. I saw my first war movie on the evening of our departure from Europe, it was a naval film, and I had to sleep with my parents that night. We were due to sail home in the morning on an ocean liner.

The sail home on the SS France was a highlight of the trip for me. I met a girl a year older than me and we became good friends and I spent most of the ship time with her. It wasn't until I missed church on Sunday morning, assuming my new friend would be going to church, too, and I could just go with her, that I learned that my friend was Jewish. I had never met anyone who was Jewish before. After the return home I encountered The Diary of Anne Frank and my eyes were opened to new horrors.

I also should mention that the early 1960s was a time when the Cold War was quite active and the Cuban Missile Crisis was part of my childhood. Atomic bombs and school drills, timing how long it took to run home from school, hiding under desks, and bomb shelters were part of my everyday existence in elementary school. So was the Civil Rights Movement, (my father was a Southern minister who moved to Tallahassee, Florida 3 weeks after the local bus strike started) and then the Vietnam War.

At any rate, my early experiences have taught me to abhor war, but how people survive in war and how war changes the world has always been fascinating to me. I don't read military novels, but I read both fiction and nonfiction about World War II. I read novels about the resistance movements, and novels and nonfiction about the Holocaust. I've read novels that take place in WWII Germany and know that not everyone in Germany was equally guilty. There was a resistance movement there, too.

I admire people who stand up to authority when authority is wrong and I admire people who fight back against oppression in amazingly creative ways. We've had many wars since WWII, and I read about the effect of war on people in Africa, Asia, and South America. Medicine is another favorite topic of mine to read about and I've discovered war medicine accounts and medical anthropology books about people who identify the dead in mass graves following acts of genocide.

I can't possibly list every book I've ever read about war, but here are a few that made an impression on me:

Lest Innocent Blood be Shed - the book about the Trocme family.

History: A Novel

The Invisible Bridge

The Book Thief

Charlotte Gray

Is Paris Burning?

The Spanish Bow

The English Patient

Stones From the River

For Rouenna

The Storyteller's Daughter

The Dressing Station

The Stone Fields

Let it Be Morning

Lost City Radio

Not Wanted on the Voyage I can't believe I forgot this one!