Autobiographical war accounts - looking for recommendations
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From time to time I like to read autobiographical war accounts/memories/diaries. There are a lot of these kind of books, but it is not always easy to find the ones that are well written. Therefore I like to know, what autobiographical war accounts can you recommend? It doesn't has to be aviation related and it doesn't matter which war it is.
Here two of my favorite books:
"Homage to Catalonia" is a book by George Orwell about his time as a militiaman in the Spanish civil war. Orwell was at the Aragon front that was relatively quiet during his time in Spain, but he gives a good description of the everyday life at the front and of the conflicts between the different political groups on the republican side.
My favorite WW1 book is "Storm of Steel" by Ernst J?nger. In contrast to "All quiet on the western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque it wasn't written as an anti-war book. J?ngers gives a cold and emotionless description of the horrors of trench warfare and there are some moments when the reader gets the feeling that the author is really enjoying it, which is one of the reasons why J?nger is a controversial author in Germany.
Both books are gripping and also well written from a literary point of view, probably because both authors were professional writters. So far I haven't found anything of similar quality for the second world war, but maybe you can give me some recommendations. -
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The last autobiographical book I have read was Otto Carius "Tigers in the Mud". Carius was a succesfull tank commander on the eastern front. The book is well written and I learned a lot about tank combat.
When I read the book, I discovered that famous manga artist/film director Hayao Miyazaki wrote a manga that is based on Carius book. All persons in it are shown as...pigs!!?! - Google for "Doromamire no tora", it's quite bizarre. -
Hey Juri, for weird anime versions of 1930's warplanes, try "Porco Rosso" by the same guy. I've never seen it but hear it's really good.
For pilot accounts I can highly recommend the following:
I flew for the Fuhrer - Heinz Knoke (Defence of the Reich)
The Big Show - Pierre Closterman (Free French, Spits and Tempests)
First Light- Geoffrey Wellum - excellent, excellent book about a young man thrown into the Battle of Britain in a Spitfire.
For WW2 Pacific accounts,
With the Old Breed - Eugene(?) Sledge - is a really honest account of battle in Pelilieu and Okinawa. I don't know much about the PTO but found this enthralling.
Storm of Steel is a great book. As you say, he doesn't seem to have minded the war. -
'Soldier' by LTC Anthony B. Herbert
Strange.. the link I included in his name goes to a blank page; so here's the full wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Herbert_(US_soldier)
Cheers Juri -
When I did some research for two of my campaign projects I found these interesting diaries written by Japanese soldiers:
The diary of Genjirou Inui who fought on Guadalcanal:
http://www.nettally.com/jrube/Genjirou/cover.htm
The diary Sugihara Kinryu who died on Iwo Jima:
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~dfrisby/kinryu.pdf -
An autobiography I found to be an interesting read was 'Wings over the Pacific: The RNZAF in the Pacific Air War' by Alex Horn who flew Corsairs. Strictly speaking it's actually semi-autobiographical as a lot of the book is about the exploits of other pilots/aircrew, not just in fighters but in the transport, flying-boat and especially the bomber-recon squadrons. He does a good job of describing what it was like living in those primitive conditions and included many close-calls and oh-my-god-how'd-they-survive-that? situations which I find engrossing.
HB -
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Rudi - wow - that's one impressive man! Very brave man for what he did in Vietnam, standing up the authorities even at the cost of his name. Surely when a man of this reputation says something bad happened people would listen?
Must read this one day. -
