Filed under: History, Military, National Security | Tags: Bearing Witness to Modern War, Combat by the Men Who Fought, Honor all our veterans.
One way to honor our veterans is to learn about what they have been through. Here is a booklist of some personal narratives written at the time, or from notes taken at the time, rather than memoirs written many years later. I have starred some that I particularly recommend. I have read all the starred books, and many of the others,, but not all.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
British and Commonwealth
Graves, Robert: Goodbye to All That (London, 1929)
Sassoon, Siegfried: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London, 1930)
Vaughan, Edwin Campion: Some Desperate Glory (London, 1981)
Bagnold, Enid: A Diary Without Dates (London, 1918)
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Dunkirk and the Fall of France
Bartlet, Sir Basil: My First War: An Army Officer’s Journal for May 1940 (London, 1940)
Habe, Hans: A Thousand Shall Fall (London, 1970)
Southeast Asia
Chapman, F. Spencer: The Jungle is Neutral (London, 1949)
Fraser, George MacDonald: Quartered safe Out Here; A Recollection of the War in Burma ((London, 1993)
Masters, John: The Road Past Mandalay (New York: 1961)*
North Africa
Douglas, Keith: Alamein to ZemZem (London, 1946)
Crimp, R.L.: Diary of a Desert Rat (London, 1971)
Italy
Bowlby, Alex: Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby (London, 1969)
Mowat, Farley: And No Birds Sang (Boston/Toronto, 1979)
Northwest Europe
Burgett, Donald R.: Currahee! (Boston, 1967)
Cawton, C.R.: Other Clay (Niwot, Colo 1990)
Spencer, Henry G. : Nineteen Days in June 1944 (Kansas City, 1984)
Standifer, Leon C.: Not in Vain (Baton Rouge, La, 1992)
Fussell, Paul: Wartime (New York, 1989)* Doing Battle (Boston 1996)*
Pacific Islands
Manchester, William: Goodbye Darkness (New York 1979)*
Sledge, E.B.:With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (Novato, Calif. 1981)**
Special Operations
Moss, W. Stanley: Ill Met by Moonlight (London: 1950)*
Lindsay, Franklin: Beacons In the Night (Stanford, 1993)*
War in the Air
Crook: D.M.: Spitfire Pilot (London, 1942)
Bendiner, Elmer: The Fall of Fortresses (New York, 1980)
Boyington, Gregory (Pappy) Baa baa Black Sheep (New York, 1958)
Newby, Leroy W. : Target Ploesti (Novato, Calif, 1983)
The Naval War
Fahey, James J.: Pacific War Diary ((Boston, 1963)
Kernan, Alvin: Crossing the Line (Annapolis; 1994)**
Prisoners of War
Daws, Gavan: Prisoners of the Japanese (New York 1994)*
Keith, Agnes Newton: Three Came Home (New York 1946)*
Lomax, Eric: The Railway Man (London 1995)*
Newby, Eric: Love and War in the Apennines (London, 1971)*
Searle, Ronald: To the Kwai – and Back (London 1986)*
Women’s War
Curtis, Lettice; The Forgotten Pilots: A Story of the Air Transport Auxiliary*
Roosenburg, Henriette: The Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York, 1957)**
Vassiltchikov, Marie: The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 (London, 1985)**
KOREA
Russ, Martin: Breakout:The Chosin Reservoir Campaign (New York, 1999)*
[This is a novel by an author who was there]
VIETNAM
Moyar, Mark: Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York, 2006)* [A Highly Regarded Definitive History]
West, Bing: The Village (New York, 1972)
GULF WAR
Kelly, Michael: Martyrs’ Day: Chronicle of a Small War (New York, 1883)*
IRAQ
Bellavia, David: House to House: A Soldier’s Memoir (New York, 2007)**
Burden, Matthew Currier: The Blog of War (New York, 2006)
West, Bing: The March Up (New York, 2004)
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