Writing
About War
More books and novels have been written about war or use
war as a background than any other human event. Why is this? Are we a
warmongering society? Of course we are. We are humans and, unfortunately,
humans make war. Some people say, "I don’t like to read war
stories." I think that what they are really saying is that they don’t
like war, a sentiment that any sane person would agree with. Like the song
says, "War… what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’."
Except as a theatre of human emotion and storytelling,
war is a complete waste of time, lives and energy. Talk to any veteran of
war and he will tell you that there is no glory in killing others. Yet that
same veteran might also tell you that never in his life did he feel more
intensely alive, in an extreme environment where body or mind may be
destroyed at any moment, with the feeling that they depended upon their
fellow soldiers and cared about their comrades more than they could have
imagined during peacetime. And this is why I think there are so many books
on the subject or books that have war as a background. Because of the
intensity of human emotion and striving that takes place in a war
environment, an environment of conflict on the greatest scale.
I hate war too. The very idea that because one government
declares war on another and gives its citizens not only the right but the
obligation to murder the other, is repugnant to me. And yet my fictional
books are about a group of men and boys going to sea in a sailing warship
during the American Revolution. I am more interested in the sailing of a
ship and the lives and characters on that ship than I am about the war, but
the fact that a world conflict is going on gives that ship and those
characters a purpose, a challenge and an intensely dangerous backdrop in
which to interact that makes the story more interesting, both from an
historical vantage as well as from the human dimension. The same person who
says, "I don’t like war stories" will not think twice about
going to one of those scream movies or watching a documentary about a serial
murderer. Why? Because of the extreme and intense emotions that one will
experience while waiting for that sweet young girl to be horribly murdered—the
kind of emotions and scenes that I would rather avoid, finding a good war
story preferable for the simple reason that the war story is usually not
about simple fear and the gruesome act of killing, but about normal people
in dire and quite abnormal circumstances. Murder is a terrible thing too,
but it makes for an interesting story.
What about the argument that war stories are inherently
culturally biased? I worked as a psychiatric social worker overseas on a U.
S. Army base for five years. Some of my friends were from the German
community and I enjoyed inviting them to go with me to the movies at the
base after a dinner of typically American fare such as barbequed chicken
wings or pizza. After a showing of Rocketman, a fanciful story of a
young American hero type who finds a secret device that he can strap on his
back and zoom around the county, my German friends seemed to be unusually
silent. Of course the story takes place during WWII and the young man finds
himself flying against the Nazis. My German friends were upset at the fact
that, once again, as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, German soldiers were
the bad guys. I was probably being insensitive to their complaint when I
said, "Well, you have to admit, the Nazis make great bad guys. They’re
obviously evil and besides, their flags and uniforms are so
colorful."
My mother is German, so I felt I could say such things,
but I don’t think I endeared myself to my German friends with those words.
The same thing happened with the "inscrutable Chinese" and the
Indians, all portrayed as "bad guys." I suppose some of this can
be viewed as inherently racist, but if one views a movie like Rocketman
or Raiders, almost cartoon-like stories, the portrayal of Nazis is
not so much a racist or anti-cultural statement as it is a simple foil for
an exciting movie, using an image that people associate with evil to
portray, if not completely believable, at least recognizable "bad
guys." I knew that my German friends were glad that Hitler lost the
war, that he was a real "bad guy," and that they certainly did not
think of themselves as Nazis. They did not argue with me about the fact that
Nazis, as a group, were "obviously evil," but Nazis were also
Germans and so there are things about peoples and cultures that can never be
adequately explained. Perhaps to my friends, the association was difficult
to overcome and all I can say is that such portrayals must be written with
sensitivity to the "other" side without glossing over the truth.
In any war story one side is against the other. In my
books, the Colonies are against the British. Not because the British are
bad, but because that is what happened in history. The characters that play
the British are not inherently bad, but the side they are on, from my
characters’ view, is the wrong one. Comments about the other side are
naturally uncomplimentary. But I also try to show that the other side is
human, not evil; that they suffer as much as the Americans; that they only
happen to be on the other side through accident of birth, not because they
are on the wrong side. My hero, although he must defeat his enemies, feels
human emotions, feels some compassion for the men on both sides who must
suffer. One British captain is chivalrous enough to give his prisoners free
roam about his ship, inviting my heroes to dinner—even going against
specific orders by keeping a man out of the prison ship, sending him to a
British hospital instead, thereby saving the life of my gunnery officer and
showing that even the enemy is not without compassion. In writing about war,
both sides are ultimately human beings, cast into their roles by fate, not
by right or wrong choices, each equally capable of honorable or evil acts.
One does not choose sides in war. And that is what I would encourage the
reader who says "I don’t like war stories" to try and
understand. It is not war or hatred of another race that a writer is
glorifying, but it is the human beings he is writing about, and often the
people on both sides. War stories are almost always about human beings, not
about war.
Michael Winston is the author of
Independent Action.
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