The diaries are gold. It's like being able to travel back in time and interview the young person who was there fighting. They're much better than in-person interviews were 60-70 years later. I really love all the young Americans who kept them for their rebelliousness (if their superiors ever enforced the no-diaries rule, they were in Ser…
The diaries are gold. It's like being able to travel back in time and interview the young person who was there fighting. They're much better than in-person interviews were 60-70 years later. I really love all the young Americans who kept them for their rebelliousness (if their superiors ever enforced the no-diaries rule, they were in Serious Trouble).
One diarist, Ted Graham from VB-15, an already-published writer at 22, who planned to write a novel based on his experience after the war, literally wrote directly to me across the time-space continuum when he wrote an introduction to his diary: "But man born unto a world war generation may live but only part of that life, not realizing even the lesser of his dreams. I am of that age and thinking perhaps some chronicler may some day wonder what this great group thought, dreamed, cherished and felt. From the war many will live, of course, but they, in their busy life, may take no time to write their thoughts." Of all of them, I really wish he had survived and I could have known him - I'm certain we'd have been friends.
Michael Connelly once said to me that he really respected non-fiction writers because they had "the power to bring the dead back to life." Which is what I try to do.
The diaries are gold. It's like being able to travel back in time and interview the young person who was there fighting. They're much better than in-person interviews were 60-70 years later. I really love all the young Americans who kept them for their rebelliousness (if their superiors ever enforced the no-diaries rule, they were in Serious Trouble).
One diarist, Ted Graham from VB-15, an already-published writer at 22, who planned to write a novel based on his experience after the war, literally wrote directly to me across the time-space continuum when he wrote an introduction to his diary: "But man born unto a world war generation may live but only part of that life, not realizing even the lesser of his dreams. I am of that age and thinking perhaps some chronicler may some day wonder what this great group thought, dreamed, cherished and felt. From the war many will live, of course, but they, in their busy life, may take no time to write their thoughts." Of all of them, I really wish he had survived and I could have known him - I'm certain we'd have been friends.
Michael Connelly once said to me that he really respected non-fiction writers because they had "the power to bring the dead back to life." Which is what I try to do.