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Once There Was A War Essay

953 Words4 Pages

Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck gives a unique outlook into his time overseas during World War II. He worked as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and followed the lives of your everyday group of soldiers. (9) The accounts given by Steinbeck is able to give you a glimpse into the reoccurring issues of being in war thousands of miles away from your home. The book begins with the unit traveling to an unknown destination in Europe and what their lives are like on the troopship. Steinbeck writes, “The clerks and farmers, salesmen, students, laborers, technicians, reporters, fishermen who have stopped being those things to become an army have been trained from their induction for this moment. This is the beginning of the real …show more content…

as to what is really going on. The waist gunner says, “I looked through that paper pretty close. It seems to me that the folks at home are fighting one war and we’re fighting another one. They’ve got theirs nearly won and we’ve just got started on ours. I wish they’d get in the same war we’re in. I wish they’d print the casualties and tell them what it’s like. I think maybe that they’d like to get in the same war we’re in if they could get it to do.” (40) This opening up eyes to the fact that the United States was not being printed the same images of what was happening in the soldiers lives and what they were having to experience while in this war, and that they wish to be as brave as they are portrayed at home. Their yearning to return to their families continue, and some soldiers are able to pass time by growing vegetables that grow well at home. Steinbeck states, “Men who are homesick seem to take a mighty pleasure in working with the soil.” (71) They are finding small ways of bringing their true identities with them in a war time. There was never much understanding given into what the personal lives of each individual soldier was having to cope with being well documented. American were not receiving correct images of what the war was really like for them to not have the resources and the type of life they were accustomed

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