A War Book Recommendation for Peaceful Holidays

With two ongoing wars occupying much of our attention, holidays give us an opportunity to understand wars differently from what we are told. My recommendation is a reading of the book Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer and a war veteran. This short book, written in 1969 and set in the context of World War II — a war more noble than most in its aim to end the Holocaust — has no equal.

One of my relatives and one of my colleagues at work were veterans of the Vietnam war in the sixties. While my relative, AJ, rarely said much about his time in Vietnam, he would repeatedly express his displeasure at the escalation of American involvement in Afghanistan. He didn’t like it when President Bush initiated it. And he didn’t like it when President Obama escalated the US presence. He’d just say it was an unwinnable war just as the Vietnam war was, and all it would do is spread misery. My normally talkative colleague also would say little about Vietnam. Once he said, something along these lines: “Would you believe, thirty years removed from serving in that war, I still wake up and jump out of my bed, sweat breaking out ready to be attacked, on hearing the tiniest noise while asleep?” Such is the long-term impact of the war. A student of mine with a brilliant mind was a Gulf War veteran. His brilliant mind was no match for his enduring mental afflictions and physical disabilities from that war years ago.

While the deaths and injuries during a war capture our attention, with those numbering in the thousands in Ukraine and in the Middle East, a war’s impact on many more thousand civilians and soldiers in the aftermath are less apparent. Few lives remain unscathed among the millions in Ukraine and Gaza where the wars are raging. It’s not just them. Thousands of Israeli and Russian war veterans and their families will pay a price too, for years to come.

It is difficult to capture the complexities and long-lasting effects of a war as humorously as Vonnegut does in Slaughterhouse-Five. Hard to believe we can be told the horrors of a war in this way. The book is a science fiction of sorts, and it builds on the personal life of Vonnegut who was a member of an inexperienced US Army unit, captured by the German army. Taken to Dresden, the prisoners had to live through an onslaught by Allied Forces that killed 25,000 civilians. Let me caution. The book requires a contemplative read. It is not written chronologically. It makes one question religious teachings, Christian religion in this case. It’s written as seen through the fogged mind of one who has gone through a war.

Wars are glorified and leave in their wake a destruction of minds and bodies unimaginable to those who have not been a party. That is most of us who cheer on with little understanding of what it is we are cheering. Give this book a read. Here and here are two earlier book recommedations. May peace reign on earth in these holidays and beyond.

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