When the Heavens Filled with Shouting

"The real war will never get in the books." ― Walt Whitman Real war, almost by definition, cannot be understood as an ideal war, as if there were an idea of real war which all real wars imperfectly manifest. The generals write about their war. The politicians write about their war. The academicians write about war from the safety of their hallowed halls. But what of those who actually fought the war--the real war--the war that did the killing and did the dying. This is the real war: the human side--what real people experienced in the real war. Real war is found in the particulars. It is what happened to this squad, or this ship, or this crew. It is what happened to this home, this family, this marriage, both during and after the war. The real war cannot be understood in the abstraction. It is the particulars which make the real war a human experience. It is the particulars which delineate the real war; it is the particulars which contradict the popularized, glorified Hollywood war and unmask the sanitized war for the fiction it is. What did the soldiers feel? What did their families feel? What is it like to tell your only son good-bye? Or tell your brother, or your husband, or your uncle good-bye and send him off to war? What is it like to receive a telegram from the War Department saying your loved one has been wounded, or is missing, or has been killed? Having survived combat how does one survive coming home haunted by nightmares? What does a wife do when the man who returns after the war is not the husband she sent off to war? This is the true story told by eyewitnesses where were there, who fought and died "When the Heavens Filled with Shouting," and those who survived "the rain of ghastly dew, from the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue."