A historian exposes the unpredictably diverse feelings of ordinary soldiers, but fails to learn from their words.
Murderers are often only too eager to tell, in jailhouse interviews or macabre memoirs.
But not all. These dispatches provide rare insight into the experiences of men who may have scrawled in the foxhole or the barracks thoughts that they would not, or could not, convey once they got home. I had to confess to myself that it was one of the happiest moments of my life. If many of these letters and journals reveal a gloating indifference to human life, they're also full of the trembling vulnerability bestowed by guilt. Many raged against brutish or incompetent officers, at insufferable conditions and even at bloodthirsty civilians who clamored for war without knowing its costs.