Monday, October 30, 2017

These Heroic, Happy Dead by Luke Mogelson

War stories and war movies bother me. So, when I got this book to read, I almost didn't read it. Since it was a collection of short stories, I went ahead and read it, hoping for the best.

Mogelson did a great job depicting how wars and combat affect soldiers, both in war and in peacetime. This is actually why I dislike war stories so much: it's just commonplace to throw these men and women into horrific conditions, instruct them to kill then toss them back in to reality without any help. I've always felt that war is played as a game by the people declaring it. It's easy to declare when you never have to fight.

The characters we meet actually intertwine throughout the stories, their past, their present. Veterans of Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq. Veterans who can't handle life after war, who give up, turn angry and violent.

All in all, each story made me sad and angry about how vets are treated, or in several cases, ignored and left alone, after they have been used by the bigwigs to win their wars. Don't get me wrong, some wars were justified. But just as many were not.


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