War Soldiers Research Articles

“The book is inspired by the Australian soldier”: the wounds of war and the literary rehabilitation of the Australian soldier in Vietnam War writing

This article historicises two particularly significant examples of Australian Vietnam War literature: When the Buffalo Fight, written by Lex McAulay and published in 1980, and In Good Company: One Man's War in Vietnam, written by Gary McKay and published in 1987. Through their parallel emphases on a traditional trope of Australian soldiering masculinity and the personal and reflective character of their narrative voices, these texts, and others like them, salvaged the image of the Australian soldier from the deep ambivalences and moral ambiguities that surrounded the conduct of the Vietnam War. It is argued that these texts contributed to a revitalised collective consciousness of the role Australian soldiers played in the Vietnam War and that this continues to wield significant political influence, particularly in relation to how Australia's role in more contemporary wars is understood and commemorated.

From One Gulf to Another: Reading Masculinity in American Narratives of the Persian Gulf and Iraq Wars

Recent avenues of exploration in cultural studies reveal new possibilities for a reading of masculinity in Persian Gulf War and Iraq War narratives. There has been much debate regarding the impact of technology on the soldier’s sense of self, exploring ideas of speed, distance, and the possibilities and drawbacks raised by cyborg theory. What is yet to be fully explored, however, is how these factors have affected the trajectory of masculinity which has been thoroughly mapped through the wars of the twentieth century, and can be extended to encompass the literature of these conflicts. This article examines the ways in which masculinity is represented and challenged in Gulf War and Iraq War narratives, specifically Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (2003), Tom Paine’s The Pearl of Kuwait (1997), Colby Buzzell’s My War: Killing Time in Iraq (2005) and Evan Wright’s Generation Kill (2004). It explores how the literature of these wars can be read as portraying the impact of technowar on the masculinity of soldiers in the Gulf War, and the return to the post-Vietnam style ‘manly man’ in the later Iraq War. Crucially though, it explores how these narratives complicate such a simplified analysis and identifies the ways in which the technological circumstances of each conflict impact on representations of masculinity at both an individual and collective level.

Trust Your Senses? War, Memory, and the Racist Nervous System

ABSTRACTThe article begins with a rereading of the wartime essays of Virginia Woolf and George Orwell on the nature and affects of aerial bombing. In each case it is argued that the experience of being bombed reveals something about the nature of nationalism and the education of the senses. It is suggested that Britain can be conceived as both a bombed and a bombing culture. An account of the relationship between colonial power and bombing is presented through a review of the work of critical war historians. In addition, a brief discussion is included of the historical amnesia regarding the role of colonial soldiers in the Second World War. It is suggested that contemporary debates about nationalism and racism would benefit from being informed by analytical conversations between militarism, formations of nationalism, and the issue of contemporary multiculturalism. The article develops the notion of the racist nervous systems as an analytical metaphor which foregrounds the affective qualities of racism. The article ends with a discussion of the relationship between these processes and multiculturalism, the “war on terror” and the role of the British army—many of whose recruits continue to come from Commonwealth countries—in global counterinsurgency.

War of Words: Bridging the Language Divide in the Great War

This article explores the different ways in which soldiers in the First World War communicated with the enemy. Drawing, in particular, on accounts of capture and captivity recorded in interview with escaped and exchanged British prisoners of war, it argues that language was central to these experiences, and that a soldier’s ability to understand, and make himself understood, was often pivotal to the question of whether he survived or perished.

Cross-dressing for the fatherland: sexual humour, masculinity and German soldiers in the First World War

This article explores several interrelated questions concerning the consequences of the First World War on German front veterans' perceptions of gender and sexuality: how did soldiers respond to military and civilian attempts to control male sexuality and define masculine ideals? How did soldiers perceive sexual behaviours and masculine norms as a result of the traumatic experiences of the trenches? Focusing on sexual humour in front newspapers, this article argues that ordinary soldiers sought to escape prevailing masculine expectations and coped with the stress of the trench experience through gender transgression that included a wide range of `deviant' behaviours, including heterosexual promiscuity, homosocial and homosexual bonds, and female mimesis. Sexual humour in front newspapers reveals that many soldiers sought more than just the absorption of `feminine' characteristics into their masculine image of comradeship, as scholars have highlighted. Soldiers also fantasized and experimented with escaping from war-time violence and masculine restrictions by crossing genders. Referring to front newspapers, soldiers' letters, and documents produced by civilians and the War Ministry, this article uses archival sources recently collected at the federal archive/military archives in Berlin and Freiburg, the Schwules Archiv (Gay Archive) in Berlin, and regional archives in Stuttgart and Munich.

Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era

Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era

Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War, by David Killingray

Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War, by David Killingray

Media, militarism and mythologies of the state: The Latino soldier in World War II films

This essay examines the representation of Latino soldiers in World War II films and the social and political consequences of making these soldiers invisible or visible on screen. The Latino soldier's in/visibility has often been contingent upon state directives, genre conventions and prevailing war discourses. Films such as A Medal for Benny (1945), Battle Cry (1955) and Hell to Eternity (1960) were linked to discourses of national defense and, in later years, Cold War rhetoric. By focusing on these films, the essay calls for heightened vigilance about military and state influence in cinematic representations of Latino/a soldiers.

Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War

Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War

Trees as soldiers in a landscape war

Trees as soldiers in a landscape war

Jeffrey Reznick, John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War

Jeffrey Reznick, John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War

African soldiers in the Second World War

African soldiers in the Second World War

Beyond the Brotherhood: Reassessing US Army Combat Relationships in the Second World War

The conventional wisdom that portrays US combat soldiers in World War II as a 'band of brothers' owes much to Hollywood and popular history, and distorts serious understanding of the relationships within combat units of the US Army. This article examines this idea in the context of theories of unit cohesion and combat motivation and suggests a more complex understanding of these issues.

History at the intersection of disability and public health: The case of John Galsworthy and disabled soldiers of the First World War

The author presented an earlier version of this historical article to the Disability Section of the American Public Health Association (November 2009). It is part of his ongoing research in the social and cultural history of medicine as the field intersects with the history of disability, veterans, and public health, as well as current issues that touch all of these areas. This article introduces readers to perspectives on disability held by the British novelist John Galsworthy (1867-1933), which he developed primarily through his philanthropic support for and his compositions about rehabilitation programs for British and American soldiers disabled in the First World War (1914-1918). Readers will learn that Galsworthy’s perspectives are as much about his identity as an individual with disabilities as they are about men disabled in the “war to end all wars.” The rediscovery of Galsworthy’s experiences and words more than 90 years after the end of World War I reveals how history is present today at the intersection of disability and public health. Indeed, the story of Galsworthy ultimately seeking to forget his own experiences during the “Great War,” as well as the very physical and psychological disability caused by that conflict, can inspire public health professionals and disability rights advocates today to remember—indeed, to advocate for—men and women who served in battle and have returned home to realize renewed health and social participation despite permanent physical and psychological wounds. Readers will note that language used throughout this article to describe disability is period-specific and therefore not keeping with current conventions.

Etyka wojny a dopuszczalność zabijania

The article attempts to show that the broadly accepted views on the standards that apply to soldiers in war are in contradiction with general morality. The ethics of war allows actions which in ordinary situations would not only be regarded as morally unacceptable, but would in fact be worthy of the highest moral condemnation. I note two selected discrepancies between general ethics and the ethics of war, namely the existence of an asymmetry between the attackers and the attacked and the question of who is the object of morally unjustifiable acts of violence. Rejecting extreme positions (realism in international relations and various forms of pacifism), I recognize that there are two possible solutions to these discrepancies: either we accept the status quo, i.e. a strong incompatibility between the ethics of war and general ethics, or we admit that it is necessary to reformulate the traditional ethics of war and perhaps also the applicable standards of international law governing the admissibility and conduct of armed conflict.

Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War

Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War

A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War, 1854–1877

A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War, 1854–1877

The eagle and the harp: the enterprising Byrne Brothers of County Monaghan

Minnesota-based Christopher Byrne, a soldier in the Civil War, discovered an article in a New York newspaper reporting on a concert given in Ireland by his long-lost brother, the last of the great Irish harpers. The article compares the lives of Irish soldiers in the American Civil War with changes occurring in Irish popular culture in Ireland. It addresses the fact that Irish musicians who once were supported by aristocratic patrons were turning increasingly to the concert hall, where they performed for wider audiences, even as their siblings were seeking avenues for success in the USA and utilising post-war benefits to good effect.

Jaime Cortesão: o escritor combatente na I Guerra Mundial e a defesa intransigente de uma República democrática e inclusiva

Jaime Cortesão: o escritor combatente na I Guerra Mundial e a defesa intransigente de uma República democrática e inclusiva

““A Beriberi Heart””: Lessons from Slave Soldiers of World War II

This article is a group portrait consisting of brief vignettes of three Americans who became prisoners of war and worked as slave laborers for Japanese corporations during World War II. It discusses the men's capture, their food deprivations, the effects of their malnutrition, their ways of coping with imprisonment, and their lives and attitudes toward food after liberation. The author visited with each of the men, all octogenarians living in San Diego County, California, at the time. One, in a wheelchair, was working as a national service director for American Ex-Prisoners of War; another was a retired businessman; the third, who remained in the military after the war, retired as a chief warrant officer, and had since spent a lot of his time in pursuit of physical fitness. Each of the men wrote about his experiences as a POW in both published and unpublished accounts, and this essay also quotes from those sources.