The best war novels look beyond glory and victory to show the awful impact on the individual regardless of nationality

Volunteering to join the British Army as I did and consequently serving with The Parachute Regiment, it would have been very easy as a young man to be wrapped up in the reputation, tradition, glory, and ceremony of that unit and to forget what duties you might be called upon to perform. Similar in fact to the character of Paul Baumer, the young idealistic German soldier, full of patriotism and eager to fight the foe in the trenches of WW1. The reality is horrifyingly different, as superbly described by the author from his own harrowing experiences on the Western Front. Paul quickly realises that the nationalism he has been sold is quite false. He is constantly surrounded by hunger, sickness, fear, and death, and that he and his young comrades are already either ‘old or dead.’ To make matters worse his return home on leave is emotionally destructive as nobody either understands or believes his experiences. He returns, empty to face the end.

This is I believe one of the finest books ever written on the subject of warfare. As a former serving soldier, this book reminds me of the dangers of uncontrolled nationalism and the horrors that can be unleashed if our leaders/politicians get it wrong. Be vigilant.

Again I have to admit a personal link to this book, having had two relatives who served in the Royal Navy during WW2, one of whom led a boarding party to capture a German U boat (but that’s another story). I certainly met him often and very occasionally you could see the effect of his wartime experiences in his words or actions. Like most who served, he rarely spoke about his experiences. 

The fact that the author of The Cruel Sea served as a naval reservist in WW2 certainly adds authenticity to this story. You know that this really is an accurate depiction.

The Cruel Sea is not about glamour or even heroes, but it is about grinding relentless exhaustion, about being soaked and freezing on an open bridge in Atlantic winter storms, about men’s strengths and weaknesses, searching day after day, night after night for a ruthless hidden enemy – the German U boat. It is about tedium, frustration, pain, anguish, and tenacity. This is about the dull pain of war at sea. This is about the long slog between rare and desperate actions. This is about the cruel sea and the mere men who tried to survive on her, serving their country, often unseen and unheard.

This story, written in 1949, describes the escape of a small group of British and Burmese civilians from the invading Japanese during WW2 and seems perfect material for one of those British 1950s black and white films, showing the British temperament when facing total war – courage, resilience, snobbery, the perpetuation of the class system and petty rivalries even with the threat of a demanding landscape, and a brutal enemy closing in on them. As far as I know it never made the silver screen but you can have fun slotting actors of the time into the different characters.

The writer captures the vivid Burmese country, its taste and smell, its appalling heat and humidity from his own personal experiences and involves the reader in the hopes and fears of the escapees, urging them all on to safety. But who will make it? Who deserves to make it? Who doesn’t?

As a member of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force serving within a civil war, I witnessed the fear and trauma amongst the civil population. This experience taught me what the word ‘hate’ really means. This book beautifully describes the awful trauma of a civil population caught up in a brutal war.

This book is written about my uncle Bob Allen. He was a career RAF officer, not easy to know, quite distant and intimidating, and he had a secret.

This is a true story that lay deliberately hidden for fifty years until unearthed on his death by the author. I say deliberately because of the need – common-felt amongst survivors of war – to remain tight-lipped. Even when his hand-written memoirs were discovered, they had been written in the third person. But this is the story of an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary times. He joined the RAF aged nineteen, was flying a Hurricane in dogfights that year, saw action in West Africa, in Normandy at D-Day, was shot down, presumed killed and captured by the SS. Interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Stalag-Luft 3. In 1945, he suffered one of the infamous winter marches on which many POWs perished before being liberated by the Russians. This is just one man’s remarkable story. This is what one man amongst millions stoically and quietly endured in the name of freedom. Lest we forget.

The pilot in question was my uncle. Ordinary people in extraordinary times.

 Most war novels are concerned quite naturally with the actions of the participants. This story, written in retrospect, concerns itself with the impact on the civilian population.

As the only part of the UK occupied by Nazi Germany,  Channel Islanders experienced the constant demands and dangers of occupation. Post-war, these issues gradually surface again after an exchange of letters leads to a visit to the Society and its members by an interested writer, where slowly and gently the brutality, hardship, treachery, survival, courage, and dark secrets of wartime are once again reluctantly revealed. It is also a reminder of the power of human relationships and of the consequences that can arise when love is stronger than national interests.

It is also a novel that certainly makes you consider what your own actions might have been if you had been similarly tested.