Slaughterhouse

I don't know, I guess I really like war stories. That's kind of a weird way to begin a blog entry, but I do. I like watching war movies, I like reading war books, I like listening to people telling war stories. Real war stories, though. My grandpa fought in World War II, so I often find myself in St. Louis or Chicago at reunions of his regiment. They don't really swap stories though, they just kind of sit together, remembering together, but not out loud.

That's kind of what I was reminded of, I guess, when Vonnegut and O'Hare were sitting at the table trying to remember the "good stuff," but they couldn't. My grandpa doesn't have "good stuff" to tell me. He always laughs when he says, "In the prison camp, I lost 45 pounds in 45 days." But that's not really that funny. Or when he tells me about the day of the prisoner exchange, and how he was the last one picked, and how the only thing he could do when he got to the other side was eat pancakes, and how they made him sick. He never really tells me how nervous he was, or how horrible it was.

But I mean, I can hear it in his words in other ways. He tells me about the Battle of the Bulge, and all he says is, "A lot of people froze in that battle." It's pretty simple, but it carries so much weight for him. How else do you describe something with so much death and destruction? He almost froze, he spent 30 days flat on his back in a field hospital as his legs cracked open and oozed. Doctors talked about amputation, but in the end he made it okay. He talks about his friends, points to them in pictures and says, "That's Hodges, he's dead now," in a simple way, yet one that is so powerful and sad.

This isn't really a blog post about the novel, which I kind of realize now. But I can't really think about this book without thinking about the things my grandfather's said to me. We talk a lot in class about how war is so glorified for everyone in America, but I've never really had a glorified view of war. Well, maybe, when I was very small, when I looked at the medals on the wall. A French Legion of Honor, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Prisoner of War -- I can go on, but I won't. Kids in elementary school would ask me if my grandpa fought in Vietnam, but I was proud to say no, that he'd fought the Nazis instead. It gave me more street cred on the playground.

But really, though, our family doesn't gather to listen to grandpa's wartime stories. He doesn't really like to talk about it, unless he's doing a presentation. It's more a silent presence looming over the glass boxes that held the ribbons, or over the trunk in the corner of the living room that still holds his knife and helmet, coat and boots. I only know so much because I've been to a few presentations and because I wrote a paper on him for Non-Fiction Writing last year.

So I guess, to make this related to class, I appreciate what Vonnegut is doing in writing an more accurate portrayal of the things that happen in wartime. My grandpa was only 18 when he got off the boats on Utah Beach, D+94, and I think he would very much agree that it was just a children's crusade. Vonnegut does a really good job of making me hate war more than I already do, but I can only see his memories in black and white. It'd be interesting, I think, to hear my grandfather's take on the novel -- to hear from someone who shares the memories in color.